Note 137 — AN ESSAY OF DRAMATIC POESY.
Reading edition
Our old poets saw something peculiarly ludicrous in the anapœstic canter of these doggrel Alexandrines. The old comedy of "Gammer Gurton's Needle" is composed entirely of them. Shakespeare often uses them where the dialogue is carried on by his clowns, or comic characters; as in "Love's Labour's Lost," act III.; in most of the quaint skirmishes of wit and punning, in the "Comedy of Errors;" and in the "Taming of the Shrew." Other examples from low comedy of that early age are given in Reed's edition of Shakespeare, Vol. xx. p. 462. After all, this same Alexandrine is only the common ballad-stanza of "Chevy Chace," written in two lines at length, instead of being subdivided into four. Mr Malone remarks, that the assertion in the text is too general.