or
As mine own conscience too sensible;—
I must live scorned, or be a murderer;—
That trust out all our reputation.
Nor did Fletcher write, with any frequency, improper run-on lines, such as III, 2, 135 (one of his collaborator's scenes):
Speak yet again, before mine anger grow
Up beyond throwing down.
In this play the percentage of run-on lines in Fletcher's scenes is about nineteen; in the scenes not written by him, almost twenty-seven. Fletcher's double endings are over forty per cent; his collaborator's barely ten.
In A King and No King similar Beaumontesque characteristics distinguish the major portion of the play from the few scenes generally acknowledged to be written by Fletcher. In Fletcher's scenes[155] one notes the high proportion of stress-syllable openings, and, consequently, of anapæstic substitutions, the subtle omission occasionally of the arsis, and not infrequently of the thesis (or light syllable) after the pause, and the use of the accented syllable at the beginning of the verse-section. While sometimes these characteristics appear in the other parts of the play, their relative infrequency is a distinctive feature of the non-Fletcherian rhythm. A comparison of the verse of Fletcher's Act IV, Scene 2, with that of his collaborator in Act I, Scene 1, well illustrates this difference. The recurrence of the feminine cæsura measures fairly the relative elasticity of the versifiers. It regulates two-thirds of Fletcher's lines; but of his collaborator's not quite one half. Fletcher, for instance, wrote the speech of Tigranes, beginning the second scene of Act IV:
^ Fool | that I am, | I have | undone | myself,
^ And | with mine own | hand ¦ turn'd | my for|tune round,
That was | a fair | one: ¦ I have child|ishly
^ Plaid | with my hope | so long, till I have broke | it,
And now too late I mourn for 't, ¦ O | Spaco|nia,
Thou hast found | an e|ven way | to thy | revenge | now!
^ Why | didst thou fol|low me, |^ like | a faint shad|ow,
To wither my desires? But, wretched fool,
^ Why | did I plant | thee ¦ 'twixt | the sun | and me,
To make | me freeze | thus? ¦ Why | did I | prefer | her
^ To | the fair Prin|cess? ¦ O | thou fool, | thou fool,
Thou family of fools, |^ live | like a slave | still
And in | thee bear | thine own |^ hell | and thy tor|ment,—
where, beside the frequent double endings and end-stopped lines, already emphasized in preceding examples, we observe in the run of thirteen lines, six stress-syllable openings with their anapæstic sequences, three omissions of the light syllable after the cæsural pause with the consequent accent at the beginning of the verse-section, and no fewer than six feminine cæsuræ (or pauses after an unaccented syllable) of which three at least (vv. 2, 5, 10) are exaggerated jolts.