"It is to be observed that passages of rhymed couplets, in which the thought is somewhat constrained and its expression limited by the form of the verse, are scattered freely through the play, and that these are found side by side with passages of blank verse in which the thought, on the contrary, so entirely dominates the form, and overloads and weighs it down, as to produce the impression that the poet, in writing them, was almost regardless of the graces of his art, and merely sought an expression of his ideas in the most compressed and elliptical form. The former trait is characteristic of his youthful style; the latter marks a certain period of his maturer years. Contracted words, which Shakespeare used more freely in his later than in his earlier works, abound; and in some passages words are used in an esoteric sense, which is distinctive of the poet's style about the time when 'Measure for Measure' was produced. Note, for instance, the use of 'succeed' in 'owe and succeed thy weakness,' in Act II., Sc. 4 of that play, and in 'succeed thy father in manners,' Act I., Sc. 1 of this. It is to be observed also that the advice given by the Countess to Bertram when he leaves Rousillon is so like that of Polonius to Laertes in a similar situation, that either the latter is an expansion of the former, or the former a reminiscence of the latter; and as the passage is written in the later style, the second supposition appears the more probable. Finally, it is worthy of remark that both the French officers who figure in this play as First Lord and Second Lord are somewhat strangely named Dumain, and that in 'Love's Labor's Lost' Dumain is also the name of that one of the three attendants and brothers in love of the King who has a post in the army; which, when taken in connection with other circumstances, is at least a hint of some relation between the two plays."
If the reader who has gone thoughtfully through the plays in the course which I have indicated will take up this one, he will find in the very first scene evidence and illustration of these views. It is almost entirely in prose, which itself shows the weight of Shakespeare's mature hand. The first blank verse is the speech of the Countess, in which she gives a mother's counsel to Bertram as he is setting out for the wars, as is pointed out above, and which is unmistakably of the "Hamlet" period. Then comes a speech by Helen beginning,
O were that all! I think not on my father:
And these great tears grace his remembrance more
Than those I shed for him—
and ending with this charming passage, referring to the growth of her love for Bertram:
'Twas pretty, though a plague,
To see him every hour; to sit and draw
His arched brows, his hawking eye, his curls
In our heart's table; heart too capable
Of every line and trick of his sweet favor:
But now he's gone, and my idolatrous fancy
Must sanctify his reliques. Who comes here?
It is needless to say to the advanced student of Shakespeare's style that this is in his later manner. A little further on is Helen's speech to the detestable Parolles, beginning with the mutilated line, "Not my virginity yet," which is followed by some ten, in which she pours out in Euphuistic phrase her love for Bertram, saying that he has in her "a mother, and a mistress, and a friend, a counsellor, a traitress, and a dear"; and yet further,
His humble ambition, proud humility,
His jarring concord, and his discord dulcet,
His faith, his sweet disaster, with a world
Of pretty, fond, adoptious Christendoms
That blinking Cupid gossips.
This will remind the reader of Scott's Euphuist, Sir Piercie Shafton, who, if I remember aright, uses some of these very phrases, in which Shakespeare has beaten Lilly at his own weapons, and made his affected phraseology the vehicle of the touching utterance of real feeling. "Euphues" was published in 1580, when Shakespeare was only sixteen years old; and this passage, although it may have been written or perhaps altered later, was probably a part of the play as it was first produced. The scene ends with the following speech by Helen, which, for its peculiar characteristics, is worth quoting entire. The reader who will compare it with "Love's Labor's Lost" and "A Midsummer Night's Dream" will have not a moment's doubt as to the time when it was written:
Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie
Which we ascribe to heaven: the fated sky
Gives us free scope, only doth backward pull
Our slow designs when we ourselves are dull.
What power is it which mounts my love so high
That makes me see and cannot feed mine eye?
The mightiest space in fortune nature brings
To join like likes and kiss like native things.
Impossible be strange attempts to those
That weigh their pains in sense and do suppose
What hath been cannot be: whoever strove
To show her merit that did miss her love?
The king's disease—my project may deceive me,
But my intents are fixed and will not leave me.
Besides its formal construction and its rhyme, this passage is overmuch afflicted with youngness to be accepted as the product of any other than Shakespeare's very earliest period. Of like quality to this are other passages scattered through the play. For example, the Countess's speech, Act I., Sc. 3, beginning, "Even so it was with me"; all the latter part of Act II., Sc. 1, from Helen's speech, "What I can do," etc., to the end, seventy lines; passages in the third scene of this act, which the reader cannot now fail at once to detect for himself; Helen's letter, Act III., Sc. 4, and Parolles's, Act IV., Sc. 3; and various passages in the last act. Shakespeare, I have no doubt, wrote this play at first nearly all in rhyme in the earliest years of his dramatic life, and afterward, late in his career, possibly on two occasions, rewrote it and gave it a new name; using prose, to save time and labor, in those passages the elevation of which did not require poetical treatment, and in those which were suited to such treatment giving us true, although not highly finished specimens of his grand style.