and iv, 115: 'He came in thunder; his celestial breath was sulphur to smell.'

189. Mortal-deadly, fatal; here an adverb, with reference to dangerously in the preceding line.

202. A former fortune-a fortune like that which he had before he gave to Coriolanus half his commission. It might be considered, however, to refer not to time, but to rank and position.

203. We will drink together-Aufidius and I will confer, and agree upon terms. Cp. 2 Henry IV, IV, ii, 64:

I. Coin.

'Here, between the armies,

Let's drink together friendly and embrace,

That all their eyes may bear those tokens home,

Of our restored love and amity.'

SCENE IV.

Latin

So in the Folio. Modern spelling coign. cuneus, a wedge; French coin, a corner, an angle. Cp. Macbeth, I, vi, 6: 'No jutty, frieze, buttress, nor coign of vantage.' It is the same as the ordinary coin, properly 'the steel die with which money is stamped, originally doubtless from the stamping having been effected by means of a wedge'-WEDGWOOD.

8. Condition-natural character, temperament. see note. We still say ill-conditioned in this sense.

So II, iii, 89,

18. Engine. Formerly applied to any mechanical contrivance. Here an engine of war, such as a battering ram, is thought of.

20. His state-the canopied chair (V, i, 64) of state in which he sits enthroned, as if he were a representation of Alexander the Great. The state, properly the canopy, was transferred to the chair. So I Henry IV, II, iv, 418: Thy state is taken for a joint-stool.'

22. Eternity-immortality.

24. Mercy. Supply 'he wants' from the preceding sentence. 25. In the character. We should say in character. He means, 'such as he appears, to the life.' Cp. II, i, 59.

41. Not.

Tarquins.

Tarquins-not (the day of) the expulsion of the

45. Blown-swoln and driven on by the wind. Lucrece:

As through an arch the violent roaring tide
Out-runs the eye that doth behold his haste.

So Rape of

SCENE V.

4. In theirs, and in the commons' ears. It is felt that their cannot well occupy so emphatic a position without being inflected.

5. Him I accuse-he whom, the antecedent being attracted into

the case of the omitted relative. Cp. Antony and Cleopatra, III, i,
15: 'When him (whom) we serve's away.'

22, 23. Who.... he. He sometimes, for clearness, takes the
place of the nominative when it is at some distance from its verb.
27. Stoutness-obstinacy.

28. Consul-the consulship, hence followed by which.

37. Did end all his-did, in the end, make all his own; appro-
priate to himself.

40. Waged me-paid me wages, as his follower, in patronising
looks.

Ib. Countenance-favour.

45. My sinews, etc.—a figure from wrestling. The final struggle
for mastery will be fought out on the question of the spoil of which
the Volscians had been balked.

50. A post-a messenger, whom nobody notices because his visits
are quite customary.

58. After your way, etc.—when you have given your own version
of his story, all arguments in his defence will be buried with him.
67. Answering us, etc.—leaving us with the expenses of the war
by way of satisfaction. See line 79.

84. Compounded on-agreed upon. See III, i, 3, note.

90. In Corioli-thy name, Coriolanus, stolen in Corioli. Found-
ing on this line, some editors have laid this scene in Corioli. In the
Folio there is no division into scenes, but Plutarch expressly states
that Marcius and Aufidius returned to Antium from Rome.
96, 97. Never admitting counsel—taking no one into his counsels
regarding the war.

102. No more.

Understand than a boy of tears.'

125. This orb o' the earth-this earthly orb. His fame is world-
wide.

126. Judicious has been taken, quite exceptionally, as synony
mous with judicial, but it may be interpreted in the usual sense-
well-judged, cautious, discriminating.

144. Urn-a tomb. Cp. King Henry V, I, ii, 228: 'Lay these
bones in an unworthy urn, tombless, with no remembrance over
them.' Milton's Lycidas, 19, 20:

'So may some gentle muse

With lucky words favour my destined urn.'

Ib. His own impatience. His refers to Coriolanus, not to Aufidius.

THE VERSIFICATION OF THE PLAY.

21

THE aim of these concluding pages is to discuss the metrical peculiarities of the play in a more systematic and connected fashion than was possible in the Notes. The irregularities that fall to be discussed are not in any sense special to this play, for the principles here expounded and illustrated are equally applicable to a very large section of the poet's works. This is a study, it must however be confessed, that is beset with considerable difficulties. It is impossible to say always that we have Shakespeare's lines as he wrote them. Metre, too, is not to be settled by a numerical computation of syllables. So much depends upon the rhythmical feelings of the individual reader, that there may be more than one admissible solution of a difficulty. Still, there is much to be learned on the subject about which there can be no dispute. obvious, too, that textual criticism largely involves questions of prosody, and that the due appreciation of poetical beauties very considerably depends upon an intelligent perception of the niceties of metre.

It is

Dr Abbott devotes over a hundred pages of his invaluable Shakespearian Grammar to prosody, and Mr Alexander J. Ellis treats the subject with similar fulness in his great work on Early English Pronunciation. These writers do not quite agree. The former scarcely recognises trisyllabic feet, Alexandrines, and fourmeasure lines; whereas the latter makes extensive use of these solutions in difficult cases. Professor Masson, in the introduction to the Cambridge Milton, shows how applicable to epic blank verse are freedom and naturalness of accentuation, and, in avoiding elisions and resolutions where possible, is in substantial accord with Mr Ellis.

Verse-tests have been largely used in determining the chronology of the plays,* and in this way confirm that grouping of them which

* Mr Furnivall and Mr Fleay have largely contributed to the Transactions of the New Shak pere Society on this subject. Mr Furnivall's researches are published in his introduction to the Shakespeare Commentaries of Gervinus, those of Mr Fleay in his Shakespeare Manual.

can be formed on other grounds. In these groups we pass from the abundant use of rhyme to its complete, or almost complete, disappearance. Thus in Love's Labour's Lost, rhyming are to nonrhyming lines as two to one. Winter's Tale has not a single rhyme in a non-lyrical passage. Coriolanus shows an occasional rhyme, either quite accidentally, or by way of unusual emphasis at the close of a scene. One passage of twelve lines (II, iii, 104-115) in rhyme is notable. Here Coriolanus, 'in the gown of humility,' after a mocking canvass of the citizens, soliloquises on the insincerity of his position. The verse is in subtle accord with the mood of the speaker.

The pre-Shakespearian drama was mainly a rhymed one. The nature of it may be inferred from the speeches of the Player King and Player Queen in Hamlet. Ulrici, quoting Collier, says that it was not till 1585-86 that blank verse first obtained a firm footing on the public stage, and that it was Marlow's Tamburlaine which specially effected this innovation. The result was an enormous gain to dramatic language; for a little reflection will show that dramatic blank verse was the best possible compromise between rhyme and prose. It combined the peculiar melody of the one with all the variety and elasticity of the other. The special aim of the dramatist must be to avoid monotony and secure emphasis. Now there is no more common fault in the reading of rhymed poetry than the regularly recurring halt at the end of the line, producing only expressionless monotony. Let us examine the devices that Shakespeare gradually resorted to for avoiding sameness of pause and accent.

The exigencies of rhyme necessitate the frequent appearance of the end-stopt' line, in which the verse always ends with a more or less decided break in the sense. The speeches in Hamlet already referred to furnish a ready illustration. Blank verse on the model of rhymed verse will show the same feature, as any early play, say the Two Gentlemen of Verona, exemplifies. The later plays correct this by the use of run-on' lines, supplemented by 'double and weak endings.' The following passage is instructive:

(Sic)

Such a nat'ure,

Tickled with good success, disdains the shad ow
Which he treads on at noon: but I do wonder

His insolence can brook to be command'ed

Under Cominius. (Bru.) Fame, at the which he aims,
In whom already he's well graced, cannot

Better be held, nor more attained, than by

A place below the first: for what mis-carries

Shall be the general's fault, though he perform

To the utmost of a man; and giddy censure

Will then cry out of Marcius, "O, if he

Had borne the business!" (Sic.) Besides, if things go well,
Opinion, that so sticks on Marcius, shall

Of his demerits rob Cominius'-I, i, 252-265.

This extract shows, what can be readily proved from any page of the

later plays, that the favourite pause comes after the third place, and sometimes after the second. The end-stopt lines are few, while the running-on is aided by the use of an extra unemphatic syllable, forming a sort of double ending, as well as by the somewhat rarer appearance of weak endings, such as by and shall. Professor Ingram discriminates two degrees of weakness in such endings, the one-light-on which the voice can to a certain small extent dwell, the others-weak-so essentially proclitic in their character, that we are forced to run them, in pronunciation no less than in sense, into the closest connection with the opening words of the succeeding line' (Trans. of the New Shak. Soc., 1874, part ii). Of the former he enumerates sixty in this play, of the latter forty-four. Of the weak endings twenty are cases of and. The student will readily pick out such words for himself from the following examples: Act IV, sc. v-light endings, who (73), be (75), am (92), did (110), shall (142); weak endings, if (78), that (125). It should be mentioned that Professor Craik drew attention twenty years ago, in the prolegomena to his English of Shakespeare, to more than forty of these endings occurring in Coriolanus.

On a minute examination of Shakespeare's lines, we shall find that the normal accent on every second syllable is frequently varied. The stress is often reversed, producing the combination of trochee and iambus. (These classical names are really better than any special substitutes for them, and, if we regard them as indicating accent, and not necessarily quantity, are sufficiently accurate.) The following lines exemplify this irregularity:

'Hére is the steéd, | wé the capárjisón' (I, ix, 12).

Bétter it is to dié, | bétter to stérve' (II, iii, 104).

'Thy knée ¦ bússing the stones, ¡ fór in such bújsiness' (III, ii, 75).

6

And throughout the play the ear readily recognises such phrases as these: Shouting their em'ulation;" "See our best élders; ' Tickled with good | success;' at a cracked drách|me;' Ránsoming hím;' Rather than foól | it so;' 'Mánifest treás on;' Nór by the matter;' 'Scárs to move laúghter;' 'You and your cráfts;' "In a most deár | particular.'

Trisyllabic feet abound in the play. The attempt is made to get rid of them by the elision of unemphatic vowels. Thus we are advised to read imped'ment (I, i, 66), mut'nous (I, i, 104), vig'lant (I, i, 108), conject'ral (I, i, 187), cow'rdly (I, i, 196), prior'ty (I, i, 240), prosperity (I, v, 23), cent'ries (I, vii, 3), pleb'ans (I, ix, 7), par sites (I, ix, 45), invet'rate (II, iii, 216), gen'ral (III, i, 145), rem'dy (III, ii, 26), tyrann'cal (III, iii, 2), extrem'ty (IV, i, 4), off cer (IV, vi, 127).

This is to take most unwarrantable liberties with a language. When Hamlet told the players to pronounce his speech trippingly on the tongue, he did not certainly anticipate any such clipping and mangling as this, but rather that natural accentuation, approximating