Free William Shakespeare: The Complete Works 2nd Edition by William Shakespeare Page B

pace of reading increases when the line-breaks coincide with a major point of grammatical junction within a clause, such as between a subject and verb, verb and object, or noun and relative clause. In this next example ( Henry V , 4.3.64-5), because the first line contains only the clause subject, there is a dynamic tension at the end which propels us onwards to reach the verb:
    And gentlemen in England now abed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here.
     
    We can feel this tension if we stop our reading at the end of the first line. A subject alone is like an unresolved chord, calling out for the rest of the clause to provide semantic coherence.
    Even when a sentence stretches over several lines, the relationship between metre and grammar can be regular, as we can see in this speech from the deposed king in Richard II (5.5.1-5):
    I have been studying how I may compare
This prison where I live unto the world;
And for because the world is populous,
And here is not a creature but myself,
I cannot do it.
     
    The line-endings are all major points of grammatical junction, so that each line makes a separate semantic point. By keeping the lines coherent, in this way, the meaning proceeds in a series of smooth, regular steps - very appropriate for a speech whose unique properties have been repeatedly praised: ‘No other speech in Shakespeare much resembles this one’ for its ‘quietly meditative’ tone (Frank Kermode, Shakespeare’s Language , p. 45). The effect would be totally lost if the lines did not coincide with these major units of grammar, as in this rewriting:
    Today I have been studying how I may
Compare this prison where I live unto
The world . . .
     
    Such lines no longer have a semantic coherence. Grammatical structures are begun but left unfinished: the auxiliary verb may is split off from its main verb compare ; the preposition unto is split off from its noun phrase the world . That is not the metrical syntax of quiet meditation. On the other hand, it is precisely this sort of disruption which is needed when portraying a confused mind - in this case, Cloten’s ( Cymbeline, 2.3.64-73):
    I know her women are about her; what
If I do line one of their hands? ‘Tis gold
Which buys admittance—oft it doth—yea, and
makes
Diana’s rangers false themselves, yield up
Their deer to th’ stand o’th’ stealer; and ‘tis gold
Which makes the true man killed and saves the thief,
Nay, sometime hangs both thief and true man. What
Can it not do and undo? I will make
One of her women lawyer to me, for
I yet not understand the case myself.
     
    Here several lines break in unexpected places (an effect partly captured by the traditional notion of caesura) - in the middle of a two-part conjunction ( what | If ), after an interrogative word ( what ), and between a conjunction and its clause ( for | I ) - and clauses begin at the end of lines instead of at the beginning. Cloten comments: ‘I yet not understand the case myself.’ The disruption between metre and grammar suggests as much.
    The more the metre forces grammatical deviations within a line, the more difficult the line will be to understand. In this next example ( Richard II, 1.1.123), three unexpected things happen at once: the direct object is placed at the front, the indirect object comes before the verb, and an adjective is coordinated after the noun. The glossed version is much clearer, but it is unmetrical: ‘Free speech and fearless I to thee allow’ [= I allow to thee free and fearless speech]. Sometimes the change in word order can catch us off-guard, as in this example from Contention (5.3.52-55), spoken by Young Clifford after seeing his dead father, and vowing revenge. Nothing, he says, will escape his wrath:
    Tears virginal
Shall be to me even as the dew to fire,
And beauty that the tyrant oft reclaims
Shall to my flaming wrath be oil and flax.
     
    A casual reading of the third line would suggest that ‘a tyrant often reclaims [i.e.