These métaphýsics | óf magíciáns.Faust. I, Sc. ii.
Allied with this is the fact that Marlowe still has a great predilection for masculine endings, although feminine endings are also met with now and then, especially in his later plays. Run-on lines do not often occur, but many two- and three-foot lines as well as heroic couplets are found at the end of longer speeches, scenes, and acts.
The blank verse of Greene, Peele, Kyd, and Lodge has a similar structure to that of Marlowe, especially as regards the prevalence of masculine endings. The verse of Greene and Peele, however, is rather monotonous, because generally the caesura occurs after the second foot. On the other hand, the metre of Kyd and Lodge stands in this respect much nearer to that of Marlowe and in general shows greater variety.[156]
§ 164. The blank verse of Shakespeare,[157] which is of great interest in itself, and moreover has been carefully examined during the last decades from different points of view, requires to be discussed somewhat more fully.
It is of the first importance to notice that Shakespeare’s rhythms have different characteristic marks in each of the four periods of his career which are generally accepted.[158] For the determination of the dates of his plays the metrical peculiarities are often of great value in the absence of other evidence, or as confirming conclusions based on chronological indications of a different kind; but theories on the dates of the plays should not be built solely upon these metrical tests, as has been done, for instance, by Fleay. Such criticisms, generally speaking, have only a subordinate value, as, amongst others, F.J. Furnivall has shown in his treatise The Succession of Shakespeare’s works and the use of metrical tests in settling it (London, Smith, Elder & Co., 1877. 8º).
The differences in the treatment of the verse which are of greatest importance as distinctive of the several periods of Shakespeare’s work are the following:
§ 165. In the first place the numerical proportion of the rhymed and rhymeless lines in a play deserves attention. Blank verse, it is true, prevails in all Shakespeare’s plays; but in his undoubtedly earlier plays we find a very large proportion of rhymed verse, while in the later plays the proportion becomes very small.
Some statistical examples, based on careful researches by English and German scholars, may be quoted to prove this; for the rest we refer to the special investigations themselves.
In Love’s Labour’s Lost, one of Shakespeare’s earliest plays, we have 1028 rhymed lines and 579 unrhymed. In The Tempest, one of his last plays, we find 1458 unrhymed and only two rhymed five-foot lines. In the plays that lie between the dates of these two dramas the proportion of rhymed and unrhymed verse lies between these two numbers. In Romeo and Juliet, e.g. (which belongs to the end of Shakespeare’s first period, though Fleay thought it a very early play) we have 2111 unrhymed and 486 rhymed five-foot lines; in Hamlet (belonging to the third period) there are 2490 unrhymed and 81 rhymed lines.
In many cases, however, the use of rhyme in a play is connected with its whole tone and character, or with that of certain scenes in it. The frequency of rhymes in Romeo and Juliet finds its explanation in the lyrical character of this play. For the same reason A Midsummer Night’s Dream, although it is certainly later than Love’s Labour’s Lost and Romeo and Juliet, shows a larger proportion of rhymed lines (878 blank: 731 rhymes). This seems sufficient to show that we cannot rely exclusively on the statistical proportion of rhymed and unrhymed verses in the different plays in order to determine their chronological order.