Читать книгу A Book of Middle English - J. A. Burrow - Страница 89

Throughout the period the standard form of rhymed verse was the couplet of eight or nine syllables, with four beats or stresses. This is seen at its most controlled in Gower’s Confessio Amantis, in which the author’s metrical precision has been faithfully transmitted by a scribe no less attentive to the syllabic regularity of the metre. Almost invariably Gower has an iambic line of eight syllables:

Som góodly wórd þat þée was tóld (13/24)

or nine syllables if the last is unstressed:

Wiþ ál his hérte and móst it háteþ (13/56)

The reader may begin with the expectation that word‐endings containing a vowel, such as ‐e, ‐ed, ‐es, are to be pronounced as a syllable. So in the first line:

The více cléped Ávantánce (13/1)

both vice and cleped have two syllables, and Avantance has four. Similarly, dukes, helpe and soghte are all disyllabic in:

Wher þei þe dukes helpe soghte (13/241)

The chief exception to this is that a final vowel is elided before another vowel, and before h‐ when it is silent or in an unstressed syllable. So while the ‐e of make is sounded in make myn avant (13/37), it is lost in make avanterie (13/40), and by the same principle the word ‘token’ has one syllable in tokne or lettre (13/25). Because the h‐ of hond is aspirated, the final ‐e of the adjective ‘own’ is sounded in his oghne hond (13/81). The ‐e of scholde is sounded before have in 13/144 because have is stressed, but that same ‐e is elided in 13/41, scholde have do, where have is unstressed. Despite its spelling, hire is generally a monosyllable, whatever sound follows, as the examples of it in 13/86–8 demonstrate. Words such as evere and nevere are disyllabic, nev’re, with the second ‐e‐ elided (e.g. 13/32), so that with the final ‐e lost before a vowel they become monosyllabic, as in For évere I schál (13/220).

These rules sound complicated when listed in this way, but – such is the meticulousness of both poet and scribe – reading Gower aloud with attention to the metre will at once bring out the regularity of the rhythm. Variations upon the iambic pattern are occasional and therefore often very striking, as in Drínk wiþ þi fáder, dáme (13/153), where the inversion of the first foot gives dramatic emphasis at this crucial point in the tale (see the note there). Inversion within the line is rarer still, but it can, for example, convey the speech‐rhythm of a colloquial phrase in téll and sei hów (13/20).

The same four‐stress verse‐form is used some two centuries earlier for The Owl and the Nightingale. Perhaps because of the stronger influence of the native line upon the early poet, there is much greater freedom in rhythmic patterns than Gower permits, but even so, greater freedom does not generally mean less control. A straightforwardly regular line is:

þarmíd þu cláckes óft and lónge (2/81)

Final ‐e needs to be sounded in:

And áfter þáre lónge tále (2/140)

but within the line ‐e is elided in:

Ich hábbe on bréde and ék on léngþe (2/174)

There is striking inversion of the first foot in:

Wái þat he nís þaróf biréved (2/120)

and shifting of stress within the line brings to prominence the alliteration and rhyme of a colloquial phrase:

Wel fíʒt þat wel flíʒt séiþ þe wíse (2/176)

In

þu cháterest so dóþ on Írish próst (2/322)

the chatter of the extra syllable of chat’rest so might be regarded as artful, but it is as well to remember that this poet’s scribes were not especially faithful to his intentions, and that metrical variation may sometimes be a sign of scribal carelessness.

The text of Sir Orfeo (from about 1330) presents a rougher form of the four‐stress couplet. It is evident that at least some of the metrical irregularities were contributed by a scribe or a series of scribes, yet it is unlikely that the poet himself wrote a formal iambic line. Whatever the practices of individual poets, strict regularity of syllables was not fundamental to English verse as it was to French, and modulations of the standard pattern are often effectively used. In Sir Orfeo it may be that the marked irregularity of the passage describing the horror of the undead in the Fairy World (5/391–400) is designed as a jolt to the reader; on the other hand the restoration of earlier inflected forms (not attempted in this book) would often give a smoother line:

And súm[e] láy[en] wóde ybóunde (5/394)

So, too, the irregularity of

And whén ʒe understónd þat ý be spént (5/215)

would be improved by the substitution of the synonymous verb wite, which is actually used in the parallel line in another manuscript.

Chaucer employed short couplets in some early works, but later preferred a longer line of ten or eleven syllables, either in rhyming couplets (e.g. the Reeve’s Tale, text 18a) or in stanzaic form. The Parliament of Fowls (text 16), the Prioress’s Tale (text 18b) and Troilus (text 17) are composed in ‘rhyme‐royal’ stanzas of seven lines rhyming ababbcc. Like Gower, Chaucer was concerned with achieving the correct number of syllables in his longer line, and observed the same rules of elision; but, in the Parliament especially, the manuscripts are less faithful to his original intentions.

Rhymes in these poems are generally true, though later sound changes may have obscured this. ‘Boards’ and ‘words’ would now be half‐rhymes, but in Gower bordes and wordes (13/131–2) are true rhymes, as are dale and smale in Sir Orfeo (5/537–8). Identical rhymes are quite common, but only when they involve different parts of speech, as clawe, noun and verb, in 2/153–4, or a simple word with a compound, as soghte and besoghte in 13/241–2. For remarks on rhyme and word‐stress see 2.4 above.

Writers of lyrics chose a wide range of stanza‐forms, from the very simple patterns of the Rawlinson Lyrics (14a–f ), which are perhaps for singing, to the more complex schemes of the Harley Lyrics (14g–k). A burden or refrain accompanies one of the simplest (14b), as well as one of the most elaborate (14g). The models for lyric stanzas will again often have been French or Anglo‐Norman, though Latin hymns were also a strong and direct influence upon writers such as John of Grimestone (14l–r).

Rhymed verse frequently uses alliteration as an ornament of style; sometimes that alliteration is very heavy, as in the York Play (text 15), which is written in twelve‐line stanzas of regularly iambic lines. Pearl is also written in twelve‐line stanzas with heavy alliteration, rhyming on just three sounds: a b a b a b a b b c b c. For further details see the Headnote to text 10.