Charles Davidson — English Mystery Plays. 229 



Elizabethan age, compelled a compromise and saved our prosody 

 from the level monotony of excessive uniformity of movement. 



However, it is sufficient for this discussion that the reader should 

 abandon as futile all attempts to analyze into classical feet the Eng- 

 lish verses which follow, and read them with natural stresses, run- 

 ning the unstressed syllables as nearly as possible in a recitative mono- 

 tone. Semi-stresses occur, occasionally two semi-stresses take the 

 place of a full stress, and often a slide or prolongation of a stressed 

 syllable, or a caesura, is the only separation between two stressed 

 syllables ; but these semi-stresses, for the sake of simplicity of pre- 

 sentation, I have ignored, using only the breve and the macron for 

 unstressed and stressed syllables respectively. 



Another agent in the formation of this stanza was alliteration, for 

 which the poetic consciousness of the people still made its demands. 

 The letter-rime, coinciding with the stress, heightened the accent, 

 and rendered the unstressed syllables of still less importance. The 

 old alliterative verse was very similar to the first half -verse of the 

 V-accent line. The Northern poets took the septenar line in its 

 stanzaic form and laid upon it the requirements of their ancient 

 poetry, thus building for themselves a characteristic stanza, distinc- 

 tive, as I believe, of the poets north of the Humber. 



It becomes necessary now for us to trace in support of these prop- 

 ositions the rise of the septenar stanza, and to note carefully the 

 laws of its formation. Of the Latin septenar of the thirteenth cen- 

 tury examples are abundant. It was the usual vehicle, as has been 

 said, for political song and satire, 



Ex. 1. The Battle of Lewes. Middle of thirteenth century. 

 Lines 1-4. 



Csllamus velociter II scribe sic scribeutis, 



Lingua laiidabiliter II te benedicentis, 



Dei patrls dexterd II domine virtutem. 



Qui das tiiis prosperii II qudndo vis ad nutum: 



:? 

 r) 



■ It — \j — \. 



-M %J ^ 



-II «-» — «. 



. II U t 



a a b b etc. 



Characteristics : — Rime by couplets, no stanzaic structure, mascu- 

 line caesura, feminine rime, stress follows the caesura, trochaic move- 

 ment, regular succession of stressed and unstressed syllables, caesura 

 regularly divides verse into a first half of four accents and second 



1 Wright, p. 73. 



Trans. Conn. Acad., Vol. IX. October, 1S92. 



