User:Phil wink/English alexandrine

Materials for English alexandrine article

Surrey's poulter's measure

When Summer took in hand the winter to assail
With force of might and virtue great, his stormy blasts to quail,
And when he clothèd fair the earth about with green,
And every tree new garmented, that pleasure was to seen,
Mine heart gan new revive, and changèd blood did stir
Me to withdraw my winter woes, that kept within my dore.

Regular caesura in Sidney

Loving in truth, and fain in verse my love to show,
That She, dear She, might take some pleasure of my pain,
Pleasure might cause her read, reading might make her know,
Knowledge might pity win, and pity grace obtain,

Spenser

"Spenser's alexandrine, however, has a striking innovation: it is no longer 6 + 6 syllables, but a unified line of 12 syllables in total."

At last as through an open plaine they yode,
They spide a knight, that towards pricked faire,
And him beside an aged Squire there rode,
That seem'd to couch vnder his shield three-square,
As if that age bad him that burden spare,
And yield it those, that stouter could it wield:
He them espying, gan himselfe prepare,
And on his arme addresse his goodly shield
That bore a Lion passant in a golden field.

Shakespeare

Some playwrights of the English Renaissance theatre used alexandrines as variant lines in the context of their iambic pentameter blank verse. However, this practice was always rare and, because of the comparative looseness of the dramatic verse of that period, it is not always clear whether an apparent alexandrine is best understood as such, or as a pentameter with a dactylic ending, an especially irregular pentameter, a regular pentameter with unusual contractions, two trimeters, interpolated prose, or an error. Nevertheless, E. K. Chambers estimated that William Shakespeare's blank verse was composed of over 1% hexameter lines. Whether Shakespeare's exchange between Richard III (Gloucester) and Anne is in shared hexameters or whole trimeters may not be an answerable question:

Anne. I would I knew thy heart.
Gloucester. 'Tis figur'd in my tongue.
Anne. I fear me both are false.
Gloucester. Then never was man true.
Anne. Well, well, put up your sword.
Gloucester. Say then my peace is made.
Anne. That shalt thou know hereafter.
Gloucester. But shall I live in hope?
Anne. All men, I hope, live so.
Gloucester. Vouchsafe to wear this ring.
Anne. To take is not to give.

Even what appears to be a textbook classical alexandrine:

To have what we would have, we speak not what we mean.

could conceivably be read as an iambic pentameter with a contraction and epic caesura (both not uncommon in Shakespeare):

    /     ×   ×  /    (×) |  ×   /    ×    /   ×  /
To'have what we would have, we speak not what we mean.

Example of 5-6-7 in Dryden

For thee the Land in fragrant Flow'rs is drest;
For thee the Ocean smiles, and smooths her wavy breast;
And Heav'n it self with more serene and purer light is blest.

Pope

A needless Alexandrine ends the Song,
That like a wounded Snake, drags its slow length along.

Though Pope reduced their numbers in his verse, he did not banish them; a few lines later he features a (presumably) needful alexandrine:

Not so, when swift Camilla scours the Plain,
Flies o'er th'unbending Corn, and skims along the Main.

Bridges

Robert Bridges wrote his Testament of Beauty in self-described "loose Alexandrines"; they are loose in that they exhibit no regular caesura or stressed syllable, but they maintain a strict 12-syllable count through an aggressive system of elision he called "Neo-Miltonic syllabics". In this excerpt, underlined sequences are to be counted as a single syllable (though not necessarily pronounced as one):

'Twas late in my long journey, when I had clomb to where
the path was narrowing and the company few,
a glow of childlike wonder enthral'd me, as if my sense
had come to a new birth purified, my mind enrapt
re-awakening to a fresh initiation of life;