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Chaucer introduced into English poetry the iambic verse of five feet, formed by the Provençals in imitation of the Classic Phaleucian and Sapphic hendecasyllables, and adopted from them by the Italian poets. These last, however, though they held the principle of admitting but five ictus in a line, did not limit themselves to eleven syllables, as the following examples will show:—

Che passa i monti, e rompe i muri e l'armi.

Dante, Inf. xvii. 2.

L'oro, e le perle, e i fior vermigli, e i bianchi.

Petr. Son. xxxi.

Non danno i colpi, or finti, or pieni, or scarsi.

Tasso, Ger. Lib. xii. 55.

So the Greeks in their dramatic iambics admitted trisyllabic feet, Æschylus admitting one foot, Sophocles two, Euripides three; while the comic poets, both Greek and Latin, used these feet still more freely, not, however, exceeding the limit of three.

Chaucer did not allow himself the same licence as his masters. He sometimes admits one such foot, rarely two, and three, I believe, only once. He also uses at times the Alexandrine or verse of six feet.

The first who used this verse for the drama in England was Bishop Bale, who in 1538 published three Interludes, as he termed them, or dramatic pieces on Scriptural subjects. Here are a few lines from the one named God's Promises:—

In the begynnynge, before the heavens were create,

In me and of me was my sonne sempyternall,

With the Holy Ghost, in one degre or estate

Of the hygh godhed, to make the Father coequall,

And thys my Sonne was with me one God essencyall,

Without separacyon at any tyme from me,

True God he is of equall dignytè.

The feet, it will be seen, are here of two or three syllables indifferently; and the same is the case in the couplets which occur also in these plays.

About the same time Nicholas Udall wrote his comedy of Ralph Roister Doister—not printed till 1566—in which we have the earliest specimen of the verse afterwards chiefly used for comedy, namely, one of four feet, the foot of two, three, and even four syllables. It commences thus:—

As long lyveth the mery man (they say)

As doth the sory man, and longer by a day,

Yet the Grassehopper for all his Sommer pipyng

Sterveth in Winter wyth hungrie gripyng.

This measure may be seen in Damon and Pitheas, New Custom, Gammer Gurton's Needle, and other plays, in which we shall find it admitting lines of five and even six and seven feet—ex. gr.,

That state is most miserable. Thrise happy are we

Whom true love hath joined in perfect amity.

Which amity first sprung, without vaunting be it spoken that is true,

Of likeliness of manners, took root by company, and now is conserved by virtue.—Damon and Pitheas.

Contemporary with Bale and Udall, the illustrious Earl of Surrey had introduced into English a new species of verse—blank verse. This was a five-foot iambic measure without rime, and admitting of verses of six feet. His version of two books of the Æneis in this measure was printed in 1557; and five years later, Jan. 18, 1561–2, a play written in it and named Gordebuc, by Norton and Sackville, was performed before Queen Elizabeth at Whitehall, and it was given to the press in 1566. But more than twenty years elapsed before blank verse made its first appearance on the public stage in the Tamburlain of Marlow. From its inherent superiority, it at once became the established form for the drama, still mingled, however, with riming couplets and stanzas.