Merchant of Venice. - Repositories

NOTES 193
plete by one speaker is frequently completed by another.
following, for example, is orJy one verse: —
The
" Would make | me sad, |
My wind | cooling | my broth," |
— L, L, 22.
Variations in the Kind of Feet.—Variations also occur in
the kind of feet; they are not all iambi. In the last quotation
the fourth foot is a trochee (two syllables, of which the first is
accented). Some commentators, however, choose to divide the
last part of this verse thus : —
>^ ^ ^
" My wind, [ (pause) cool | ing my broth."
Such a division substitutes, for the iambus in the last foot, an
anapest (three syllables, of which the last is accented). In
some cases the accent seems to waver between two successive
syllables ^7ithout settling strongly on either; occasionally, also,
two successive syllables are both strongly accented. Finally, it
must be remembered that the pronunciation of some words in
Shakespeare's time differed from the usage of to-day. The
question of pronunciation was not so well settled then as
now, and some words were pronounced in more than one
way. Thus, ocean is treated sometimes as of three syllables,
the Latin being o-ck-a-nus.
Occasionally a stanza is introduced containing a metre entirely
different from the iambic pentameter. In the lyrics of
The Merchant of Venice most of the lines are trochaic tetrameter
(four trochees in a Une) with the occasional substitution