The Arte of English Poesie eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 355 pages of information about The Arte of English Poesie.

The Arte of English Poesie eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 355 pages of information about The Arte of English Poesie.

Where the sharpe accent falles more tunably vpon [graunt] [peace] [long]
[dure] then it would by conuersion, as to accent then thus: 
  Go-d grau`nt — thi-s pea`ce — ma-y lo`ng — e-ndu-re.

And yet if ye will aske me the reason I can not tell it, but that it shapes so to myne eare, and as I thinke to euery other mans.  And in this meeter where ye haue whole words bissillable vnbroken, that maintaine (by reason of their accent) sundry feete, yet going one with another be very harmonicall.

Where ye see one to be a trocheus another the iambus, and so entermingled not by election but by constraint of their seuerall accents, which ought not to be altred, yet comes it to passe that many times ye must of necessitie alter the accent of a sillable, and put him from his naturall place, and then one sillable, of a word polysillable, or one word monosillable, will abide to be made sometimes long, sometimes short, as in this quadreyne of ours playd in a mery moode.
  Geue me mine owne and when I do desire
  Geue others theirs, and nothing that is mine

  Nor giue me that, wherto all men aspire
  Then neither gold, nor faire women nor wine.

Where in your first verse these two words [giue] and [me] are accented one high th’other low, in the third verse the same words are accented contrary, and the reason of this exchange is manifest, because the maker playes with these two clauses of sundry relations [giue me] and [giue others] so as the monosillable [me] being respectiue to the word [others] and inferring a subtilitie or wittie implication, ought not to haue the same accent, as when he hath no such respect, as in this distik of ours.
  Pro-ue me` (Madame) ere ye re-pro`ue
  Meeke minds should e-xcu`se not a-ccu`se
.

In which verse ye see this word [reprooue,] the sillable [prooue] alters his sharpe accent into a flat, for naturally it is long in all his singles and compoundes [reprooue] [approoue] [disprooue] & so is the sillable [cuse] in [excuse] [accuse] [recuse] yet in these verses by reason one of them doth as it were nicke another, and haue a certaine extraordinary sence with all, it behoueth to remoue the sharpe accents from whence they are most naturall, to place them where the nicke may be more expresly discouered, and therefore in this verse where no such implication is, nor no relation it is otherwise, as thus.
  If ye re`pro-ue my constancie
  I will excu-se you curtesly
.

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The Arte of English Poesie from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.