Page images
PDF
EPUB

The following will serve as an example of Hoccleve's stanza structure; Regement of Princes (EETS. ES. 72) 4992 ff.:

Alpogh his lyfe be queynt, þe resemblaunce

Of him hap in me so fresh lyflynesse

pat, to putte othir men in remembraunce
Of his persone, I haue heere his lyknesse
Do make, to pis ende in sothfastnesse
þat þei þat haue of him lost bought and mynde
By his peynture may ageyn him fynde.

The ýmagés þat in be chirche been

Makén folk þenke on god and on his seyntes
Whan þe ymáges þei beholde and seen,

Wher as vnsight of hem causíth restreyntes
Of pouhtes gode; whan a þing depeynt is
Or éntailéd, if men take of it heede,
Thoght óf þe lyknesse it wil ín hem brede.

§ 197. Lydgate.

In his numerous and long poems (according to Schick more than 130000 verses) Lydgate uses the short rimed couplet, the heroic couplet and very often the seven-line stanza of Chaucer; but he is a poor versifier, as he himself often admits. He often omits the anacrusis both in the short rimed couplet and in the heroic couplet; in the caesura two stressed syllables often come together. Further he uses a disyllabic anacrusis and epic caesura, so that the scheme of his heroic verse is (×)×××(×)|| (x)×××××(x); cp. The Temple of Glas 792 ff., 806 ff.: Nou ladi Vénus, to whóm noþing vnknowe

Is in þe world, i-hid ne not mai be

For þere nys þíng, néþir heigh ne lowe,
Mai be concelid from 3our priveté

-

Fro whom my menyng is not nov secré,
But witen fúlli þat mýn entent is trewe,

And lich my trowth now on my peyne rewe...

And sip ze haue þe guerdon and be mede

O'f al louers pleinli in gour hond,

Nóu of grace and pite takeþ hede

Of my distresse þat am vndír zour bond

So lovli bound as ze wele vndirstond:

Nou in þat place where I toke first my wound
Of pite sufferiþ mý helth may be found.

See further Schipper EM. I, 492 ff. and Schick's edition of The Temple of Glas EETS. ES. 60, p. LXI ff.

$198. The Scotch Poets.

In Barbour's Bruce, in Wyntown's Orygynale Cronykil and in the Scotch collection of legends the short rimed couplet is used (§ 185). Probably some of the unrimed and rimed alliterative romances (§ 156) were written in Scotland. Most of the Scotch poets of the fifteenth and the first half of the sixteenth centuries were influenced by Chaucer and generally used the heroic verse. James I used Chaucer's seven-line stanza for his Kingis Quair, Henrysoun for his Fables and Testament of Cresseid, and Walter Kennedy for his Passioun of Christ. Blind Harry wrote his Schir William Wallace in heroic couplets, which Gawin Douglas used for his translation of Virgil,

whilst he used Chaucer's eight-line stanza in King Hart and the nine-line Anelida-stanza (§ 194 note) in the Palace of Honour. Dunbar's The Freiris of Berwik is written in heroic couplets, The Thrissill and the Rois in seven-line stanzas, The Merle and Nightingale in eight-line stanzas, The Golden Targe in the nine-line Anelida stanza. In his shorter poems he uses various other stanzas, e.g. the twelve-line tail-rime stanza (The Dance of the Sevin Deidly Synnis), the five-line stanza a a b b a (§ 168, note) etc. He uses the unrimed alliterative verse in The Tua Marriit Wemen and the Wedo.

Both the short rimed couplet and the heroic couplet are very regularly constructed by the Scotch poets, since the e of final syllables, even when written as i or y, was silent and the succession of stressed and unstressed syllables made easier. Examples for the heroic couplet Schir

Wallace 1 ff.:

Our antecessowris that we suld of reide
And hald in mynde thar nobille worthi deid
We lat ourslide throw werray sleuthfulnes
And castis ws euir till vthir besynes.
Till honour ennymyis is our haile entent,
It has beyne seyne in thir tymys bywent.
Our ald ennemys cummyn of Saxonys blud
That neuyr geit to Scotland wald do gud

Bot euir on fors and contrar haile thair will
Quhow gret kyndnes thar has beyne kyth thaim till;
for the seven-line stanza The Kingis Quair st. 27:
The brid, the beste, the fisch eke in the see,
They lyve in fredome euerich in his kynd,

And I a man and lakkith libertee,

Quhat schall I seyne, quhat resoun may I fynd
That fortune suld do so? thus in my mynd
My folk I wold argewe, bot all for noght,

Was non that myght, that on my peynes rought;

for the eight-line stanza The Merle and the Nightingale 1 ff.:

In May as that Aurora did vpspring

With cristal ene chassing the cluddis sable,

I herd a merle with mirry notis sing

A sang of lufe with voce rycht confortable
Agane the orient bemis amiable

Vpone a blisful brenche of lawryr grene;

This wes hir sentens sueit and delectable:

A lusty lyfe in luves schervice bene;

for the nine-line stanza The Golden Targe 253 ff.: O reuerend Chaucer rose of rethoris all

As in oure tong ane flour imperiall

That raise in Britaine evir quha redis rycht Thou beris of Makaris the tryumph riall

Thy fresch anamalit termes celicall

This matir coud illumynit have full brycht. Was thou noucht of oure Inglisch all the lycht Surmounting eviry song terrestriall

Alls fer as Mayes morow dois mydnycht?

$ 199. The Septenary and Alliterative Verse. The septenary rimed couplet was used at the end of the fourteenth century and in the fifteenth century, e.g. in the first part of Sir Ferumbras (EETS.ES. 34) and in the Tale of Beryn (Chaucer Soc. Sec. Ser. 17). The Tale of Gamelyn, which is contained in the MSS. of the Canterbury Tales but

is not the work of Chaucer, is written not in septenaries, but in an irregular long line of four beats. We still find verses of one, two and three beats in stanzas; but the alexandrine is wanting.

Most of the poems, mentioned in § 156, written in unrimed alliterative verse or in the thirteenline alliterative stanza probably belong to the end of the fourteenth or to the fifteenth century; the two alliterative poems in the Percy MS., Death and Liffe and Scottish Feilde (Battle of Flodden 1513), and Dunbar's The Tua Marriit Wemen and the Wedo belong to the beginning of the sixteenth century. The rhythmical structure of the alliterative verse in these later poems is precisely the same as that in the earlier poems; cp. Adolf Schneider, Die mittelenglische Stabzeile im 15. und 16. Jahrhundert (Bonner Beitr. 12, 103-172).

$ 200. Stanza Construction.

In addition to the stanzas of seven, eight and nine lines (with five beats) most of the stanzas, mentioned in § 170-180, with verses of three or four beats, were used in the shorter lyrical and didactic poems. In narrative poems of the fifteenth century the tail-rime stanzas of twelve and sixteen lines and the thirteen-line alliterative stanza remained in use.

Also in dramatic poetry stanzas are more common than the short rimed couplet in the fourteenth and

« PreviousContinue »