‘The Lady Shall Say Her Mind Freely’: Shakespeare and the S/Pace of Blank Verse

Abstract

Tudeau-Clayton argues that, in line with developments in contemporary rhetoric, Shakespeare conceived of blank verse as ‘spatious’, using it to figure the emancipation of the individual. The form became linked to the early modern discovery of infinity, so that the development of blank verse can be seen as a chapter in the history of modernity. Not following the example of ‘Marlowe’s mighty line’, Shakespeare uses techniques such as enjambment to produce a ‘“plastic” or “malleable” line’ designed to transgress linguistic and physical limits. Resisting linearity and closure, Shakespearean blank verse opens up a space for an individual’s negotiation of infinity—an approach particularly conspicuous in Hamlet, but also to be traced in Juliet’s ‘infinite bounty’.

Appendix

1.1 ‘Blank Verse’: A Timeline

1540s:

Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (d.1547), translates Book 2 (‘Aeneas’ Tale to Dido’) and Book 4 of Virgil’s Aeneid.

1554:

Howard’s translation of Book 4 is published by John Day; the verse form is advertised on the title page as ‘straunge metre’.

1557:

Howard’s translation of Books 2 and 4 is published by Richard Tottel, who advertises the verse form on the title page as ‘English meter’.

1561–1562:

Performance of Gorboduc by Thomas Sackville and Thomas Norton: the first drama in English to use unrhymed iambic pentameters as ‘the medium for classically inspired tragedy’ (Adamson 1999, 634).

1563:

Henry Howard’s translation is praised for its ‘mighty style’ by Barnabe Googe in an epitaph on Thomas Phaer, whose translation of the first seven books of the Aeneid into rhyming long lines appeared in 1558 (Googe 1989, 82).

1580:

In a published exchange of letters with Edmund Spenser, Gabriel Harvey announces the cultural project of ‘Exchanging of Barbarous and Balductum Rymes with Artificial Verses’ (Harvey ctd. Attridge 1974, 107).

1582:

Publication of Richard Stanyhurst’s translation of the first four books of the Aeneid into ‘English heroical verses’ (title page), ‘the most thoroughgoing […] of the extended experiments in quantitative metre’ (Attridge 1974, 166).

1585[?]:

Christopher Marlowe with Thomas Nashe[?] produces The Tragedy of Dido (published 1594), the first of his tragedies, modelled on Howard’s translation (Sessions 1999), in which he develops Howard’s verse form for a popular drama.

1587:

Marlowe’s Tamburlaine (published 1590) is first produced—a huge success on the London public stage. In a prologue, the ‘jigging veins of rhyming mother-wits’ is rejected and the paradigmatic Marlovian hero is introduced: with his ‘high astounding terms’ and ‘conquering sword’ (Tamburlaine, Part I, ‘The Prologue’ [Marlowe 1969, 105]).

1588:

The term ‘blank verse’ is coined by Robert Greene expressly in relation to Marlowe, ‘daring God out of heaven with that Atheist Tamburlan’: ‘if there be anye in England that set the end of scollarisme in an English blanck verse, I thinke either it is the humor of a novice that tickles them with selfe-love, or to much frequenting the hot house…’ (Perimedes The Blacke-Smith, 1588, sig A3r-A3v (u/v s/f forms normalized)).

1589:

The closing chapter of The Art of English Poesy debates ‘in what cases the artificial is more commended than the natural, and contrariwise’ (chapter title) and comes down on the side of the natural for the poet, who ‘is then most admired when he is most natural and least artificial’ (Puttenham 2007, 386). The ground of this conclusion lies in a view of language as ‘little less natural than…sensual actions, saving that the one is perfected by nature at once, the other not without exercise and iteration’ (384).

1589:

Thomas Nashe expands on Greene’s critique of ‘blank verse’ as practised by Thomas Kyd as well as by Marlowe (‘Preface to Robert Greene’s Menaphon’ [Nashe 1958, 311–12, quoted above]).

1598:

John Florio’s gloss to Sciólto: ‘loose, free, quit, discharged, unsnared, at libertie, nimble, quick, untide, untangled, licentious. also a kinde of loose verse so called in Italian, a blanke verse’ (Florio 1598, ‘Sciólto’).

1598–1600:

The phrase ‘blank verse’ used in three plays by Shakespeare:

Much Ado about Nothing—Benedick reflects, in prose, on famous lovers, such as Leander and Troilus, ‘whose names yet run smoothly in the even road of a blank verse’ (Ado V.2.28–9).

As You Like It—Jacques dismisses Orlando and Rosalind: ‘Nay then, God b’wi’you an you talk in blank verse’ (AYL IV.1.28).

Hamlet—in anticipation of the player’s performance Hamlet declares: ‘the Lady shall say her mind freely or the blank verse shall halt for’t’ (H II.2.313–14).

1611:

Randle Cotgrave: ‘enjambement: an incroaching upon, or striding over’ (Cotgrave 1611, ‘enjambement’).

1611:

John Florio’s second gloss: ‘sciólto: loose, free, at liberty, untide, untangled, unsnared. Also quit, absolved or discharged. Also quick, nimble and full of agility. Also a kind of verse among the Italians, a loose verse a blancke verse’ (Florio 1611, ‘sciólto’).

1623:

In his prefatory poem to the First Folio Ben Jonson praises Marlowe’s ‘mighty line’ (Shakespeare, 1997, 3351) [see Barnabe Googe’s praise of Howard’s ‘mighty style’ above].

1674:

In the second edition of Paradise Lost, John Milton justifies his verse form: ‘The measure is English heroic verse without rhyme, as that of Homer in Greek, and of Virgil in Latin; …Not without cause… some… Italian and Spanish poets of prime note have rejected rhyme… as have also long since our best English tragedies, as a thing of itself… trivial and of no true musical delight… This neglect then of rhyme so little is to be taken for a defect… that it rather is to be esteemed an example set, the first in English, of ancient liberty recovered to heroic poem from the troublesome and modern bondage of rhyming’ (Milton 1971, 38–9).