In sooth, I know not why I am so sad
as proof. Ten monosyllables in one line! But this is not impossible in Norwegian:
For sand, jeg ved ei, hvi jeg er saa trist—
It is not easy to translate Shakespeare, but the difficulty goes deeper than his richness in words of one syllable.
With the greater part of Dr. Western's article everyone will agree. It is doubtful if any case could be made out for the division of prose and verse based on psychology. Shakespeare probably wrote his plays in verse for the same reason that Goethe and Schiller and Oehlenschläger did. It was the fashion. And how difficult it is to break with fashion or with old tradition, the history of Ibsen's transition from poetry to prose shows. It is equally certain that in Collin's Introduction it is difficult to distinguish ascertained facts from brilliant speculation. But it is not easy to agree with Dr. Western that Collin's explanation of the "pause" is a tissue of fancy.
In the first place, no one denies that the printers have at times played havoc with Shakespeare's text. Van Dam and Stoffel, to whose book Western refers and whose suggestions are directly responsible for this article, have shown this clearly enough. But when Dr. Western argues that because printers have corrupted the text in some places, they must be held accountable for every defective short line, we answer, it does not follow. In the second place, why should not a pause play a part in prosody as well as in music? Recall Tennyson's verse:
Break, break, break,
On thy cold, grey stones, o sea!
where no one feels that the first line is defective. Of course the answer is that in Tennyson no accented syllable is lacking. But it is difficult to understand what difference this makes. When the reader has finished pronouncing Belmont there must be a moment's hesitation before Lorenzo breaks in with:
In such a night