blank verse as the following can be had, no one will ever ask for rhyme: —
Forbear to sleep the night, and fast the day,
Compare dead happiness with living woe;
Think that thy babes were fairer than they were,
And him that slew them fouler than he is;
Bettering thy loss makes the bad causer worse;
Revolving this will teach thee how to curse.
But when long passages are given us such as —
There is no vice so simple but assumes
Some mark of virtue on his outward parts:
How many cowards, whose hearts are all as false
As stairs of sand, wear yet upon their chins
The beards of Hercules and frowning Mars,
Who, inward search'd, have livers white as milk;
And these assume but valour's excrement
To render them redoubted, &c., &c.—
then, since the thoughts are neither supremely interesting in themselves, nor presented with supreme force or skill, the hearer is apt to grow weary, and to ask from the form of the verse that entertainment which he does not derive from the substance. In other words, he would, consciously or not, be glad of rhyme if he could get it.
There seems good reason to think that the French masterpieces of the seventeenth century would not, if they were not rhymed, hold their ground on the modern stage. With us, Shakspere's amazing genius enables us, even without the aid of rhyme, still to enjoy his plays; but this is true of no other dramatist of that age.[1] In his work on the Elizabethan dramatists, Charles Lamb produced passages from some of the best plays of all the
- ↑ Massinger's New Way to pay Old Debts is perhaps the only exception to the statement in the text.
