Sterveth in Winter wyth hungrie gripyng.
This measure may be seen in Damon and Pitheas, New Custom, Gammer Gurton's Needle, and other plays, in which we shall find it admitting lines of five and even six and seven feet,—ex. gr.,
That state is most miserable. Thrise happy are we
Whom true love hath joined in perfect amity.
Which amity first sprung, without vaunting be it spoken that is true,
Of likeliness of manners, took root by company, and now is conserved by virtue.—Damon and Pitheas.
Contemporary with Bale and Udall, the illustrious Earl of Surrey had introduced into English a new species of verse—blank verse. This was a five-foot iambic measure without rime, and admitting of verses of six feet. His version of two books of the Æneis in this measure was printed in 1557; and five years later, Jan. 18, 1561-2, a play written in it and named Gordebuc, by Norton and Sackville, was performed before Queen Elizabeth at Whitehall, and it was given to the press in 1566. But more than twenty years elapsed before blank verse made its first appearance on the public stage in the Tamburlain of Marlow. From its inherent superiority, it at once became the established form for the drama, still mingled, however, with riming couplets and stanzas.
16.
I have already expressed my opinion that the earliest among the extant dramas of Shakespeare may have been The Comedy of Errors. This is in blank verse, in general strictly decasyllabic, mingled with the riming measures above noticed. His next play would seem to have been The Two Gentlemen of Verona, much of the same form, but differing from it, and from its immediate successors, by admitting in its blank verse trisyllabic feet, as in
A virtuous gentlewoman, mild and beautiful.—iv. 4.