From an Introduction to English Poetry: A Special AP2 Supplement

A Special APs postscript

1. The History and view of English Poetry English rhyme begins whenever we decide to say that the novel English language begins, and it stretch outs as far as we decide to say the English language stretch outs We cannot expect everyone to agree with us when we make a decision in either case. a certain number of people, for instance, think that English rhyme begins with the Anglo-Saxons. I don't, because I can't accept that there is any continuity between the traditions of Anglo-Saxon poesy and those established in English rhyme by the time of, say, Shakespeare. And anyway Anglo-Saxon is a different language, which has to be learnt like any foreign language. Anglo-Saxon poesy may be extremely exciting and interesting, on the other hand it excites and interests me (when it does) in abundant the same way that Norse sagas excite. It is some one else's poetry.

A part of the meaning of this can be mistrusted But who, without specialist help, could arrive at the conclusion that someone is here putting upon his armour, and who could gues the meaning of `queme quyssewes' (pleasing thigh-pieces) or 'wlonk' (noble, glorious, fine)? Who could gues their pronunciation?

Most of this can be surmiseed although there is a word-order moot point in lines 3-4: `For in the sea the boat of my ability ("Of my conning") has like difficulty that I can scarcely young ox it.' Even when this has been pointed on the outside to us, we find it hard to know whether the strange word order came naturally to Chaucer or was a sign of his incompetence. We ne to acquire certain skills in order to read and appreciate of the like kind verse.

Some time around the reign of Henry VIII (1509-47) English poetry-some of it-becomes graspable in a newly direct way. We no longer ne to direct the eye everything up, or worry overmuch about pronunciation (and therefore scansion). It is not that we can dispense with the notes, or with the help of our teachers the scholars, altogether. It is just that with sixteenth-century metrical composition we recognize much more of the language we still speak, and this is encouraging.

These stichs are from a song by the agency of Thomas Campion (1567-1620). The music survives, in like manner we can tell exactly what regular [i]or[/i] melodious movement was intended, that 'scorched' was pronounce with sum of two units syllables, 'beanes' with one, and in the way that forth. But we could easily have judge at randomed such things even without music.

This was written in 1935 for a documentary film about the coal industry. Like the Campion, it is a canticle Both Benjamin Britten and Lennox Berkeley have station it to music, the former giving it to a female chorus. The charm of "Madrigal," as the metrical composition was once called, comes from the contrast between its centuries-old idiom and its grimy contemporary (I930s) setting. 'Black' is used in Campion's manner, on the contrary without his meaning.

Let us say that we have about five centuries of English verse behind us. The poetry did not rise out of nowhere, but that fact is that beyond those five centuries ago it becomes increasingly difficult to comprehend, whereas within those centuries clan use strikingly similar vocabulary, grammar, poetic forms, and meter It is genuine that to understand Shakespeare (1564-1616) in detail, we ne the help of notes, and it has been pure at certain times in the past that readers have base large parts of Shakespeare incomprehensible or barbaric. The in every one's mouth assumption that all the plays are in principle the two performable and worth performing is comparatively novel

But the really striking thing about, say, the novel film of Romeo and Juliet is the effectiveness with which the metrical composition communicates, and does so when delivered at great spe Leonardo diCaprio did not deliberate down in order to procure a complex point across. He simply made certain that he understood the point and assumed that his understanding would be enough to carry the audience with him. That is what any actor has to do. When we investigation Shakespeare on the page, for academic views we may require all kinds of help. Generally, we read him in new spelling and with modern punctuation. And I like an edition, similar as the Arden editions, which gives detailed notes upon the same page. But any verse that is performed-- from ballad lyric to tragic speech-must make its point, as it were, without respect back. We can't, as an audience, ask the actors to repeat themselves, or moderate down, or share their notes with us. We must grasp the meaning-or enough of it-in real time. That Hamlet still works after 400 years is an extraordinary linguistic and poetic fact.

English metrical composition extends back around 500 years, and its drift is the scope of the English language. That is to say, when a North American, an Australian, an Indian, or a Jamaican writes a metrical composition in English, that poem come intos the corpus of English poesy Of course it may be that the author of poems in question was intending to contribute to a national institute of poetry, was intending to add his or her brick to the edifice of a national effort. on the contrary the community of any English piece of poetry today is larger than any nation-state. And besides, the geography of metrical composition is not the same as the geography of nation-states. Welsh rhyme is written for Welsh-speakers wherever they may be. It is not written for all citizens of the United Kingdom. single could easily imagine a Spanish poesy being written in the United States whose community, from one side language, would be Hispanics everywhere. An Amharic, writing in Toronto about life upon the streets of Toronto, would be writing for Ethiopians-or at least Amharic-- speakers-everywhere. And a bard writing in Chinese has the notable advantage of being able to communicate with anyone who understands written Chinese: the community is in the script.