the first English tragedy. About the time when Shakespeare arrived in London the infinite possibilities of blank verse as a vehicle for dramatic poetry and passion were being shown by Kyd and above all by Marlowe. Blank verse as used by Shakespeare is really an epitome of the development of the measure in connection with the English drama. In his earlier plays the blank verse is often similar to that of Gorboduc. The tendency is to adhere to the syllable-counting principle, to make the line the unit, the sentence and phrase coinciding with the line (end-stopped verse), and to use five perfect iambic feet to the line. In plays of the middle period, such as The Merchant of Venice, King Henry the Fifth, and As You Like It, written between 1596 and 1600, the blank verse is more like that of Kyd and Marlowe, with less monotonous regularity in the structure and an increasing tendency to carry on the sense from one line to another without a syntactical or rhetorical pause at the end of the line (run-on verse, enjambement). Redundant syllables now abound, and the melody is richer and fuller. In Shakespeare's later plays the blank verse breaks away from bondage to formal line limits, and sweeps all along with it in freedom, power, and organic unity.

The verse of King Henry the Fifth is much less monotonously regular than that of the earlier plays; it is more flexible and varied, more musical and sonorous, and only here and there, chiefly in the speeches of Chorus, has it the superb movement of the verse in King Lear, The Winter's Tale, and The Tempest. End-stopped, normally regular iambic pentameter lines often occur (as, for instance, Chorus-prologue, I, 13, 14; I, i, 13, 36, 48, 82, etc.), but everywhere are variations and deviations from the norm.

The proportion of run-on lines is about the same as that in The Merchant of Venice, which is slightly in excess of that in Othello, but only about half of what is found in The Tempest. There are 336 feminine endings and 2 light endings; the play contains no weak endings. Of the 31 short lines in the play a large proportion will be found in Pistol's rant, where they help the mock-heroic effect.

ALEXANDRINES

While French prosodists apply the term Alexandrine only to a twelve-syllable line with the pause after the sixth syllable, it is generally used in English to designate iambic six-stress verse, or iambic hexameter. This was a favorite Elizabethan measure, and it was common in moral plays and the earlier heroic drama. Alexandrines lend themselves easily to mock-heroic use, and Pistol characteristically reels off a notable verse or two of this kind (see II, i, 61; III, vi, 39); other examples are scattered up and down the play, II, ii, 168; III, iii, 5; III, v, 24; Chorus-prologue, IV, 22, 28; IV, iii, 18, 33, etc.

RHYME

1. Couplets. In King Henry the Fifth are only sixty-two lines of rhymed pentameter verse (rhymed couplets) and most of these are 'rhyme-tags' at the end either of scenes, where their use is merely mechanical, or of speeches, where the couplet often has the effect of a clinching epigram. A progress from more to less rhyme in the regular dialogue is a sure index to Shakespeare's development as a dramatist and a master of expression. In the early Love's Labour's Lost are more than a thousand rhyming five-stress iambic

in The Tempest are only two; in The Winter's Tale

lines; not one.

2. A Popular Saying. Proverbs and bits of popular wisdom are naturally either in rhyme or alliterative rhythm. Cf. I, ii, 167-168.

3. Song-Snatches. The only rhymed lyrical measures in the play are the iambic snatches trolled by Pistol and the Boy in III, ii, 8–11, 15–19.

4. Sonnet. The epilogue is a regular Shakespearian sonnet. See note, page 170. Its authorship has been the subject of much discussion, especially in connection with the references to King Henry the Sixth in the closing couplet.

PROSE

In the development of the English drama the use of prose as a vehicle of expression entitled to equal rights with verse was due to Lyly. He was the first to use prose with power and distinction in original plays, and did memorable service in preparing the way for Shakespeare's achievement. In Shakespeare's earlier plays where rhyme abounds there is little or no prose; the proportion of prose to blank verse increases with the decrease of rhyme. Considerably more than a third of King Henry the Fifth is in prose, and four kinds may be distinguished: (1) The prose of proclamations and formal documents, as II, ii, 145-150; III, vi, 116-133. (2) The prose of 'low life' and the dialogue of comic characters, as in the speeches of Bardolph, Nym, Fluellen, Gower, and the others. This is a development of the humorous prose found, for example, in Greene's comedies that deal with country life. (3) The prose of familiar dialogue, as in Henry's talk with the soldiers, III, vi, 86-110;

IV, i, 95–217. This, too, is the prose of the wooing scene. (4) The humorous prose spoken as a rule, though not exclusively, by persons of superior rank or importance, the prose of high comedy, vivacious, sparkling, and flashing with repartee, as in III, iv, vii. This is a development of Lyly's essentially euphuistic prose.

Instructive examples of Shakespeare's transition from prose to verse are IV, i, 218 (see note from Johnson), and viii, 70. The wooing scene begins in blank verse, V, ii, 98– 101, but Katharine's broken English changes the dialogue to prose, the natural medium of expression for a lover who speaks as "plain soldier." With line 323 the heroic, national interest of the play is resumed and prose gives way naturally to blank verse.

V. DRAMATIC STRUCTURE

In dramatic structure King Henry the Fifth is unique among Shakespeare's plays. Nowhere else does his work show such a combination of epic and dramatic methods. Elsewhere he makes use of prologues and epilogues; Chorus appears in Pericles and in Romeo and Juliet; but in King Henry the Fifth the appeal of Chorus is specifically to the historic imagination, and the main interest of his five prologues is epic (see note, Enter CHORUS, page 3). The first words of Chorus are an almost conventional epic appeal to the Muse. This epic spirit, trembling with lyric subjectivity, so dominates the play and finds expression in such superb declamation and impassioned rhetoric that, when Garrick produced King Henry the Fifth, Chorus was the part he elected to interpret.

But though the dramatic interest is subordinate to the epic, the work is a drama with a plot that develops simply and naturally through the five essential stages of (1) the exposition or introduction; (2) the complication or rising action; (3) the climax or turning point; (4) the resolution or falling action; and (5) the catastrophe or conclusion. As in Shakespeare's other plays, the organic elements in the action do not correspond to the mechanical division into acts. The exposition is contained in the first scene, where the main dramatic motive is introduced. The complication begins in the second scene, which tells that war is determined upon; and the rising action continues through the four scenes of the second act and the seven scenes of the third, which, with humorous interludes that give relief and human interest, describe the preparation for the war and the campaign in France. The climax is reached in the close of the third scene of the fourth act, when the battle is joined; and the humorous encounter between Pistol and the French soldier in the following scene begins the falling action, which has its dénouement in the peaceful alliance between England and France.

ANALYSIS BY ACT AND SCENE1

I. THE EXPOSITION, OR INTRODUCTION (TYING OF THE KNOT) Prologue. The keynote of the play is struck in the reference to "warlike Harry" (line 5) and the inadequacy of the dramatist's stage resources to represent so heroic a king.

1 "It must be understood that a play can be analyzed into very different schemes of plot. It must not be thought that one of these schemes is right and the rest wrong; but the schemes will be better