in conjunction with other
indications, an argument of some strength in favour of the idea that
_King Lear_ followed directly on _Othello_.

(6) There remains the evidence of style and especially of metre. I will
not add to what has been said in the text concerning the former; but I
wish to refer more fully to the latter, in so far as it can be
represented by the application of metrical tests. It is impossible to
argue here the whole question of these tests. I will only say that,
while I am aware, and quite admit the force, of what can be said against
the independent, rash, or incompetent use of them, I am fully convinced
of their value when they are properly used.

Of these tests, that of rhyme and that of feminine endings, discreetly
employed, are of use in broadly distinguishing Shakespeare's plays into
two groups, earlier and later, and also in marking out the very latest
dramas; and the feminine-ending test is of service in distinguishing
Shakespeare's part in _Henry VIII._ and the _Two Noble Kinsmen_. But
neither of these tests has any power to separate plays composed within a
few years of one another. There is significance in the fact that the
_Winter's Tale_, the _Tempest_, _Henry VIII._, contain hardly any rhymed
five-foot lines; but none, probably, in the fact that _Macbeth_ shows a
higher percentage of such lines than _King Lear_, _Othello_, or
_Hamlet_. The percentages of feminine endings, again, in the four
tragedies, are almost conclusive against their being early plays, and
would tend to show that they were not among the latest; but the
differences in their respective percentages, which would place them in
the chronological order _Hamlet_, _Macbeth_, _Othello_, _King Lear_
(Koenig), or _Macbeth_, _Hamlet_, _Othello_, _King Lear_ (Hertzberg), are
of scarcely any account.[283] Nearly all scholars, I think, would accept
these statements.

The really useful tests, in regard to plays which admittedly are not
widely separated, are three which concern the endings of speeches and
lines. It is practically certain that Shakespeare made his verse
progressively less formal, by making the speeches end more and more
often within a line and not at the close of it; by making the sense
overflow more and more often from one line into another; and, at last,
by sometimes placing at the end of a line a word on which scarcely any
stress can be laid. The corresponding tests may be called the
Speech-ending test, the Overflow