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SHAKESPEAREAN TRAGEDY

in a play, but the difference in this matter between one play and another. Thus one may disagree with König in his estimate of many instances, but one can see that he is consistent,

In Shakespeare’s early plays, ‘overflows’ are rare. In the Comedy of Errors, for example, their percentage is 12.9 according to König[1] (who excludes rhymed lines and some others). In the generally admitted last plays they are comparatively frequent. Thus, according to König, the percentage in the Winter’s Tale is 37.5, in the Tempest 41.5, in Antony 43.3, in Coriolanus 45.9, in Cymbeline 46, in the parts of Henry VIII. assigned by Spedding to Shakespeare 53.18. König’s results for the four tragedies are as follows: Othello, 19.5; Hamlet, 23.1; King Lear, 29.3; Macbeth, 36.6; (Timon, the whole play, 32.5). Macbeth here again, therefore, stands decidedly last: indeed it stands near the first of the latest plays.

And no one who has ever attended to the versification of Macbeth will be surprised at these figures. It is almost obvious, I should say, that Shakespeare is passing from one system to another. Some passages show little change, but in others the change is almost complete. If the reader will compare two somewhat similar soliloquies, ‘To be or not-to be’ and ‘If it were done when ’tis done,’ he will recognise this at once. Or let him search the previous plays, even King Lear, for twelve consecutive lines like these:

If it were done when ’tis done, then ’twere wellIt were done quickly: if the assassinationCould trammel up the consequence, and catchWith his surcease success; that but this blowMight be the be-all and the end-all here,But here, upon this bank and shoal of time,We ‘ld jump the life to come. But in these casesWe still have judgement here; that we but teachBloody instructions, which, being taught, returnTo plague the inventor: this even-handed justiceCommends the ingredients of our poison’d chaliceTo our own lips.

Or let him try to parallel the following (III. vi. 37 f.):

          and this reportHath so exasperate the king that hePrepares for some attempt of war.
  1. ↑ These overflows are what König calls ‘schroffe Enjambements,’ which he considers to correspond with Furnivall’s ‘run-on lines.’
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