download PDF version: 47.1MB - Global Grey

62 FRANCIS BACON'S CRYPTIC RHYMES
The metre is treated somewhat freely, and yet, or
rather, therefore, it is so pleasing to the ear. In the
same act another passage affords us an instance of
at the commencement and at the
rhymes occurring
end of a line, and rhyming also to and fro from line to
line :
DROMIO E.
Here's too much " out upon thee ! "
me in.
DROMIO S.
I
pray thee let
[Within.] Ay, when fowls have no feathers, and fish
have no fin.
ANT. E.
Well, I'll brake in : go,
borrow' me a crow.
DROMIO E.
A crow without feather, master, mean you so ?
For a fish without a fi ,
there's a fowl without a feather
:
If a crow help us in,
sirrah, we'll pluck a crow together.
Go, get thee gone ;
ANT. E.
fetch me an iron crow.
BALTHASAR.
Have patience, sir ; O, let it not be so !
Not a few passages in the Plays afford ample proof
that the author's ready wit was ever on the alert to
ridicule the poetasters of his day, whose fond desire to
rhyme led them beyond the limit of poetic art. Thus,
in Love's Labour s Lost, during the festive enter
tainment towards the end of the play, the school
master, Holofernes, for lack of a better rhyme to the
does not hesitate to
Latin word " manus " (hand),
change "canis" (dog) to " canus," thus forcing the
rhyme :