Sdruciolla is the Italian term for triple-rimed endings.

(Earl of Surrey: Æneid, book IV. 223-242. ab. 1540. pub. 1557.)

Surrey's translation of two books of the Æneid may have been suggested by the translation (1541) made by Francesco Maria Molza, attributed at the time to Cardinal Ippolito de Medici. This was in Italian unrimed verse. (See Henry Morley's First Sketch of English Literature, p. 294, and his English Writers, vol. viii. p. 61.) The verse of Surrey, like Wyatt's, shows a somewhat mechanical adherence to the syllable-counting principle, in contrast to regard for accents.[26] Thus we find such lines as:

There is a fairly free use of run-on lines; according to Schipper, 35 in the first 250 of the translation. Nevertheless, the general effect is monotonous and lacking in flexibility.

(Sackville and Norton: Gorboduc, or Ferrex and Porrex, V. ii. 1-14. 1565.)

This tragedy, although Dryden curiously instanced it in defence of the use of rime on the stage, was the earliest English drama in blank verse. The metre is decidedly more monotonous than Surrey's, and gives little hint of the possibilities of the measure for dramatic expression. In general, the early experiments in blank verse suggest—what they must often have seemed to their writers—the mere use of the decasyllabic couplet deprived of its rime. Nevertheless, as Mr. Symonds remarks of a passage in Gorboduc, "we yet may trace variety and emphasis in the pauses of these lines beyond what would at that epoch have been possible in sequences of rhymed couplets." (Blank Verse, p. 20.)

For a specimen of the blank verse of Gascoigne's Steel Glass (1576, the earliest didactic poem in English blank verse), see p. 18, above.

Paris's oration to the Council of the Gods:

(George Peele: The Arraignment of Paris, IV. i. 61-75. 1584.)

This specimen shows the new measure introduced into the drama in connection with the earlier rimed septenary. Peele's verse in general is characterized by sweetness and fluency, but there is still no hint of the possibilities of the unrimed decasyllabics.

Schröer, in the article cited from Anglia, enumerates the following additional specimens of blank verse before the appearance of Marlowe's Tamburlaine; Grimald's Death of Zoroas and Death of Cicero, in Tottel's Songs and Sonnets, 1557; Jocasta, by Gascoigne and Kinwelmarshe, 1566; Turberville's translation of Ovid's Heroical Epistles, 1567; Spenser's unrimed sonnets, in Van der Noodt's Theatre for Worldlings, 1569; Barnaby Rich's Don Simonides, 1584; parts of Lyly's Woman in the Moon, 1584; Greene's "Description of Silvestro's Lady," in Morando, 1587; The Misfortunes of Arthur, 1587;—the last two appearing probably in the same year with Tamburlaine, whether earlier or later is uncertain. Most of these specimens are short, and all are comparatively unimportant.

(Marlowe: Tamburlaine, Part I, IV. ii. 30-46. pub. 1590.)

(Marlowe: Doctor Faustus, sc. xvi. ll. 65-81. Printed 1604; written before 1593.)

Marlowe is universally and rightly regarded as the first English poet who used blank verse with the hand of a master, and showed its possibilities. With him it became practically a new measure. Mr. Symonds says: "He found the ten-syllabled heroic line monotonous, monosyllabic, and divided into five feet of tolerably regular alternate short and long. He left it various in form and structure, sometimes redundant by a syllable, sometimes deficient, enriched with unexpected emphases and changes in the beat. He found no sequence or attempt at periods; one line succeeded another with insipid regularity, and all were made after the same model. He grouped his verse according to the sense, obeying an internal law of melody, and allowing the thought contained in his words to dominate their form.... Used in this fashion, blank verse became a Proteus. It resembled music, which requires regular time and rhythm; but, by the employment of phrase, induces a higher kind of melody to rise above the common and despotic beat of time.... It is true that, like all great poets, he left his own peculiar imprint on it, and that his metre is marked by an almost extravagant exuberance, impetuosity, and height of coloring." (Blank Verse, pp. 22-27.) In the earlier verse of Tamburlaine, while showing these new qualities of a metrical master, Marlowe yet kept pretty closely to the individual, end-stopped line; in his later verse, as illustrated in the fragmentary text of Faustus, he seems to have attained much more freedom, resembling that of the later plays of Shakspere.[28]

(Shakspere: Two Gentlemen of Verona, II. iv. 196-208; 213, 214. ab. 1590.)

(Shakspere: Measure for Measure, III. i. 118-132. ab. 1603.)

This Mr. Symonds cites as "a single instance of the elasticity, self-restraint, and freshness of the Shaksperian blank verse; of its freedom from Marlowe's turgidity, or Fletcher's languor, or Milton's involution; of its ringing sound and lucid vigor.... It illustrates the freedom from adventitious ornament and the organic continuity of Shakspere's versification, while it also exhibits his power of varying his cadences and suiting them to the dramatic utterance of his characters." (Blank Verse, p. 31.)

(Shakspere: The Tempest, V. i. 33-50. ab. 1610.)

No attempt can be made to represent adequately the blank verse of Shakspere. The specimens, chosen respectively from his earlier, middle, and later periods, illustrate the trend of development of his verse. In the earlier period it was characterized by the slight use of feminine endings and enjambement; in the later by marked preference for both, and by general freedom and flexibility. In other words, Shakspere's own development represents, in a sort of miniature, that of the history of dramatic blank verse. According to Furnivall's tables, the proportion of run-on lines to end-stopped lines in The Two Gentlemen of Verona is one in ten, while in The Tempest it is one in three. The increased use of "light" and "weak" endings is closely analogous. Professor Wendell says of the verse of Cymbeline: "End-stopped lines are so deliberately avoided that one feels a sense of relief when a speech and a line end together. Such a phrase as

is deliberately made, not a single line, but two half-lines. Several times, in the broken dialogue, one has literally to count the syllables before the metrical regularity of the verse appears.... Clearly this puzzling style is decadent; the distinction between verse and prose is breaking down." (William Shakspere, p. 357.)[29]

(Ben Jonson: Sejanus, V. iv. 1603.)

Jonson's blank verse, says Mr. Symonds, is that "of a scholar—pointed, polished, and free from the lyricisms of his age. It lacks harmony and is often labored; but vigorous and solid it never fails to be." He also instances the opening lines of the Sad Shepherd as exceptional in their "delicate music." Beaumont's verse is in many ways similar in structure to Jonson's, yet commonly more melodious.

(Fletcher: Valentinian, IV. i. ab. 1615.)

(Fletcher: The Wild-Goose Chase, IV. i. 1621.)

The verse of Fletcher is highly individual among the Jacobean dramatists, though in a sense typical of the breaking down of blank verse, in the direction of prose, which was going on at this period. The distinguishing feature of Fletcher's verse is the constant use of feminine endings, and the extension of these to triple and even quadruple endings, by the addition of one or more syllables. Twelve-syllable lines (not alexandrines, but ordinary lines with triple endings) are not at all uncommon; and the additional syllable or syllables may even be emphatic. In general the tendency was in the direction of the freedom of conversational prose. Such a line as

would not be recognized, standing by itself, as a five-stress iambic verse; properly read, however, it takes its place without difficulty in the scheme of the metre.[30]

(Thomas Middleton: The Changeling, II. i. ab. 1623.)

Middleton carried on the work of fitting blank verse for plausibly conversational, as distinguished from poetic, effects. Often his lines are more difficult to scan than Fletcher's, and still less seek melodiousness for its own sake. Characteristic specimens are verses like these:

(John Webster: The Duchess of Malfi, IV. ii. 1623.)

"Webster," says Mr. Symonds, "used his metre as the most delicate and responsive instrument for all varieties of dramatic expression.... Scansion in the verse of Webster is subordinate to the purpose of the speaker." (Blank Verse, pp. 45-47.) He also calls attention to such remarkable lines as—

(Philip Massinger: A New Way to Pay Old Debts, IV. i. 1633.)

Massinger's verse is more regular than that of Fletcher and others, in the matter of extra final syllables and the like, but free and flexible in the use of run-on lines and generally progressive movement.[31] It is an error to assume that there was no good blank verse written in this period when the drama in general is said to have been in a state of "decadence." The verse of Ford, for example, is noticeably strong and restrained (compare the remark of Mr. Symonds, on its "glittering regularity"). On the other hand, one may see the dramas of Richard Brome for specimens of the decadent metre at its worst. Brome wrote comedies both in prose and verse, and there is little difference between the two forms in his hands. See also the crude and lax verse of some of the early plays of Dryden, illustrated on p. 234 below. It was verse of this kind which, as Mr. Gosse observes, justified the introduction of the heroic couplet in all its strictness.

(Milton: Paradise Lost, Book I. ll. 544-559; 571-587. 1667.)

(Milton: Samson Agonistes, ll. 1636-1652. 1671.)

The blank verse of Milton is characterized by greater freedom and flexibility than that of any earlier poet. The single line practically ceases to be the unit of the verse, which is divided rather into metrical paragraphs, or, as some would even call them, stanzas. Professor Corson quotes an interesting passage from a letter of Coleridge, giving an account of a conversation in which Wordsworth expressed his view of this sort of blank verse. "My friend gave his definition and notion of harmonious verse, that it consisted (the English iambic blank verse above all) in the apt arrangement of pauses and cadences, and the sweep of whole paragraphs,

and not in the even flow, much less in the prominence or antithetic vigor of single lines, which were indeed injurious to the total effect, except where they were introduced for some specific purpose." (Corson's Primer of English Verse, p. 218.) In like manner Mr. Symonds says: "The most sonorous passages begin and end with interrupted lines, including in one organic structure, periods, parentheses, and paragraphs of fluent melody.... In these structures there are many pauses which enable the ear and voice to rest themselves, but none are perfect, none satisfy the want created by the opening hemistich, until the final and deliberate close is reached." (Blank Verse pp. 56, 57.)

In Milton's own prefatory note to Paradise Lost, he called his blank verse "English heroic verse without rime." Rime he spoke of as "the invention of a barbarous age, ... graced indeed since by the use of some famous modern poets,"—not least among them, he might have said, being John Milton himself. He described also the special character of his verse in saying that "true musical delight ... consists only in apt numbers, fit quantity of syllables, and the sense variously drawn out from one verse into another,"—that is, by enjambement. "This neglect then of rime so little is to be taken for a defect, ... that it rather is to be esteemed an example set, the first in English, of ancient liberty recovered to heroic poem from the troublesome and modern bondage of riming."[32]

It appears from this note that Milton regarded his heroic blank verse as a different measure from the familiar dramatic blank verse. The latter he used in Samson Agonistes, the verse-structure of which will be seen to differ from that of Paradise Lost; the most salient distinction is the more frequent use of feminine endings. Mr. Symonds remarks interestingly on the "difference between Shaksperian and Miltonic, between dramatic and epical blank verse. The one is simple in construction and progressive, the other is complex and stationary.... The one exhibits a thought, in the process of formation, developing itself from the excited fancy of the speaker. The other presents to us an image crystallized and perfect in the poet's mind; the one is in time, the other in space—the one is a growing and the other a complete organism.... The one, if we may play upon a fancy, resembles Music, and the other Architecture." (Blank Verse, p. 58.)

(Dryden: Marriage à la Mode, III. i. 1672.)

(Dryden: All for Love, III. i. 1678.)

The first of these specimens of Dryden's blank verse illustrates the loose form of it found in many of the comedies, ill distinguished from prose and used interchangeably with prose, as in the case of the late Jacobean dramatists. It was with All for Love that Dryden dropped the use of the rimed couplet in tragedy, and turned his hand toward the construction of really noble blank verse. This play was professedly an imitation of Shakspere, and the passage here quoted is a paraphrase of one in Antony and Cleopatra, II. ii. Shakspere's blank verse doubtless exerted a good influence on the quality of Dryden's. "From this time on," says Mr. Gosse, "Dryden's blank verse was more severe than any which had been used, except by Milton, since Ben Jonson." (Eighteenth Century Literature, p. 14.)

(Thomas Otway: Venice Preserved, V. ii. 1682.)

This play was one of those marking the return of the serious drama to blank verse, after the brief domination of the couplet on the stage. While Otway's verse is not as good as Dryden's best, it is of fairly even merit, and shows that something had been learned from the practice of the couplet.

(Addison: Cato, V. i. ll. 10-18; 25-31. 1713.)