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In classifying the feet of English verse and their variations we may remove some of the difficulties, and some of the divergencies in the conclusions, by a scientific defining of the terms stressed and unstressed syllables. For simplicity we may confine the discussion at present to iambic feet.
1 E. W. Scripture, Elements of Experimental Phonetics, 1902, p. 449.
2 For example, the word and, normally light, can assume a major stress:
To-morrow and to-morrow and to-morrow.
Even a, usually pronounced like the schwa-vowel, can bear a stress in poetry, though the justifiable cases are rare. Certainly Wordsworth's stressed o's are far too numerous for good art, and do not always make good sense.
3 This principle is the pons asinorum of many would-be poets. It is surprising to note how often immature verse, which scans correctly according to printed theory and yet refuses to sing, is faulty, because of its violation of this and kindred laws.
4 For some interesting but slightly indefinite statistics concerning weak stresses in Macbeth see David Laurence Chambers, The Meter of Macbeth, Princeton Univ. Press, 1903, p. 25 et seq.
5 Note Ellis's reading of the lines, cited more recently by Mayor, Chapters on English Meter, p. 55.
6 It is likely, but difficult to prove, that most English pyrrhics drawl the accent, rather than intensify the utterance, thereby producing a sort of musical stress, without mutilating the natural sound of the language.
7 Op. cit., p. 554.
8 Ibid., pp. 553 4.
9 The question whether verse should be read with a pause at the line-end comes in here. It may be arguing in a circle to say that lines end in pauses, since the first part of a following line may be inverted, and to say a foot may be inverted because it follows a line-end pause. But the supposition that a line ends in a pause explains inverted foot and the existence of the line itself, both of which are inexplicable if there be no line-end pause.
10 See comment of Chambers (op. cit., p. 37 et seq.) on Conrad's conclusion concerning trochees in Macbeth, at the beginning of a line, after a mid-line pause, and where there is supposedly no pause. Conrad's article is in Jahrbuch XXXI.
11 Chambers (op. cit., p. 47), referring to mid-line feminine endings in Macbeth, speaks of “the analogy between the terminal pause and the internal pause of the line, especially when Shakespeare was composing, not by the single verse, but in rhythmical paragraphs.” He uses this fact, however, to prove these syllables not a part of any following feet.
12 Chambers, op. cit., p. 39.
13 II, 111, 79.
14 Chambers, loc. cit.