178 C. F. Tucker Brooke, 



as a vehicle of real conversation. Run-on lines and double endings 

 are far more frequent even in the earliest of Shakespeare's plays 

 than in Marlowe's, and in the works of such Jacobean writers as 

 Fletcher and Massinger they predominate to such an extent as to 

 make the blank verse of these writers largely lose the quality of 

 poetry and become, like much of Wordsworth's, mere measured 

 prose. The change indicated is in great measure a regular evolution 

 occasioned by a change in the purpose and tone of the drama from 

 Marlowe's time to Fletcher's ; and the stylistic peculiarities of Mar- 

 lowe's verse are shared, to a certain extent, by several of the more 

 impassioned writers of his age — by Kyd and Peele, for example. The 

 discussion of the minutiae of versification by which Marlowe's in- 

 dividual style can be distinguished even from that of his immediate 

 contemporaries would be not altogether germane to the present sub- 

 ject, and would carry the inquiry unjustifiably far afield. I hope 

 to prosecute this investigation in another place. For the present, 

 I offer the statistics below as proving merely that the Contention and 

 True Tragedy cannot reasonably be regarded as the work of the 

 author who wrote the additions to these plays in 2 and 3 Henry VI, 

 while fully agreeing with the theory that Marlowe wrote the first two 

 plays and Shakespeare the additions. 



One of the most striking characteristics of Marlowe's verse, an 

 outgrowth of his tendency to emphasize the division of lines and his 

 dislike of double endings, is the frequent appearance of two weak 

 syllables in the final foot. This pyrrhic ending gives the verse a kind 

 of dying fall which very markedly emphasizes its close. It also 

 permits the avoidance of a double ending where words like " resolu- 

 tion" or "valiant" conclude the line. In such cases, Marlowe and 

 the author of Contention and True Tragedy normally pronounce every 

 possible syllable, making the line a regular pentameter, whereas 

 Shakespeare and the author of the additions in 2 and J Henry VI 

 cause the fifth foot to close with the stressed antepenult of the word, 

 and run the remaining " -tion " or " -iant " together as a single super- 

 fluous eleventh syllable. The ordinary Marlovian pronunciation 

 is seen in the line : 



" Before / we part / with our/ posses- /si-on." {Tamburlaine, 340) 

 or 



" Desirde / her more, / and waxt / outra- / gi-ous " {Edward II, 857) 



The usual Shakespearean scansion, on the other hand, appears in the 

 line {Richard III, I, 1, 18): 



