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BLANK VERSE. |
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both in sound and sense into the closest connection with the opening words of the succeeding verse, e.g. :
The power I serve Laughs at your happy Araby, or the Elysian shades.
Massinger.
If by your art, my dearest father, you have Put the wild waves in this roar, allay them. Had I been any god of power, I would Have sunk the sea within the earth, or e'er It should the good ship so have swallowed, and The freighting souls within her.
" Tempest."
At this point the versification of Shakspere claims our special attention, beyond what has already been said upon blank verse generally and dramatic verse in particular, he being the acknowledged master of poetic art both as regards matter and form. His unrivalled series of dramas—thirty-seven in all—the pride of our mother tongue, are not only an inexhaustible source of pleasure to the successive generations of English-speaking people all the world over, but they furnish a field of ever-increasing interest and enquiry into the methods of his art and the development of his genius. The attempt to fix the chronological order of his plays has, of late years, led Shaksperean students to pay special attention to his versification, and their united labours have resulted in uch an arrangement of |
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