J. E. Bernard, Jr., The Prosody of the Tudor Interlude
J. E. Bernard, Jr., The Prosody of the Tudor Interlude, Archon Books, Yale University Press, 1969
The interludes are considered one by one, each with a tabulation of its metrical nature. The results of an endeavor to link changes in rime scheme with internal changes in the plays are more in the style of observation than conclusions, but from the history of the metres in the course of the century the following may be deduced: / 1. The verse of the Tudor interlude must not be merely condemned by our present syllabic criteria as doggerel. / 2. It was indigenous to England and had no connexion with Continental poetics. / 3. The playwrights were concerned with varying their verse in accord with what took place in the drama. / 4. In general, their concern emphasized the contrast between two systems; for example, virtue and serious passages were often present in ballad measures, and vice and frolicsome passages in rime cou[e]e. / 5. All complicated measures were laid aside with the advent of prose and blank verse about 1588. … (Preface, x)
Interludes were primarily folk-drama, and the verse which more or less confined their lines was a secondary consideration. … The no further rapprochement, certainly no wedding of poetic thought to poetic form. (1)
But just as the authors of the interludes had no concern with poetical content, neither had they any concern with poetic outline as far as individual lines were considered. The line was a matter of little importance to them. That it should embrace now eight syllables, now thirty-eight, did not challenge their sense of form. (2)
The singleness of the dramatic eye which John Heywood and the other writers of interludes possessed thus permitted nearly all focus to be concentrated on groups of lines. Now, prosody is concerned primarily with the single line… In the case of the interludes with the general absence of such interest, the result is that all attention must be brought to bear on groups of lines. Usually these lines are grouped in pairs, providing a minimum of prosodic interest as well as a minimum of effort in the writing. Very often, however, the lines are grouped stanzaically. (2)
The lines cannot all be scanned; few in fact will submit to the straightjackets of iamb and anapaest. [The striking exception to this rule is the work of George Gascoigne, himself in 1575 the author of the earliest modern treatise on English prosody. …] (3)
The survey thus becomes primarily a study in rime, for by this means the lines are linked. In so discussing the versification of the interludes, i.e. strophically, there must be found a means of noting the size of the lines which constitute the stanzas. From the very beginning, the length of the lines varied within wide syllabic limits, and the only common denominator is to be found in the number of stresses which the lines contain. (3)
To generalize, the first writers of the interludes were men of the court circle, often musicians as well. [John Heywood, John Redford, Richard Edwards.] Of the parvenu Tudor aristocracy they made a comparate part; their traditions and their education were English, free from foreign sophistication. The drama with which they were familiar was for the most part that indigenous to English soil, the influence of the quattrocento in Italy not yet having been experienced, and the sotties of the French stage affecting the content of only a handful of plays. The sources for the form of the interludes were to be discovered in the moralities from which they grew, developments of the church-drama which employed complicated verse-forms. (4)
The conditions under which the interludes were written would further condone the “lax” approach of the authors to a rigid versification. The plays were composed by men whose vocations were in other fields. Some were musicians, some were clergymen, some were strolling players; none were vocational poets. [The poetical work of Heywood, Edwards, and Gascoigne scarcely entitles them to be considered “professional,” so to speak, in the sense of Michael Drayton or Edmund Spenser.] The interludes were written to grace a [4] particular occasion, originally the interim between two halves of a banquet, and, having perhaps been put on by children, then to be discarded. (4-5)
Those who wrote the interludes so often made assonance and ocular rime take the place of mere rime… (5)
The present survey includes the seventy-odd interludes which appears between 1497 and 1593, the date of Summer’s Last Will and Testament, the point of climax of this form of drama. Sophistication from the professional drama had so entered into its fibre that the interlude was no longer worthy of the name. (6)
Since the prosody of the drama is separate from that of poetry for the reasons cited above, it has been deemed necessary [6] to omit from this survey the songs which occur in the interludes. The ideals which gave rise to their versification are different, and it often bears no relation to the versification of the play as a whole. (6-7)
There was also a curious revival of the old alliterative verse—if it can be said ever to have died—which escapes all attempt to transfix it. It cannot be scanned; one can merely point it out in places where it becomes apparent. (9)
The work that has already been done on the prosody of the interludes deserves a note of comment before going on to an individual discussion. They are usually dismissed with a word like doggerel, occasionally expanded to Skeltonic doggerel. A few of the more important have merited separate discussion as far as a cataloguing of their rime schemes, but in general little attempt has been made to unravel the various metrical skeins. The dictum of George Saintsbury that this drama was prosodic anarchy and that it contained “doggerel of all kinds” has gone unchallenged. Of course it does contain doggerel of all kinds, but to dismiss [10] it so is inadequate. Conscious cerebral effort is always connected with the sustained production of lines which rime not only by two but in alternation, from which grow the more complicated structures. (10-11)
…in dealing with the Tudor interludes squeamishness is out of place. All subtleties of notation, all delicate attempts to connect this dramatic poetry with music must be put behind in an endeavor to catch the sweep [11] and swing of verse that is intended to carry the listener along, not to titillate his softer emotions. (11-12)
Five works on prosody appeared during the age of the interlude and were ignored. [See G. G. Smith, Elizabethan Critical Essays (Oxford, 1904. 2 vols.). The treatises were: 1575. George Gascoigne, Certain Notes of Instruction Concerning the Making of Verse or Rime in English (Ibid., i. 46-57.) / 1582. Richard Stany hurst, “Too tee Learned Reader,” prefatory to Thee First Foure Bookes of Virgil his Aeneis. (Ibid., i. 136-47.) / 1585. King James VI., “Ane Schort Treatise Conteining some Reulis and Cautelis to be Observit and Eschewit in Scottis Poesie.” (Ibid., i. 208-25.) / 1586. William Webbe, A Discourse of English Poetry. (Ibid., i. 226-302.) / 1589. George Puttenham, The Art of English Poesy. (Ibid., ii. 3-193; see also the edition of G. D. Willcox and A. Walker [Cambridge, 1936], pp. lxiv-lxxiii.) / For a discussion of the above essays, see Smith, loc. cit., pp. xlvi-lx. Fortunately, too, the whole question of quantitative scansion does not enter into the metrics of the interludes. See also Schipper, ii. 223-5.] True, this form of the drama has nearly run its course by their time, but so great is the contrast between the work of Gascoigne in his interludes and that of his contemporaries that one instantly recognizes The Glass of Government as a step-child. (12)
[LXXII. Summer’s Last Will and Testament. Rhythms, heavy. Prevailing metre: blank verse.] The verse is of the doggerel kind, with a general attention to the number of stresses in the line and a vague attention to the number of unstressed auxiliary syllables. (195)
The notion that rime cou[e]e better befitted the scenes of madcap activity, and that ballad measured measured of six, seven, or eight lines were better suited to those of a more serious nature was one which took firm root in the ground of the secular drama whence it drew its strength. (196)
The coming of septenaries in 1569 lent another handle to the machinery of versification, and the result followed that the writers of interludes once again took stock in suiting the verse to the character and to the nature of the episode. / For a few years, perhaps eight, the interest was maintained, occasionally with grave scruples, but thereafter Saintsbury’s term “prosodic anarchy” is particularly appropriate. Blank verse banished the more complex schemes form the repertory. If one takes into account that interludes had been written in rimed prose and that now rime too may be dropped, the effect of the licence is obvious. There had been little evenness in the blank verse of the Aeneid which [201] appeared in 1557, [Books II and IV were translated into an English form of Latini’s verso sciolto by Henry Howard, Early of Surrey; see Berdan, pp. 354-60; Saintsbury, i. 314-6; Schipper, ii. 256-64.] especially if it be so unfairly compared with the elegant and subtly varied metre of Paradise Lost; certainly no strides had been made over dramatic terrain during the intervening quarter-century. With all metrical barriers down, then, it is to be expected that distinction in verse will pass from the drama, and this is indeed the case. At the end one is left with a heritage of prose and blank verse that does not suggest its ancestry, or with a mixture of rimes that signify nothing. (202)
Blank verse—and prose too—first enters the theatre of the interlude in The Three Lords and Three Ladies of London in 1588, and its coming is permanent. (210)
The interludes are considered one by one, each with a tabulation of its metrical nature. The results of an endeavor to link changes in rime scheme with internal changes in the plays are more in the style of observation than conclusions, but from the history of the metres in the course of the century the following may be deduced: / 1. The verse of the Tudor interlude must not be merely condemned by our present syllabic criteria as doggerel. / 2. It was indigenous to England and had no connexion with Continental poetics. / 3. The playwrights were concerned with varying their verse in accord with what took place in the drama. / 4. In general, their concern emphasized the contrast between two systems; for example, virtue and serious passages were often present in ballad measures, and vice and frolicsome passages in rime cou[e]e. / 5. All complicated measures were laid aside with the advent of prose and blank verse about 1588. … (Preface, x)
Interludes were primarily folk-drama, and the verse which more or less confined their lines was a secondary consideration. … The no further rapprochement, certainly no wedding of poetic thought to poetic form. (1)
But just as the authors of the interludes had no concern with poetical content, neither had they any concern with poetic outline as far as individual lines were considered. The line was a matter of little importance to them. That it should embrace now eight syllables, now thirty-eight, did not challenge their sense of form. (2)
The singleness of the dramatic eye which John Heywood and the other writers of interludes possessed thus permitted nearly all focus to be concentrated on groups of lines. Now, prosody is concerned primarily with the single line… In the case of the interludes with the general absence of such interest, the result is that all attention must be brought to bear on groups of lines. Usually these lines are grouped in pairs, providing a minimum of prosodic interest as well as a minimum of effort in the writing. Very often, however, the lines are grouped stanzaically. (2)
The lines cannot all be scanned; few in fact will submit to the straightjackets of iamb and anapaest. [The striking exception to this rule is the work of George Gascoigne, himself in 1575 the author of the earliest modern treatise on English prosody. …] (3)
The survey thus becomes primarily a study in rime, for by this means the lines are linked. In so discussing the versification of the interludes, i.e. strophically, there must be found a means of noting the size of the lines which constitute the stanzas. From the very beginning, the length of the lines varied within wide syllabic limits, and the only common denominator is to be found in the number of stresses which the lines contain. (3)
To generalize, the first writers of the interludes were men of the court circle, often musicians as well. [John Heywood, John Redford, Richard Edwards.] Of the parvenu Tudor aristocracy they made a comparate part; their traditions and their education were English, free from foreign sophistication. The drama with which they were familiar was for the most part that indigenous to English soil, the influence of the quattrocento in Italy not yet having been experienced, and the sotties of the French stage affecting the content of only a handful of plays. The sources for the form of the interludes were to be discovered in the moralities from which they grew, developments of the church-drama which employed complicated verse-forms. (4)
The conditions under which the interludes were written would further condone the “lax” approach of the authors to a rigid versification. The plays were composed by men whose vocations were in other fields. Some were musicians, some were clergymen, some were strolling players; none were vocational poets. [The poetical work of Heywood, Edwards, and Gascoigne scarcely entitles them to be considered “professional,” so to speak, in the sense of Michael Drayton or Edmund Spenser.] The interludes were written to grace a [4] particular occasion, originally the interim between two halves of a banquet, and, having perhaps been put on by children, then to be discarded. (4-5)
Those who wrote the interludes so often made assonance and ocular rime take the place of mere rime… (5)
The present survey includes the seventy-odd interludes which appears between 1497 and 1593, the date of Summer’s Last Will and Testament, the point of climax of this form of drama. Sophistication from the professional drama had so entered into its fibre that the interlude was no longer worthy of the name. (6)
Since the prosody of the drama is separate from that of poetry for the reasons cited above, it has been deemed necessary [6] to omit from this survey the songs which occur in the interludes. The ideals which gave rise to their versification are different, and it often bears no relation to the versification of the play as a whole. (6-7)
There was also a curious revival of the old alliterative verse—if it can be said ever to have died—which escapes all attempt to transfix it. It cannot be scanned; one can merely point it out in places where it becomes apparent. (9)
The work that has already been done on the prosody of the interludes deserves a note of comment before going on to an individual discussion. They are usually dismissed with a word like doggerel, occasionally expanded to Skeltonic doggerel. A few of the more important have merited separate discussion as far as a cataloguing of their rime schemes, but in general little attempt has been made to unravel the various metrical skeins. The dictum of George Saintsbury that this drama was prosodic anarchy and that it contained “doggerel of all kinds” has gone unchallenged. Of course it does contain doggerel of all kinds, but to dismiss [10] it so is inadequate. Conscious cerebral effort is always connected with the sustained production of lines which rime not only by two but in alternation, from which grow the more complicated structures. (10-11)
…in dealing with the Tudor interludes squeamishness is out of place. All subtleties of notation, all delicate attempts to connect this dramatic poetry with music must be put behind in an endeavor to catch the sweep [11] and swing of verse that is intended to carry the listener along, not to titillate his softer emotions. (11-12)
Five works on prosody appeared during the age of the interlude and were ignored. [See G. G. Smith, Elizabethan Critical Essays (Oxford, 1904. 2 vols.). The treatises were: 1575. George Gascoigne, Certain Notes of Instruction Concerning the Making of Verse or Rime in English (Ibid., i. 46-57.) / 1582. Richard Stany hurst, “Too tee Learned Reader,” prefatory to Thee First Foure Bookes of Virgil his Aeneis. (Ibid., i. 136-47.) / 1585. King James VI., “Ane Schort Treatise Conteining some Reulis and Cautelis to be Observit and Eschewit in Scottis Poesie.” (Ibid., i. 208-25.) / 1586. William Webbe, A Discourse of English Poetry. (Ibid., i. 226-302.) / 1589. George Puttenham, The Art of English Poesy. (Ibid., ii. 3-193; see also the edition of G. D. Willcox and A. Walker [Cambridge, 1936], pp. lxiv-lxxiii.) / For a discussion of the above essays, see Smith, loc. cit., pp. xlvi-lx. Fortunately, too, the whole question of quantitative scansion does not enter into the metrics of the interludes. See also Schipper, ii. 223-5.] True, this form of the drama has nearly run its course by their time, but so great is the contrast between the work of Gascoigne in his interludes and that of his contemporaries that one instantly recognizes The Glass of Government as a step-child. (12)
[LXXII. Summer’s Last Will and Testament. Rhythms, heavy. Prevailing metre: blank verse.] The verse is of the doggerel kind, with a general attention to the number of stresses in the line and a vague attention to the number of unstressed auxiliary syllables. (195)
The notion that rime cou[e]e better befitted the scenes of madcap activity, and that ballad measured measured of six, seven, or eight lines were better suited to those of a more serious nature was one which took firm root in the ground of the secular drama whence it drew its strength. (196)
The coming of septenaries in 1569 lent another handle to the machinery of versification, and the result followed that the writers of interludes once again took stock in suiting the verse to the character and to the nature of the episode. / For a few years, perhaps eight, the interest was maintained, occasionally with grave scruples, but thereafter Saintsbury’s term “prosodic anarchy” is particularly appropriate. Blank verse banished the more complex schemes form the repertory. If one takes into account that interludes had been written in rimed prose and that now rime too may be dropped, the effect of the licence is obvious. There had been little evenness in the blank verse of the Aeneid which [201] appeared in 1557, [Books II and IV were translated into an English form of Latini’s verso sciolto by Henry Howard, Early of Surrey; see Berdan, pp. 354-60; Saintsbury, i. 314-6; Schipper, ii. 256-64.] especially if it be so unfairly compared with the elegant and subtly varied metre of Paradise Lost; certainly no strides had been made over dramatic terrain during the intervening quarter-century. With all metrical barriers down, then, it is to be expected that distinction in verse will pass from the drama, and this is indeed the case. At the end one is left with a heritage of prose and blank verse that does not suggest its ancestry, or with a mixture of rimes that signify nothing. (202)
Blank verse—and prose too—first enters the theatre of the interlude in The Three Lords and Three Ladies of London in 1588, and its coming is permanent. (210)
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