In this form of stanza the different groups of lines or even single lines are frequently, as e.g. in the so-called Processus Noe (the Play of the Flood), very skilfully divided between several persons taking part in the dialogue. The interlaced rhyme in the long lines connects it with the stanza form of the lyric poem quoted above (p. 100), and the form of the ‘cauda’ relates it to that of the lyric poem quoted (p. 101), and in this respect is identical with that of The Pistill of Susan.

The rhythmic treatment of the verses is, both with regard to the relation between rhyme and the remnants of alliteration and to the use of the Middle English types of verse, on the whole the same as was described in §§ 62–4 treating of this form of verse in narrative poetry. The types A and A₁, B C and B C₁, are chiefly met with; now and then, however, type C₁ also occurs in the second hemistich, as e.g. in the verses that wold vówch sáyf 172, of the tént máyne 487, wille com agáne sóne 488, of the Play of the Flood mentioned above.

But in the ‘cauda’ the difference explained in § 65 between first and second short lines forming the close of a stanza is often very regularly observed.

In other places of the Towneley Mysteries similar stanzas are written in lines which have almost an alexandrine rhythm (cf. Metrik, i. 229), while, on the other hand, in the Coventry Mysteries we not unfrequently meet with stanzas of the same form written in lines which, in consequence of their concise structure, approach even-beat lines of four measures, or directly pass into this metre. The intermixture of different kinds of line is even carried here to such a length that to a frons of four-beat lines is joined a cauda of even-beat lines of four or three measures corresponding to King James VI’s rule quoted above (p. 108) for such stanzas; and on the other hand to a frons of even-beat lines of four measures is joined a cauda of two-beat short lines.

§ 67. The distinctly four-beat line, however, still forms the staple of the different kinds of verse occurring in these poems, and was also used in them for simple forms of stanza. In the further development of dramatic poetry it remained much in use. Skelton’s Moral Play Magnificence, and most of the Moralities and Interludes contained in Dodsley’s Old Plays (ed. Hazlitt), vols. i-iv, are written chiefly in this popular metre. As a rule it rhymes here in couplets, and under the influence of the even-beat measures used in the same dramatic pieces it gradually assumes a pretty regular iambic-anapaestic or trochaic-dactylic rhythm. This applies for the most part to the humorous and popular parts; allegorical and historical personages are made to converse in even-beat verses.

Of the different types used in the Middle English alliterative line type C (C1), which does not harmonize well with the even-beat tendency of the rhythm, and which is only very seldom if at all to be met with even in the Coventry Plays, becomes very rare and tends to disappear altogether, type A (A1) and (although these are much less frequent) type B C (B C1) alone remaining in use.

§ 68. Of the more easily accessible pieces of Bishop John Bale (1495–1563) his Comedye Concernynge Thre Lawes, edited by A. Schröer (Anglia, v, pp. 137 ff., also separately, Halle, Niemeyer, 1882) is written in two-beat short lines and four-beat long lines, and his King Johan (c. 1548) (edited by Collier, Camden Society, 1838) entirely in this latter metre. The latter play has a peculiar interest of its own, containing as it does lines which, as in two Old English poems (cf. pp. 123, 124), consist either half or entirely of Latin words. Now, as the accentuation of the Latin lines or half-lines admits of no uncertainty, the four-beat scansion of the English verses of this play and of the long lines in The Three Lawes is put beyond doubt, though Schröer considers the latter as eight-beat long lines on the basis of the four-beat theory of the short line.

But apart from this irrefutable proof of the four-beat scansion of the long line, the rhythmic congruity of it with the rhyming alliterative lines discussed in § 67 can easily be demonstrated by the reoccurrence of the same types, although a difference between the first and the second hemistich no longer seems to exist.

Type A, of course, is the most frequent, and occurs in many sub-types, which are distinguished chiefly by monosyllabic, disyllabic, or polysyllabic anacruses, disyllabic or polysyllabic theses between the first and second arsis, and monosyllabic, disyllabic, or trisyllabic theses after the latter. The most usual form of this type corresponds to the scheme (×)×–́××–́×, while the form –́××–́× is rarer. Type A₁ likewise admits of polysyllabic anacruses and theses, corresponding mostly to the formula (×)×–́××–́, less frequently to –́××–́. Type B C (×)××–́×–́× is rare, type B C₁ (×)××–́×–́, on the other hand, very common; type C (×)××–́–́× still occurs now and then, but type C₁ (×)××–́–́ has become exceedingly scarce.

§ 69. Statistical investigations as to the frequency of occurrence, and especially on the grouping of these different types are still wanting, and would contribute greatly toward the more exact knowledge of the development of the iambic-anapaestic and the trochaic-dactylic metre out of the four-beat verse. Of course in such an investigation the use of anacrusis in the types A and A₁ should not be neglected. According to the presence or absence of anacrusis in the two hemistichs four different kinds of line may be distinguished:

1. Lines with anacrusis in both hemistichs. These are the most numerous of all, and are chiefly represented by the combinations of types A(A₁) + A(A₁), A(A₁) + B C₁(B C):

2. Lines with anacrusis in the first section and without it in the second. These are almost exclusively represented by the combination A(A₁) + A(A₁); rarely by B C₁(B C) + A(A₁):

3. Lines without anacrusis in the first section and with anacrusis in the second; likewise chiefly represented by the types A (A1) + A (A1), rarely by A (A₁) + B C (B C₁):

4. Lines without anacrusis in either section, so that they are wholly dactylic in rhythm, only represented by A (A₁) + A₁ (A):

The numerical preponderance of types A + A₁ is at once perceptible, and usually these two types of hemistichs are combined in this order to form a long line.

The result is that in the course of time whole passages made up of lines of the same rhythmical structure (A + A₁) are common in the dramatic poetry of this period, as e.g. in the Prologue to Gammer Gurton’s Needle:

Possibly this preference of the type A₁ in the second half line may go back to the influence of the difference between the rhythmical structure of the first and the second hemistich of the alliterative line in early Middle English poetry.

§ 70. This view derives additional probability from the manner in which lines rhythmically identical with the alliterative hemistich are combined into certain forms of stanza which are used in the above-mentioned dramatic poems, especially in Bale’s Three Lawes.

For in this play those halves of tail-rhyme stanzas, which form the ‘wheels’ of the alliterative-rhyming stanzas previously described (§§ 61 and 66) as used in narrative poetry and in the mysteries, are completed so as to form entire tail-rhyme stanzas (of six or eight lines) similar to those mentioned in § 65. This will be evident from the following examples:

The difference in rhythm which we have previously pointed out between the lines of the body of the stanza (corresponding to first halves of the alliterative line) and those of the tail (corresponding to second halves) may again be observed in most of the stanzas of this play, although not in all of them.

In other passages the sequence of rhymes is less regular; e.g. in ll. 190–209, which rhyme according to the formulas a a a b c c b, d d b e e b, e e e f g g f

§ 71. Lastly, we must mention another kind of verse or stave originating in the resolution of the four-beat alliterative line into two sections, and their combination so as to form irregular tail-rhyme stanzas, viz. the so-called Skeltonic verse. This kind of verse, however, was not invented (as is erroneously stated in several Histories of English Literature) by Skelton, but existed before him, as is evident from the preceding remarks. The name came to be given to the metre from the fact that Skelton, poet laureate of King Henry VII, was fond of this metre, and used it for several popular poems.

In Skelton’s metre the strict form of the alliterative four-beat line has arrived at the same stage of development which the freer form had reached about three hundred years earlier in Layamon’s Brut, and afterwards in King Horn. That is to say, in Skelton’s metre the long line is broken up by sectional rhyme into two short ones. The first specimens of this verse which occur in the Towneley Mysteries, in the Chester Plays, and in some of the Moralities, e.g. in The World and the Child (Dodsl. i), resemble Layamon’s verse in so far as long lines (without sectional rhymes) and short rhyming half-lines occur in one and the same passage. On the other hand, they differ from it and approach nearer to the strophic form of the alliterative line (as occurring in the Miracle Plays) in that the short lines do not rhyme in couplets, but in a different and varied order of rhyme, mostly a b a b; cf. the following passage (l. c., p. 247):

In Skelton’s Magnificence the short lines rhyme in couplets like those of King Horn, in a passage taken from p. 257 (part of which may be quoted here):

In other poems Skelton uses short lines of two beats, but rhyming in a varied order under the influence, it would seem, of the strophic system of the virelay, which rhymes in the order a a a b b b b c c c c d. But the succession of rhymes is more irregular in the Skeltonic metre, as e. g. in the passage:

In other cases short bob-lines of one beat only interchange with two-beat rhythms, as e.g. in Skelton’s poem Caudatos Anglos (i. 193):

The mingling of Latin and English lines, as in this passage, is one of the characteristic features of the Skeltonic verse.

In some passages, as e.g. in the humorous poems Phyllyp Sparowe and Elinour Rummyng, the three-beat rhythm seems to prevail. In such cases it probably developed out of the two-beat rhythm in the same way as in King Horn.

Skelton’s verse was chiefly used by poets of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries for satirical and burlesque poetry. One of its chief cultivators was John Taylor, the Water-poet. A list of Skeltonic poems is given in Dyce’s edition of Skelton’s poems, i. introduction, pp. cxxviii-cxxix.

C. Revival of the old four-beat alliterative verse in the Modern English period.

§ 72. If after what precedes any doubt were possible as to the scansion of the verses quoted on p. 113 from the Prologue to the Early Modern English comedy of Gammer Gurton’s Needle, this doubt would be removed at once by the following couplet and by the accents put over the second line of it by the sixteenth-century metrician, George Gascoigne[116]:

For the rhythm of these lines is perfectly identical with that of the lines of the above-mentioned prologue, and also with that of the alliterative line quoted ten years later (A. D. 1585), and called tumbling-verse by King James VI in his Revlis and Cavtelis, viz.:

This is the very same rhythm in which a good many songs and ballads of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries are written, as e.g. the well-known ballad of King John and the Abbot of Canterbury, which begins with the following stanzas[117]:

This four-beat rhythm, which (as is proved by the definition King James VI gives of it) is the direct descendant of the old alliterative line, has continued in use in modern English poetry to the present day.

It occurs in the poem The recured Lover, by Sir Thomas Wyatt, one of the earliest Modern English poets, where it is intermixed sometimes with four-feet rhythms, as was the case also in several Early English poems. The general rhythm, however, is clearly of an iambic-anapaestic nature. Fifteen years after the death of Wyatt Thomas Tusser wrote part of his didactic poem A hundred good points of Husbandry in the same metre. In Tusser’s hands the metre is very regular, the first foot generally being an iambus and the following feet anapaests:

The four beats of the rhythm and the regular occurrence of the caesura are as marked characteristics of these verses as of the earlier specimens of the metre.

Spenser has written several eclogues of his Shepheard’s Calendar in this metre (February, May, September), and Shakespeare uses it in some lyric pieces of his King Henry IV, Part II, but also for dialogues, as e.g. Err. III. i. 11–84. In more modern times Matthew Prior (1664–1715) wrote a ballad Down Hall to the tune, as he says, of King John and the Abbot of Canterbury, which clearly shows that he meant to imitate the ancient popular four-beat rhythm, which he did with perfect success. In other poems he used it for stanzas rhyming in the order a b a b. Swift has used the same metre, and it became very popular in Scottish poetry through Allan Ramsay and Robert Burns, one of whose most famous poems is written in it, viz.:

Sir Walter Scott used it frequently for drinking-songs, and Thomas Moore wrote his Letters of the Fudge Family in it.

By Coleridge and Byron this metre was used in the same way as by Wyatt, viz. intermixed with regular four-foot verse according to the subject, the four-beat iambic-anapaestic rhythm for livelier passages, the pure iambic for passages of narration and reflecti—. Byron’s Prisoner of Chillon and his Siege of Corinth are good specimens of this kind of metre.[118] On the other hand the regular four-foot rhythm, as will be shown below, if it is of a looser structure, develops into a kind of verse similar to the iambic-anapaestic rhythm—an additional reason for their existing side by side often in one poem.

A few variations of this metre remain to be mentioned, which occur as early as Tusser. The first variety arises from interlaced rhyme, by which the two four-beat verses are broken up into four two-beat verses rhyming in the order a b a b.

On the model of these stanzas others were afterwards formed by Tusser consisting of three-beat verses of the same rhythm. The same verse was used for eight-line stanzas rhyming a b a b c d c d by Nicholas Rowe, Shenstone, Cowper, and in later times by Thackeray in one of his burlesque poems (Malony’s Lament in Ballads, the Rose and the Ring, &c., p. 225). For examples of these variations see the sections treating of the iambic-anapaestic verses of three and two measures.

§ 73. In modern times a few attempts have been made to revive the old four-beat alliterative line without rhyme, but also without a regular use of alliteration. These attempts, however, have never become popular.

The following passage from William Morris’s dramatic poem Love is enough may give an idea of the structure of this kind of verse:

The rhythm, together with the irregular use of alliteration, places these four-beat alliterative lines on the same level with those of the dramatic poems of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

The same kind of versification is found in Longfellow’s translation of the late Old English poem on The Grave, and in James M. Garnett’s translations of Beowulf and Cynewulf’s Elene. On the other hand, George Stephens, in his translation of the Old English poem on The Phoenix, published 1844, not only adheres strictly to the laws of alliteration, but confines himself to Germanic words, sometimes even using inflexional forms peculiar to Middle English.

§ 74. We shall conclude this survey of the development of the four-beat alliterative line by giving a series of examples in reversed chronological order, beginning with writers of the present day and ending with the earliest remains of Old English poetry, in order to illustrate the identity in rhythmic structure of this metre in all periods of its history.

Eighteenth Century, Middle:

Eighteenth Century, Beginning (1715):

Seventeenth Century, Beginning (or Sixteenth Century, End):

Sixteenth Century, End (1585):

Sixteenth Century (1575):

Sixteenth Century (before 1575):

Sixteenth Century, Middle (about 1548):

Sixteenth Century, Beginning:

Fifteenth Century, Second Half:

Fifteenth Century, ? First Half:

Fourteenth Century, End:

Fourteenth Century, Second Half:

Fourteenth Century, Beginning:

Thirteenth Century, Middle:

Thirteenth Century, Beginning:

Twelfth Century: