in his scene (I, 3) than any of the characters in the casket scene immediately following (II, 1)?  According to Collin, then, I, 3 should be in verse and II, 1 in prose!  Equally absurd is the theory that Shakespeare’s characters speak in verse because their natures demand it.  Does Shylock go contrary to nature in III, 1?  There is no psychological reason for Verse in Shakespeare.  He wrote as he did because convention prescribed it.  The same is true of Goethe and Schiller, of Bjornson and Ibsen in their earlier plays.  Shakespeare’s lapses into prose are, moreover, easy to explain.  There must always be something to amuse the gallery.  Act III, 1 must be so understood, for though Shakespeare was undoubtedly moved, the effect of the scene was comic.  The same is true of the dialogue between Portia and Nerissa in Act I, and of all the scenes in which Launcelot Gobbo appears.

Western admits, however, that much of the prose in Shakespeare cannot be so explained; for example, the opening scenes in Lear and The Tempest.  And this brings up another point, i.e., Collin’s supposition that Shakespeare’s texts as we have them are exactly as he wrote them.  When the line halts, Collin simply finds proof of the poet’s fine ear!  The truth probably is that Shakespeare had a good ear and that he always wrote good lines, but that he took no pains to see that these lines were correctly printed.  Take, for example, such a line as: 

  As far as Belmont. 
      In such a night

This would, if written by anyone else, always be considered bad, and Dr. Western does not believe that Collin’s theory of the pauses will hold.  The pause plays no part in verse.  A line consists of a fixed number of heard syllables.  Collin would say that a line like I, 1-73: 

  I will not fail you,

is filled out with a bow and a swinging of the hat.  Then why are the lines just before it, in which Salarino and Salario take leave of each other, not defective?  Indeed, how can we be sure that much of what passes for “Shakespeare’s versification” is not based on printers’ errors?  In the folio of 1623 there are long passages printed in prose which, after closer study, we must believe were written in verse—­the opening of Lear and The Tempest.  Often, too, it is plain that the beginnings and endings of lines have been run together.  Take the passage: 

  Sal: 
  Why, then you are in love.

  Ant: 
      Fie, fie!

  Sal: 
  Not in love neither?  Then let us say you are sad—­

The first line is one foot short, the second one foot too long.  This Collin would call a stroke of genius; each fie is a complete foot, and the line is complete!  But what if the line were printed thus: 

  Sal: 
  Why, then you are in love.

  Ant: 
      Fie, fie!

  Sal: 
          Not in
  Love neither?  Then let us say you are sad.