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Shakespeare’s use of poetry, and especially of blank verse, in his dramas shows a strikingly progressive development which is very important both in measuring his intellectual and artistic growth and in corroborating the dates of his various plays. The metrical tests, mainly worked out during the last part of the nineteenth century, require both judgment and imagination for effective use; but when so used they become an indispensable implement for the appreciation of the poet.

The chief facts established by the study of Shakespeare’s use of metre are the following:

(A) In early plays Shakespeare secures variety and an ornate effect by much use of riming couplets, to which he also adds more elaborate metrical forms, such as the quatrain, six-line stanza, and sonnet. In later plays he depends increasingly upon unrelieved blank verse, finally discarding rime altogether, except in inserted songs.

(B) In earlier plays he sticks rather monotonously to the type line of exactly ten syllables. In later plays he gets variety by larger use of eleven-syllable (feminine-ending) and even twelve-syllable lines, which in The Tempest exceed the proportion of one in three.

(C) In earlier plays each line is ordinarily felt as a separate unit, its individuality being marked off by a pause at the end (end-stopped). In later plays this mechanical pattern is broken up by increasing employment of unstopped, or run-on, lines, where one flows into another without a break. In plays of the last