Blank verse took from Latin its
rhymelessness, but it retained accent instead of quantity as the basis
of its line. The line Surrey used is the five-foot or ten-syllable line
of what is called "heroic verse"--the line used by Chaucer in his
Prologue and most of his tales. Like Milton he deplored rhyme as the
invention of a barbarous age, and no doubt he would have rejoiced to go
further and banish accent as well as rhymed endings. That, however, was
not to be, though in the best blank verse of later time accent and
quantity both have their share in the effect. The instrument he forged
passed into the hands of the dramatists: Marlowe perfected its rhythm,
Shakespeare broke its monotony and varied its cadences by altering the
spacing of the accents, and occasionally by adding an extra unaccented
syllable. It came back from the drama to poetry with Milton. His
blindness and the necessity under which it laid him of keeping in his
head long stretches of verse at one time, because he could not look back
to see what he had written, probably helped his naturally quick and
delicate sense of cadence to vary the pauses, so that a variety of
accent and interval might replace the valuable aid to memory which he
put aside in putting aside rhyme.
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