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PAGE 472 to fowls and lesser birds. I should not note this were it not that all these reminiscences (if they are such) recall one and the same scene. In Sophonisba also there is a tremendous description of the witch Erictho (IV. i.), who says to the person consulting her, 'I know thy thoughts,' as the Witch says to Macbeth, of the Armed Head, 'He knows thy thought.' (5) The resemblances between Othello and King Lear pointed out on pp. 244-5, and in Note R form, when taken 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 could place them in the chronological order Hamlet, Macbeth, Othello, King Lear (König), or Macbeth, Hamlet, Othello, King Lear (Hertzberg), are of scarcely any account.1 Nearly all scholars, I think, would accept these statements.
1I have not tried to discover the source of the difference between these two reckonings.
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