Google Groups no longer supports new Usenet posts or subscriptions. Historical content remains viewable.

Dismiss

poulter's measure

6 views

Skip to first unread message

art

unread,

Jul 29, 2009, 11:13:38 PM7/29/09

---------------------------------------------
_Palamon and Arcite_ by Katherine Chiljan
http://www.shakespeare-oxford.com/?p=40

<<It is indisputable that Oxford was present at the university during
the Queen’s visit, as he received his master’s degree the day
following the performance of Palamon and Arcite. We know that from his
earliest years Oxford was deeply involved in literature. Arthur
Golding (in his translation of Justin’s Histories of Trogus Pompeius,
the first of many books Oxford patronized) attested to the earl’s
“earnest desire…to read, peruse and communicate with others as well
the histories of ancient times, and things done long ago… and that not
without a certain pregnancy of wit and ripeness of understanding.”
Oxford was only 14. At 16 Oxford was writing polished poetry, and
Edwards was collecting it ( seven pieces were in his personal
collection, later published as Paradise of Dainty Devices).

One portion of the 1566 play — Emilia’s song — has survived,
and it very closely echoes Oxford’s early poetry:

. Come follow me you nymphs,
. whose eyes are never dry,
. Augment your *WAILing* number
. now with me poor Emelie.>>
-------------------------------------------
John W Kennedy <jwke...@attglobal.net> wrote:

> Blatant typo.

> Augment your wailing number now
> with me poor Emelie.

> (By the way, does Shakespeare ever use this ghastly measure? I can't
> recall any instances offhand. It can be quite effective when it is set
> to music, of course -- in hymnody it is common enough to have its own
> designation: Short Meter, or SM -- but in plain verse it is hard to
> believe that anyone ever found Poulters Measure acceptable
> outside of nursery rhymes.)
-------------------------------------------
http://www.archive.org/stream/shakespeareralei00rale/shakespeareralei...

<<It was at the Court of Anne Bole} that the poetry of the 16th
century was born; it was the cousin of Anne Boleyn, the Earl of
Surrey, who became the master of all sonneteering lovers and all new-
fangled writers of blank verse. The strength of the school of Surrey
lay in its songs, which never miss the essentials of verse that is to
be wedded to music. Even the dullest of the poets of that school
understands a lyrical movement, while the best of them can breathe
such strains as Wyatt's ravishing song, with the burden " My lute, be
still, for I have done," or Gascoigne's beautiful Lullaby. But the
school was unlucky even in its cradle. Protestant psalmody, which was
born in the same Court, and countenanced by the same kingly favour,
took possession of its simpler measures and degraded them to doggerel
for the use of the populace. The Psalms of Sternhold and Hopkins
commanded a far larger audience than the courtly poets, and shaped the
national prosody for almost half a century. The monotonous emphasis of
the universal "poulter's measure," with its shorter and longer swing,
as of a rocking-horse, made delicacy of diction impossible ; and the
only resource left to the oppressed poets was to double the monotony
by a free use of alliteration.>>
---------------------------------------------------
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourteener_(poetry)

<<Poulter's measure is a meter consisting of alternate Alexandrines
and Fourteeners, i.e. 12 and 14 syllable lines. It was often used in
the Elizabethan era. The term was coined by George Gascoigne, because
poulters, or poulterers (sellers of poultry), would sometimes give 12
to the dozen, and other times 14 (see also Baker's dozen). C. S.
Lewis, in his English Literature in the Sixteenth Century, castigates
the 'lumbering' poulter's measure. He attributes the introduction of
this 'terrible' meter to Thomas Wyatt. In a more extended analysis, he
comments: "The medial break in the alexandrine, though it may do well
enough in French, becomes intolerable in a language with such a
tyrannous stress-accent as ours: the line struts. The fourteener has a
much pleasanter movement, but a totally different one: the line dances
a jig.">>
-----------------------------------------------------
The Cambridge History of English and American Literature in 18 Volumes
(1907–21).
Volume III. Renascence and Reformation.

VIII. The New English Poetry. § 7. “Poulter’s measure”.

<<A favourite metre of Surrey—a metre used now and then by Wyatt, too—
is one of which the student of this period may grow tired as he traces
its decadence through Turbervile, Googe and others, to its brief
restoration to honour in the hands of Southwell. It was of English
origin, being, probably, a development of the ballad quatrain, and was
commonly called “poulter’s measure,” from the dozen of eggs that
varies, or varied then, between twelve and fourteen. An example will
explain the name:

Suche waiward waies hath love, that most part in discord
Our willes do stand, whereby our hartes but seldom doe accord.
Disceit is his delight, and to begile, and mock
The simple hartes whom he doth strike with froward divers strok.

It is, as the reader will see, the “common time” of the hymn-book; a
combination of two sixes with a fourteener; or, as later writers
preferred to have it printed, a stanza of 6686, only the second and
fourth lines riming. It is easy to write, because there is no doubt
about the accent, and because it saves rimes; and while, in feeble
hands, it can become a monotonous jog-trot, it is lyrical in quality,
and has in Wyatt’s hands a strength, in Surrey’s, an elegance, and in
Southwell’s, a brilliance which should redeem it from total
condemnation. One of Surrey’s most delightful poems, Complaint of the
absence of her lover being upon the sea, is written in this metre, in
the management of which, as in that of all the others he attempts, he
shows himself a born poet, with a good ear and a knowledge of the
necessity of relating line to line and cadence to cadence, so that a
poem may become a symphonic whole.>>
----------------------------------------------------------
http://willyshakes.com/monstrous.htm

<<Oxford’s poetry amounts to no more than modest attainment, and he is
curiously fond of writing in archaic fourteeners and poulter’s
measure. It should be allowed that the surviving poetry is all
probably fairly early, and that he is fond of the sixain stanza in
which Venus and Adonis is written. (This was in fact the first clue
that led Thomas J. Looney to his discovery.)>>
----------------------------------------------------------
From: Pat Buckridge <P.Buckri...@hum.gu.edu.au
Date: Sunday, 6 Nov 1994 23:06:26 +1000
Subject: Authorship
http://www.shaksper.net/archives/1994/0896.html

Dave [Kathman] is caricaturing my position on the revision process in
suggesting a scenario in which Oxford rewrote a 'poulter's measure'
_Merchant of Venice_ in blank verse (pentameters, presumably?) line by
line. Actually, I'm not sure what's supposed to be so implausible
about that: 'fourteeners' strike me as eminently compressible. But it
needn't have been like that anyway. For one thing, the earliest
versions may well have been in pentametric blank verse already -
_Gorboduc_(1565) is, after all. And for another, I imagine the
process usually involved several revisions, not just one, no doubt for
different performances stretching over more than a decade in some
cases.
------------------------------------------------------
From: Nessus
Date: 05/20/08 01:12 AM
Subject: The earls of Oxford in the History Plays,
http://www.shakespearefellowship.org/ubbthreads/ubbthreads.php/topics...

The “dramatic poetry” that Shakespeare mainly uses is a later
development. Most of the plays and poetry of the early Elizabethan
period seem to have been that same mish-mash of styles, many of them
clunky. [The Famous Victories of Henry the Fifth (1594)] is written in
poulter’s measure. Terry Ross says:

“Fourteeners and poulter's measure were extremely popular in English
poetry through the 1570s, but in the later decades of the century they
were supplanted by pentameter.”

C.S. Lewis condemns poulter’s measure as near-unbearable, and I
believe this is a major reason that FV is so disparaged by many. It
has very strong plotting and characters and shows a lot of potential,
but it’s soured by the style, which had apparently quite gone out of
fashion by the time Henry V came out. I tend to think that the
development of “poetry capable of expressing the pressures of
realistic psychological experience” helped a great deal in inventing
the human.

For me, it’s also that H4 and H5 look exactly like someone took FV,
cut it into individual scenes, inserted lots of new scenes in between,
lengthening it into two plays, translated it into pentameter, smoothed
out the plotting and took a more mature look at the characters. Henry
is a much wiser and more mature character in H4 and H5 than in FV,
where his motives are less enlightened, more selfish; as if the
character himself had grown up a bit over a period of time. Falstaff
is also a wittier and more deeply realized comic character in H4, but
there is more of a tragic undertone to him, more of an emphasis on his
advancing age.
------------------------------------
HOW ROMEUS BECAME ROMEO
A comparison of Arthur Brooke's "Romeus and Juliet"
and Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet
by Ryan McKittrick
http://www.amrep.org/articles/4_3a/romeus.html

<<When Shakespeare sat down to write Romeo and Juliet around 1596, he
wasn't starting from scratch. While he was working, Shakespeare was
looking at a copy of a wordy 3,020-line narrative poem by Arthur
Brooke titled "The Tragical History of Romeus and Juliet." First
published in 1562, "Romeus and Juliet" was well-known in England by
the 1590s, and there's no doubt that the playwright kept a copy by his
side when he dramatized the story of Verona's ill-fated lovers.
Shakespeare saw in Brooke's rambling poem the potential for a play
teeming with passion and conflict; but turning Brooke's poetry into
compelling drama required extraordinary transformation and invention.
"Pedestrian," "prolix," "leaden," "inert," and "wearisome" are just a
few of the words literary critics have used to describe Brooke's work.
J.J. Munro, in his introduction to a 1908 edition of "Romeus and
Juliet," offered this comparison of the source material and the play:
"Brooke's story meanders on like a listless stream in a strange and
impossible land; Shakspere's [sic] sweeps on like a broad and rushing
river, singing and foaming, flashing in sunlight and darkening in
cloud, carrying all things irresistibly to where it plunges over the
precipice into a waste of waters below."

Brooke's version of the Romeo and Juliet story is taken from a French
poem by Pierre Boaistuau (1559) that was based on an Italian story by
Matteo Bandello (1554), which was itself inspired by Luigi da Porto's
Giulietta e Romeo (circa 1530). Although Shakespeare also consulted
William Painter's 1562 English translation of Boaistuau's poem titled
"Rhomeo and Julietta" (and possibly some of the earlier Italian
texts), Brooke's "Romeus and Juliet" was his direct and primary
source.

A reading of Brooke's poem reveals Shakespeare's inventiveness and
skill as a dramatist. Apart from a complete overhaul of the language
and verse (Brooke wrote in hypnotic, longwinded poulter's measure
while Shakespeare scripted his play in flexible blank verse),
Shakespeare made significant changes to the story's timeline and
structure in order to enhance the dramatic momentum, give the lovers'
plight a sense of urgency, and add suspense. Shakespeare's play
gallops apace; Brooke's poem trots along at a slow and steady tempo.

From the moment Shakespeare's Chorus appears before the audience and
introduces the "two hours' traffic of our stage," the play's internal
clock starts ticking. Shakespeare compresses what takes at least nine
months to unfold in Brooke's poem into four days (Sunday through
Thursday morning), giving the central relationship a new intensity and
putting added pressure on the entire sequence of events. In Brooke's
poem, Romeo meets Juliet at Capulet's feast and then passes by
Juliet's window "a weeke or two in vayne" before speaking to her at
length. Shakespeare has his impulsive lovers meet, woo, and resolve to
marry all in the same night. Less than a day after they first lay eyes
on each other, Romeo and Juliet rush to Friar Lawrence's cell, where
they are married in secret.

Brooke gives Romeus and Juliet time to enjoy their marital bliss. In
Shakespeare's play, however, the lovers' time together starts running
out almost as soon as it begins. Romeus and Juliet consummate their
marriage months before Romeus kills Juliet's cousin, Tybalt, and is
banished by the Prince. Romeo and Juliet get married just hours before
Tybalt's death; and the passion of their first and only night together
is intensified by the prelude of murder.

The same morning Romeo flees to Mantua, Juliet's father insists on an
arranged marriage between his daughter and her aristocratic suitor,
Paris, and later violently threatens to disown her if she doesn't
marry by Thursday. In both the play and poem, Juliet receives a drug
from Friar Lawrence that will create the illusion of death, and
returns home to offer her still-livid father a false repentance. Only
in the play, however, does Juliet's acquiescing to marry Paris inspire
Capulet to reschedule the wedding. Shakespeare has Capulet move the
nuptials up from Thursday to Wednesday, and then invents a scene in
which the father-of-the-bride is seen ordering the servants around in
the middle of the night, frantically preparing his house for the hasty
wedding. By this point, the play is in the whitewater rapids of what
J.J. Munro called Shakespeare's "broad and rushing river."

To emphasize the pressures of time, Shakespeare gives precise
information about when scenes occur throughout the play. As G.
Blakemore Evans has noted, Romeo and Juliet is "unusually full,
perhaps more so than any other Shakespearean play, of words like time,
day, night, today, tomorrow, years, hours, minutes and specific days
of the week, giving us a sense of events moving steadily and
inexorably in a tight temporal framework."

Shakespeare also completely rewrote and restructured the beginning of
the story in order to foreground the conflict between the two
households and reveal the whole social spectrum of Verona. Unlike
"Romeus and Juliet," the play opens with a brawl. Servants quarrel in
proletarian prose, upper-class members of both the Capulet and
Montague families join in the fray speaking in blank verse, and
finally Prince Escales enters to break up the row, speaking his first
speech in rhyming verse.4 Shakespeare repeats the pattern of this
first scene (an outbreak of violence followed by the entrance of
aristocratic authority) two more times: in the middle of the play,
when Tybalt and Mercutio are murdered; and in the last scene, when
Romeo kills Paris and the young lovers kill themselves.

Shakespeare's revised beginning also introduces characters who play
major roles later in the drama. Tybalt doesn't appear in Brooke's poem
until his fight with Romeo. Shakespeare, however, introduces Tybalt as
a feisty agitator in the first scene, and then further develops the
character by including him at Capulet's feast, where he nearly
explodes after spotting Romeo. By the time he enters in the third act
of the play hunting down Romeo, Tybalt is already a known
troublemaker, and his presence in the scene immediately creates
tension. Shakespeare also came up with the idea of having Tybalt kill
Mercutio and using that murder to motivate Romeo's attack on Tybalt.

In addition to opening the play with a fight, Shakespeare invented the
second scene, in which Capulet invites to his feast Paris, Juliet's
suitor whom Brooke doesn't introduce until after Tybalt's death; the
third scene with the Nurse, whom we don't meet until the feast in the
poem; and the fourth scene, in which Romeo, Mercutio, and Benvolio are
preparing to go to the Capulets' in disguise. By the end of the first
act, the audience has met almost all the major players and Shakespeare
has introduced all the future lines of conflict in the play.

Shakespeare fleshes out most of the figures in Brooke's poem, but two
characters in particular emerge in the play. In "Romeus and Juliet,"
Mercutio only appears momentarily as one of the guests at Capulet's
feast. He stands out in the poem only because he sits next to Juliet
and because he has frigid hands. (It may be this brief appearance,
however, that inspired Shakespeare to change Romeus to back to Romeo.
Brooke uses Romeo to rhyme with Mercutio in one couplet when he's
describing the feast.)

The leap from Brooke's shred of a character to Shakespeare's Mercutio
is monumental. Mercutio's Queen Mab speech, his teasing of Romeo after
Capulet's feast, his lewd interaction with the Nurse, and his death
under Romeo's arm are all Shakespeare's inventions. Mercutio serves as
a foil to Romeo; and his bawdiness, his tireless punning, and his
insatiable wit ignite conflict throughout the first half of the play.
John Dryden reported that Shakespeare once said he had to kill off
Mercutio before Mercutio killed him. Dryden would have liked to see
Mercutio live, but Tybalt's slaying of Mercutio is pivotal in the
structure of the play. Mercutio's death pushes Romeo to murder Tybalt,
catapulting the action forward and generating momentum and a sense of
urgency for the rest of the drama.

Paris also stands out as a more fully developed character in the play.
Introduced by Shakespeare early in the first act and then seen as a
silent guest at Capulet's feast, Paris reenters in the play where he
first appears in Brooke - after Tybalt's death, when Capulet decides
it's time for his daughter to marry. Juliet's icy interaction with
Paris at Lawrence's cell, where she's gone to beg the Friar to help
her escape a second marriage, is Shakespeare's creation. So, too, is
Paris' reappearance at the end of the play and his death at Romeo's
hands in the tomb. His murder, combined with the killings of Mercutio
and Tybalt, the suicides of Romeo and Juliet, and the offstage death
of Lady Montague (also Shakespeare's invention), adds one more body to
the play's carnage and expands the scope of the devastation and
violence caused by the feuding.

Arthur Brooke didn't live to see the play his poem inspired. He
drowned at sea one year after publishing "Romeus and Juliet." Because
little is known about him, it's difficult to pin down Brooke's
attitude towards Romeus and Juliet. In his preface to the poem, Brooke
condemns his "unfortunate lovers" for "thrilling themselves to
unhonest desire, neglecting the authority and advice of parents and
friends; conferring their principal counsels with drunken gossips and
suspersittious friars (the naturally fit instruments of unchastity);
attempting all adventures of peril for th' attaining of their wished
lust; using auricular confession, the key of whoredom and treason, for
furtherance of their purpose; [and] abusing the honourable name of
lawful marriage to cloak the shame of stolen contracts." But the poem
itself is more sympathetic towards Romeus, Juliet and even Catholic
Friar Lawrence, and the preface may have been Brooke's attempt to ward
off the moral condemnation of Protestant zealots. Perhaps Shakespeare
saw through those introductory remarks. For what he found in Brooke's
more than three thousand lines of rhyming couplets drove him to write
a swift, explosive drama that immortalized the lovers' desire. In
comparison to the play, Brooke's poem may seem dull and sluggish, but
we are indebted to him for inspiring one of the most passionate plays
about old hate and young love.>>
---------------------------------------------
Art Neuendorffer
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourteener_(poetry)

Poulter's measure is a meter consisting of alternate Alexandrines and
Fourteeners, i.e. 12 and 14 syllable lines. It was often used in the
Elizabethan era. The term was coined by George Gascoigne, because
poulters, or poulterers (sellers of poultry), would sometimes give 12
to the dozen, and other times 14 (see also Baker's dozen). C. S.
Lewis, in his English Literature in the Sixteenth Century, castigates
the 'lumbering' poulter's measure. He attributes the introduction of
this 'terrible' meter to Thomas Wyatt. In a more extended analysis, he
comments:

"The medial break in the alexandrine, though it may do well enough in
French, becomes intolerable in a language with such a tyrannous
stress-
accent as ours: the line struts. The fourteener has a much pleasanter
movement, but a totally different one: the line dances a jig."
-----------------------------------------------------
The Cambridge History of English and American Literature in 18 Volumes
(1907–21).
Volume III. Renascence and Reformation.

VIII. The New English Poetry. § 7. “Poulter’s measure”.

It is, as the reader will see, the “common time” of the hymn-book; a
combination of two sixes with a fourteener; or, as later writers
preferred to have it printed, a stanza of 6686, only the second and
fourth lines riming. It is easy to write, because there is no doubt
about the accent, and because it saves rimes; and while, in feeble
hands, it can become a monotonous jog-trot, it is lyrical in quality,
and has in Wyatt’s hands a strength, in Surrey’s, an elegance, and in
Southwell’s, a brilliance which should redeem it from total
condemnation. One of Surrey’s most delightful poems, Complaint of the
absence of her lover being upon the sea, is written in this metre, in
the management of which, as in that of all the others he attempts, he
shows himself a born poet, with a good ear and a knowledge of the
necessity of relating line to line and cadence to cadence, so that a
poem may become a symphonic whole.>>
------------------------------------
http://www.amrep.org/articles/4_3a/romeus.html
HOW ROMEUS BECAME ROMEO
A comparison of Arthur Brooke's "Romeus and Juliet"
and Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet

by Ryan McKittrick

Above: title page of the first edition of Brooke's "Romeus and Juliet.
Below: Spranger Barry as Romeo and Isabella Nossiter as Juliet from a
1753 engraving; Henry Woodward as Mercutio in the Queen Mab scene.
When Shakespeare sat down to write Romeo and Juliet around 1596, he
wasn't starting from scratch. While he was working, Shakespeare was
looking at a copy of a wordy 3,020-line narrative poem by Arthur
Brooke titled "The Tragical History of Romeus and Juliet." First
published in 1562, "Romeus and Juliet" was well-known in England by
the 1590s, and there's no doubt that the playwright kept a copy by his
side when he dramatized the story of Verona's ill-fated lovers.
Shakespeare saw in Brooke's rambling poem the potential for a play
teeming with passion and conflict; but turning Brooke's poetry into
compelling drama required extraordinary transformation and invention.
"Pedestrian," "prolix," "leaden," "inert," and "wearisome" are just a
few of the words literary critics have used to describe Brooke's work.
J.J. Munro, in his introduction to a 1908 edition of "Romeus and
Juliet," offered this comparison of the source material and the play:
"Brooke's story meanders on like a listless stream in a strange and
impossible land; Shakspere's [sic] sweeps on like a broad and rushing
river, singing and foaming, flashing in sunlight and darkening in
cloud, carrying all things irresistibly to where it plunges over the
precipice into a waste of waters below." (1)

A reading of Brooke's poem reveals Shakespeare's inventiveness and
skill as a dramatist. Apart from a complete overhaul of the language
and verse (Brooke wrote in hypnotic, longwinded poulter's measure (2)
while Shakespeare scripted his play in flexible blank verse),
Shakespeare made significant changes to the story's timeline and
structure in order to enhance the dramatic momentum, give the lovers'
plight a sense of urgency, and add suspense. Shakespeare's play
gallops apace; Brooke's poem trots along at a slow and steady tempo.

The leap from Brooke's shred of a character to Shakespeare's Mercutio
is monumental. Mercutio's Queen Mab speech, his teasing of Romeo after
Capulet's feast, his lewd interaction with the Nurse, and his death
under Romeo's arm are all Shakespeare's inventions. Mercutio serves as
a foil to Romeo; and his bawdiness, his tireless punning, and his
insatiable wit ignite conflict throughout the first half of the play.
John Dryden reported that Shakespeare once said he had to kill off
Mercutio before Mercutio killed him. Dryden would have liked to see
Mercutio live, but Tybalt's slaying of Mercutio is pivotal in the
structure of the play. Mercutio's death pushes Romeo to murder
Tybalt, catapulting the action forward and generating momentum
and a sense of urgency for the rest of the drama.

Paris also stands out as a more fully developed character in the play.
Introduced by Shakespeare early in the first act and then seen as a
silent guest at Capulet's feast, Paris reenters in the play where he
first appears in Brooke - after Tybalt's death, when Capulet decides
it's time for his daughter to marry. Juliet's icy interaction with
Paris at Lawrence's cell, where she's gone to beg the Friar to help
her escape a second marriage, is Shakespeare's creation. So, too, is
Paris' reappearance at the end of the play and his death at Romeo's
hands in the tomb. His murder, combined with the killings of Mercutio
and Tybalt, the suicides of Romeo and Juliet, and the offstage death
of Lady Montague (also Shakespeare's invention), adds one more body
to the play's carnage and expands the scope of the devastation
and violence caused by the feuding.

Arthur Brooke didn't live to see the play his poem inspired. He
drowned at sea one year after publishing "Romeus and Juliet." Because
little is known about him, it's difficult to pin down Brooke's
attitude towards Romeus and Juliet. In his preface to the poem, Brooke
condemns his "unfortunate lovers" for "thrilling themselves to
unhonest desire, neglecting the authority and advice of parents and
friends; conferring their principal counsels with drunken gossips and
suspersittious friars (the naturally fit instruments of unchastity);
attempting all adventures of peril for th' attaining of their wished
lust; using auricular confession, the key of whoredom and treason, for
furtherance of their purpose; [and] abusing the honourable name of
lawful marriage to cloak the shame of stolen contracts." But the poem
itself is more sympathetic towards Romeus, Juliet and even Catholic
Friar Lawrence, and the preface may have been Brooke's attempt to ward
off the moral condemnation of Protestant zealots. Perhaps Shakespeare
saw through those introductory remarks. For what he found in Brooke's
more than three thousand lines of rhyming couplets drove him to
write a swift, explosive drama that immortalized the lovers' desire.
In comparison to the play, Brooke's poem may seem dull
and sluggish, but we are indebted to him for inspiring one of
the most passionate plays about old hate and young love.>>
---------------------------------------------
Art Neuendorffer

0 new messages