Thús spake she tó: | ‘O! Síster Ánne, what dréams
Be thése, | that mé torménted | thús affráy?
What new guést is thís, | that tó our réalm is cóme?
Whát one of chéer? | how stóut of héart in árms?
Trúly I thínk | (ne váin is mý belíef)
Of Góddish ráce | some óffspring shóuld he bé.’
§ 163. With regard to the further development of this metre in the drama of the second half of the sixteenth and the first half of the seventeenth centuries we must restrict ourselves to a brief summary of its most important peculiarities, for details referring the reader to Metrik, ii, pp. 256–375; for bibliography see ib., pp. 259–60.
The employment of blank verse in the court drama hardly brought about any change in its structure. In Gorboduc, apart from a few instances in which a line is divided in the dialogue between two speakers (generally two and three feet) and the occasional (for the most part no doubt accidental) use of rhyme, the blank verse is exceedingly similar to that of Surrey, having masculine endings with hardly any exceptions.
This character was maintained by blank verse in all the other court plays of this time, only occasionally rhyming couplets are used at the end of a scene in Gascoigne’s Iocasta, and prose passages now and then occur in Lyly’s The Woman in the Moon.
The next and greatest step in the further development of the metre was its introduction into the popular drama by no less a poet than Marlowe in his drama Tamburlaine the Great (1587). Marlowe’s mastery over this metrical form was supreme. His skill is shown in his use of the inversion of accent, particularly the rhetorical inversion, to give variety to his rhythm, e.g.: