Note 167 — Chapter III · ORIGINS OF LINES AND STANZAS
Reading edition
(a) From Heywood:—
(1) Octosyllabic principally:
And I to every soul again Did give a beck them to retain, And axèd them this question than, If that the soul of such a womàn Did late among them there appear?
(Four P's.)
But in close proximity such lines as
But Lord! how low the Souls made curtesy,
and
'Christ, help,' quoth a soul that lay for his fees,
make their appearance.
(2) Hawesian or Barclayan decasyllables staggering into Alexandrine or anapæstic doggerel:
How can he have pain by imagination, That lacketh all kinds of consideration? And in all senses is so insufficient That nought can he think in ought that may be meant By any means to devise any self thing, Nor devise in thing past, present, or coming?
(Wit and Folly.)
(For other passages from Heywood see Scanned Conspectus, § XVIII.)
(b) Longer examples:—
(1) With Alexandrine norm:
Therefore see that all shine as bright as Saint George, Or as doth a key newly come from the smith's forge.
(Ralph Roister Doister.)
(2) With fourteener ditto:
D. I know not what a devil thou meanest, thou bringest me mere in doubt. H. Knowest not on what tom-tailor's man sits broaching through a clout?
(Gammer Gurton's Needle.)
It is curious how closely this unreverend metre sometimes comes to the heroic model of Sigurd.
(3) With decasyllabic ditto:
Housed to say that as servants are obedient, To their bodily masters being in subjection, Even so evil men that are not content Are subject and slave to their lust and affection,
where, once more, the norm may be shifted to the anapæst.