Or the famous description of Bellario, beginning:
I have a boy,
Sent by the gods, I hope to this intent,
Not yet seen in the court—
from the same scene.
Or the King's soliloquy in Act II, Scene 4, containing the lines:
You gods, I see that who unrighteously
Holds wealth or state from others shall be curst
In that which meaner men are blest withall:
Ages to come shall know no male of him
Left to inherit, and his name shall be
Blotted from earth.
The reader will at once be impressed with the regularity of the masculine ending. Beaumont does not, of course, eschew the double ending; but, as Boyle has computed, the percentage in this play is but fifteen in the non-Fletcherian passages, whereas the percentage in Fletcher's contribution is thirty-five. The prevalence of run-on lines is also noteworthy; and the infrequency of the stress-syllable openings, anapæsts, and feminine cæsuræ by which Fletcher achieves now conversational abruptness, now lyrical lilt.
In The Maides Tragedy, such soliloquies as that of Aspatia in Act V, Scene 4, with its mixture of blank verse and rhyme:
This is my fatal hour; heaven may forgive
My rash attempt, that causelessly hath laid
Griefs on me that will never let me rest,
And put a Woman's heart into my brest.
It is more honour for you that I die;
For she that can endure the misery
That I have on me, and be patient too,
May live, and laugh at all that you can do—
are marked by characteristics utterly unlike those of Fletcher's dramatic verse. Also unlike Fletcher are the scenes which abound in lines of weak and light ending, and lines where the lighter syllables of every word must be counted to make full measure. Fletcher did not write:
Alas, Amintor, thinkst thou I forbear
To sleep with thee because I have put on
A maidens strictness;