FOOTNOTES:
[100-A] "The Religious Poetry of Babylonia." Presbyterian Review, 1888, p. 76.
[105-A] There is an English translation of this work.
CHAPTER VI
BLANK VERSE AND FREE VERSE AS FORMS OF PROSE
The unrhymed iambic pentameter known as blank verse is really a form of free verse; it is a modified form of the unrhymed classical measure. It made its appearance in Italy in the early part of the sixteenth century, and was used by Ariosto in his comedies, except that he employed a final additional unaccented syllable, making eleven syllables in each line. Surrey, who used it in his translation of two books of the Æneid, imported it from the Italians. It was called by the Italians versi sciolti, "untied or free verse." It was, then, the old classical measure with more freedom.
In his essay, Blank Verse, John Addington Symonds dwells especially on the plasticity and variety of blank verse, which he says it has more than any other national metre. It may be used for the commonplace and the sublime, the tragic and the comic, etc. It does not have to consist of five iambuses only, but other feet may be substituted almost at the caprice of the poet. This, however, practically amounts to saying that blank verse is after all a great deal like prose; indeed, it may be arranged like modern free verse with great ease. Its plasticity and variety are due to the fact that its artificial requirements are less than those of most other metres. It was a fortunate day for English drama and poetry when Marlowe, Shakespeare and Milton, following in the footsteps of Surrey's translation of two books of the Æneid, and
Sackville's and Norton's play, Gorboduc, made blank verse fashionable. The writers really brought poetry back into prose. For blank verse is but a restricted prose, because there is as often as not no natural pause at the end of the line, and because other feet may be substituted for the iambus.