A damned death! Let gallows gape for dogs, let man go free.—Hen. V. iii. 6.
These last six, we may see, all belong to Ancient Pistol. We possibly might add:
He's ta'en, and, hark! they shout for joy.—
Come down, behold no more.—Jul. Cæs. v. 3.
17.
I will now make a few general observations on the dramatic verse of Shakespeare and his contemporaries. In the first place, as observed above, we may lay it down as a general rule that their verse—I may perhaps include even that of Marston—is never rugged or inharmonious, but that when it appears to be so it is owing to the copyist or the printer, or to the fact of the manuscript having been damaged, and not unfrequently to want of skill in the reader.
An apparent cause of imperfection in lines is the reader's ignorance of the poet's mode of pronunciation. Thus it was then the custom—one not quite lost yet—in prose as well as in verse, if two words came together, one ending, the other beginning, with an accented syllable to throw back the former accent: hence Shakespeare said, for example, "the dívine Desdemona." If critics kept this fact in mind, they would not reject Tieck's excellent emendation of "the précise Angelo" for "the prenzic Angelo" in Measure for Measure, on account of the accent, when in the very same play we have "a cómplete bosom," i. 4; "O just, but sévere law!" ii. 2; "Will bélieve this," ib.; "Our cómpell'd sins," ib. 4, &c.; we have actually "précise villains," ii. 1. How would they read
Might córrupt minds procure knaves as corrupt
(Hen. VIII. v. 1)?
In fine, it must be remembered that ion, ien, and other double vowels were pronounced dissyllabically, as oceän, &c.