metre-mongers

Updated: May 6, 2025

But in King Henry VIII. it should be remarked that though we not unfrequently find the same preponderance as in Fletcher's work of verses with a double ending which in English verse at least are not in themselves feminine, and need not be taken to constitute, as in Fletcher's case they do, a note of comparative effeminacy or relaxation in tragic style we do not find the perpetual predominance of those triple terminations so peculiarly and notably dear to that poet; so that even by the test of the metre-mongers who would reduce the whole question at issue to a point which might at once be solved by the simple process of numeration the argument in favour of Fletcher can hardly be proved tenable; for the metre which evidently has one leading quality in common with his is as evidently wanting in another at least as marked and as necessary to establish if established it can be by any such test taken singly and, apart from all other points of evidence the collaboration of Fletcher with Shakespeare in this instance.

Algernon Charles Swinburne - A Study of Shakespeare