Page:An Essay of Dramatic Poesy.djvu/16

xii vernacular dialects, whence gradually emerged the new languages of southern Europe, the niceties of quantity were obscured or forgotten, and some new attraction was felt to be necessary by the poetic artist in order to supply its place. This attraction was found in rhyme.

Attraction may however be studied too exclusively; there may be too much ornament as well as too little. Poetry, by presenting ideas in a beautiful dress, aims at making them loved. But the ideas themselves are the main consideration, and if the dress is too much obtruded,—if it attract attention for its own sake and not for the sake of what it clothes, a fault is committed, and a failure incurred. As Aristotle considered (Poet. IV) that the elaborate Greek metres were unsuited for tragedy, and that the iambic trimeter, as 'nearer to common discourse,' was its proper instrument, so it is quite possible that in modern dramatic verse rhyme may fix the attention too much upon the manner of saying a thing, when the thing itself ought to concentrate upon it the thoughts and feelings of the spectators. But this extreme, owing to the difficulty and toil which finding rhymes imposes on the author, is less often met than its opposite. For one rhyming play which errs by excess of ornament, there are ten plays in blank verse which err by being flat and dull. Shakspere in his best plays observes the true mean, making his blank verse so rhythmic and beautiful that the hearer requires no other ornament; while by rejecting rhyme he avoids the danger of weakening that interest which should be excited by the plot and the characters. When such