ma. In
his earlier plays the blank verse is often similar to that of
_Gorboduc_, the first English tragedy. The tendency is to adhere to the
syllable-counting principle, to make the line the unit, the sentence and
phrase coinciding with the line (end-stopped verse), and to use five
perfect iambic feet to the line. In plays of the middle period, such as
_The Merchant of Venice_ and _As You Like It_, written between 1596 and
1600, the blank verse is more like that of Kyd and Marlowe, with less
monotonous regularity in the structure and an increasing tendency to
carry on the sense from one line to another without a syntactical or
rhetorical pause at the end of the line (run-on verse, _enjambement_).
Redundant syllables now abound and the melody is richer and fuller. In
Shakespeare's later plays the blank verse breaks away from all bondage
to formal line limits, and the organic continuity is found in a
succession of great metrical periods.

The verse of _Julius Caesar_ is less monotonously regular than that of
the earlier plays; it is more flexible and varied, more musical and
sonorous, but it lacks the superb movement of the verse in _Othello_,
_The Winter's Tale_, and _The Tempest_. End-stopped, normally regular
iambic pentameter lines often occur (as, for instance, I, i, 37, 41, 44,
62, 76), but everywhere are variations and deviations from the norm, and
there is an unusual number of short lines and interjectional lines of
two or three stresses. See Abbott's _A Shakespearian Grammar_, Sect.
511, 512.

RHYME

Apart from the use of rhyme in songs, lyrics, and portions of masques
(as in _The Tempest_, IV, i, 60-138), a progress from more to less rhyme
is a sure index to Shakespeare's development as a dramatist and a master
of expression. In the early _Love's Labour's Lost_ are more than one
thousand rhyming five-stress iambic lines; in _The Tempest_ are only
two; in _The Winter's Tale_ not one. _In Julius Caesar_ are found only
thirty-four rhyming lines.

PROSE

If "of the soule the bodie forme doth take," it is small wonder that
attempts have been made to explain Shakespeare's distinctive use of
verse and prose. Of recent years there have been interesting discussions
of the question "whether we are justified in supposing that Shakespeare
was guided by any fixed principle in his employment of verse and prose,
or whether he merely employed them, as fancy suggested, for the sake of
variety and relief."[1] It is a s