SOURCE: Maveety, Stanley R. “Versification in The Steele Glas.” Studies in Philology 60, no. 2 (April 1963): 166-73.

[In the essay that follows, Maveety examines the structure and meter of The Steele Glas, contending that the structure was heavily influenced by the fourteenth-century poem Piers Plowman.]

In 1576 George Gascoigne wrote a poem of about 1200 lines called The Steele Glas. The “trusty” steel glass or mirror is the poet's device in which he sees an unflattering reflection of his own society. Occupational types from kings on down are seen as a rather shabby lot. Pride, greed, and dishonesty are everywhere, and as Gascoigne looks in the glass he speaks directly to some of the offenders in vigorous and often colloquial language. His remedy for society as a whole can be stated quite simply: if each man would perform his duties humbly and honestly, the world would be better off.

Although the poem has the distinction of being the first original, non-dramatic blank verse in English, it is medieval in tone and subject matter. As Skeat,¹ F. E. Schelling,² and C. T. Prouty³ have all pointed out, the content of The Steele Glas was greatly influenced by The Vision of Piers the Plowman; as a matter of fact, Gascoigne refers to Piers by name five times. C. S. Lewis⁴ has written that, “It is medieval in everything but metre.” But it is my contention that in addition to the similarity of its subject matter The Steele Glas resembles Langland's poem with regard to versification as well.

Though Piers Plowman is a specimen of what is often called alliterative verse, the most distinctive quality of that verse is not alliteration but the structure of the line. In a typical alliterative line there are four heavy accents, the first two separated from the second two by a medial pause. On the other hand, blank verse, as everyone knows, normally has ten syllables to the line—five iambic feet. Mr. Yvor Winters, however, has pointed out what no other critic to my knowledge has seen—that in traditional English meter (such as blank verse) the accent is relative to the foot rather than to the entire line.⁵ Consider Gascoigne's line,

But words of worth, and worthy to be wayed.

Normal iambic pentameter scansion gives us a heavy stress on the word to, and though to is less heavily stressed than be which follows it, normal scansion is correct since to is heavier than the last syllable of worthy which precedes it. This last syllable of worthy and the to which follows it constitute the fourth iambic foot. Be and weighed make up the fifth foot and with the preceding foot make a series of four syllables of increasing stress. The phenomenon is not at all rare in traditional English verse; its presence here makes it possible for this same line, if regarded as an accentual, or alliterative line, to contain only four heavy stresses.

But words of worth, and worthy to be wayed.

In this typical line, as well as indicating the stress relative to the line as a whole, as it must be considered in alliterative verse, I have indicated another way in which Gascoigne's line is like that of Langland's, the medial pause. Gascoigne's consistent use of a heavy caesura after the second foot divides his line also—usually so that there are two heavily stressed syllables in each half line.⁶

Still another similarity is Gascoigne's lack of enjambment. Because his lines as a rule do not run over, Gascoigne's metrical unit is really the line (as in Piers Plowman) rather than the verse paragraph (as in most blank verse). Mr. George K. Smart has shown statistically that Gascoigne differed in this respect from those who had written blank verse before him. According to Smart, twenty-two percent of Surrey's lines in his translation of Books II and IV of the Aeneid run over. Grimald, in his two blank verse translations, used twenty-three percent run-over lines. Turberville, in his Heroides, ran over thirty-three percent of his lines. According to Smart only eleven percent of Gascoigne's lines in The Steele Glas are run over.⁷

But the two poems are alike in more than the structure of the line, the infrequency of enjambment, and the obvious lack of rhyme; they are alike also in their alliteration. Knott and Fowler's preface to the A-text of Piers Plowman includes a list of patterns for individual lines. In the first line of Piers Plowman, for example,

In a somer seson whan soft was the sonne,

the alliterated s, coinciding with all four accented syllables, produces a pattern Knott and Fowler indicate (aa/aa). In the next three lines of Piers Plowman we may see two other metrical patterns:

I shope me in shroudes as I a shepe were (aa/ax)
In habite as an heremite unholy of werkes (aa/ax)
Went wyde in his world wondres to here (aaa/ax).

Knott and Fowler list eight such patterns, in addition to the three above, these five: (aa/xa), (ax/ax), (xa/xa), (aa/bb), (aa/xx).⁸

Comparing these patterns to lines of The Steele Glas one finds surprising conformity; that is to say, many of the lines of The Steele Glas, although very regular as blank verse, conform, at the same time, to one of the patterns of the medieval line. For example, the following lines from The Steele Glas resemble the (aa/aa) pattern of the first line of Piers Plowman:

That malice make no mansion in their minds
That euermore, they mark what moode doth moue
And dig for death in dellicatest dishes

The following lines in The Steele Glas correspond to the (aa/ax) pattern.

To lende a light, and lanterne to our feete
O worthy words, to ende my worthlesse verse
VVhen goldsmithes get, no gains by sodred crownes

The following fit the (aa/xa) pattern:

Nor colour crafte, by swearing precious coles
Which Magike makes, in wicked mysteries
My battred braynes (which now be shrewdly brusde)

The (aaa/ax) pattern of the third line of Piers Plowman is rare in The Steele Glas since Gascoigne's caesura, occurring usually at the end of the second foot, makes it unlikely that the three heavily stressed syllables will occur before the second half of the line. Even so a few lines approach this pattern:

But bumbast bolster, frisle, and perfume
when Dauie Diker diggs, and dallies not
when weauers weight is found in huswiues web

The following conform to the (ax/ax) pattern:

Which loyter not, but labour al the yeare
And pine before, their processe be preferrde
And some again (I see them wel enough

The following fit the (xa/xa) pattern:

VVhen baylifes strain, none other thing but strays
By earing vp the balks, that part their bounds
And both fo dresse their hydes, that we go dry

The following are like the seventh pattern (aa/bb):

Which go not gay, nor fede on daintie foode
Til secret sinnes (vntoucht) infecte their flocks
Which loth all lust, disdayning drunkenesse,

Knott and Fowler's final pattern (aa/xx) can be illustrated with the following:

That Grammer grudge not at our english tong
VVhich sway the sworde, of royal gouernment
VVhen mercers make, more bones to swere and lye

Still we scarcely imagine Gascoigne, or Langland for that matter, sitting down with any such list of patterns before him as a handy guide for the composition of alliterative verse. No doubt both men composed largely by ear and tried to produce an effect rather than match exactly a prescribed pattern. There are many lines in The Steele Glas which do not match any of the patterns cited above, but which nevertheless, make similar use of alliteration. As a matter of fact, Skeat noted lines in Piers Plowman itself,⁹ which do not conform to these patterns.

Statistics in such a case are likely to be subjective, but on the basis of a close, line-by-line reading of The Steele Glas made expressly for this purpose, I conclude that almost fifty percent of the lines of The Steele Glas either fit one of the patterns noted by Knott and Fowler or produce a similar effect. Below is a quotation of several lines on which one can make a more reasonable judgment of the entire matter. (For an honest representation I have chosen a passage that includes such lines as the fifth through the seventh which do not conform to the patterns of alliteration and caesura.) The subject is the unscrupulous merchant who takes advantage of young gallants through usury. Such merchants, Gascoigne asserts, know how,

To make their coyne, a net to catch yong frye.
To binde such babes, in father Derbies bands,
To stay their steps, by statute Staples staffe,
To rule yong roysters, with Recognisance,
To reade Arithmeticke once euery day,
In VVoodstreat, Bredstreat, and in Pultery
(VVhere such schoolmaisters keepe their counting house)
To fede on bones, when flesh and fell is gon,
To keepe their byrds, ful close in caytiues cage,
(Who being brought, to liberty at large,
Might sing perchance, abroad, when sun doth shine
Of their mishaps, and how their feathers fell)
Until the canker may their corps consume.

The passage is typical and represents the characteristics that have been discussed, but we must avoid two possible overstatements. First, many other poets, before Gascoigne and after, made similar use of alliteration, and his use of the caesura after the second foot was by no means uncommon. The difference is in the degree. Smart has written that, “Nowhere in English is there such a consistent use of such a definite pattern of blank verse.”¹⁰

Second, we must not imagine that The Steele Glas and Piers Plowman, read aloud, will sound precisely alike. Though individual lines of The Steele Glas share distinctive characteristics with lines of Piers Plowman, one is the old, native, accentual, or alliterative verse, and the other is iambic pentameter. Gascoigne in writing the latter made use of the effects of the former, but is it possible that Gascoigne thought he was writing in the old tradition?

Precisely what Gascoigne thought of the meter of Piers Plowman and the meter in his own Steele Glas would be interesting to know but hard to determine. A very reasonable place to look is Gascoigne's own treatise on the writing of verse, Certaine Notes of Instruction Concerning the Making of English Verse (1575), which, of course, is the first book of English literary criticism. Though he lists and defines current verse forms, Gascoigne writes not a word about blank verse. He quotes Chaucer's Parson, writing that “it is not enough to thunder in Rym [sic], Ram, Ruff, by letter,” but he does not seem aware that this is a reference to a different system of versification. In another, more tantalizing note after observing that only the iambic foot was currently used in English verse, he wrote, “We have used in times past other kinds of meters: as for example this following,

No wight in this world, that wealth can attain.”

The line is ten syllables, an alternating of iambic and anapestic feet, but where did Gascoigne get it? Could this be his attempt at the alliterative verse “we have used in times past”? Before giving us an answer, Gascoigne changes the subject.¹¹

Gascoigne's metrics are generally very regular, and it would seem, at first glance, quite foolhardy to suggest he was trying to reproduce the versification of Piers Plowman, but somehow falling into blank verse by mistake. However, Miss G. D. Wilcock in her study of the classical verse movement suggests such a possibility. Wilcock, reviewing the works of those who advocated and those who opposed the writing of classical hexameters in English, shows quite conclusively that until Daniel's Defense of Rhyme, no one seemed perfectly aware of just what it was that constituted the metrical basis for English verse. Daniel was not the first to use the words stress or accent, but he was the first to use the terms consistently, apparently recognizing just what was involved. Though such poets as Gascoigne had already mastered metrical regularity, they were not thoroughly aware of what they had done; the practice preceded the theory.

Gascoigne, as a matter of fact, is one of those Miss Wilcock cites to indicate this lack of clarity in the understanding of those very principles they had so clearly mastered.

With Gascoigne's Certain Notes … the word accent emerges into prosodic discussion. Yet … the term [is] involved in a haze of confusion, of which the prime cause is the inability or unwillingness to listen to English metrical speech without some very largely irrelevant classical or foreign authority in the hand. … His discrimination of the different accents is not based upon his working knowledge of English rhythms. … He professes to find three accents in English: lenis (unstressed), circumflexa (indifferent—for this he gives no illustration) and gravis which ‘is drawen out or elevate and maketh that sillable long whereupon it is placed.’¹²

It is my conclusion that Gascoigne, not understanding completely the basis for the versification of either Piers Plowman or the verse practiced in his own day, made an approximation of the old verse form, using the metrical system currently available to him. It would seem that metrically The Steele Glas, like so much in sixteenth century literature, reveals more than one influence. In the verse of other sixteenth century poets Gascoigne had examples of alliteration and heavy caesura—both perhaps showing the indirect influence of the medieval native tradition. In addition Gascoigne was probably influenced consciously and directly by The Vision of Piers the Plowman, a recently published specimen of that same native tradition. Alden, commenting on the classical origin of blank verse, wrote, “It is curious that a form so completely adopted as the favorite of English verse should be borrowed rather than native. …”¹³ For the source of the blank verse in The Steele Glas I believe we should say—borrowed as well as native.

Notes

1. Walter W. Skeat, Specimens of English Literature (Oxford, 1917), p. 473.

2. Felix E. Schelling, The Life and Writings of George Gascoigne (Publications of the University of Pennsylvania; Series in Philology, Literature, and Archeology, II, 4), pp. 72, 74-75.

3. C. T. Prouty, George Gascoigne: Elizabethan Courtier, Soldier, and Poet (New York, 1942), pp. 248-251.

4. C. S. Lewis, English Literature in the Sixteenth Century (Oxford, 1954), p. 270.

5. Yvor Winters, “Primitivism and Decadence,” In Defense of Reason (Denver, 1943), p. 108. Primitivism and Decadence was separately published in 1937. For a similar discussion of meter as it is related to “The Audible Reading of Poetry,” see Yvor Winters, The Function of Criticism (Denver, 1957), pp. 81-100. W. K. Wimsatt and M. C. Beardsley in “The Concept of Meter: An Exercise in Abstraction,” PMLA, LXXIV (December, 1959), 585-598, describe traditional English metrics in terms of relative stress and acknowledge their indebtedness to Winters.

6. George Gascoigne, “The Steele Glas,” Complete Works, ed. John W. Cunliffe (Cambridge, 1910), II, pp. 143-174.

7. G. K. Smart, “Non Dramatic Blank Verse,” Anglia, LXI (June, 1937), pp. 384-386.

8. Thomas A. Knott and David C. Fowler, Piers Plowman: A Critical Edition of the A-Version (Baltimore, 1952), pp. i-lx.

9. Walter W. Skeat, ed., The Vision of William Concerning Piers the Plowman (Oxford, 1932), p. xxxviii. “Sometimes there are two rime-letters in the second half-line and one in the first. … :

   ‘Tyle he had sylver · for his sawes and his selynge.’

   . … By a bold license, the rime-letter is sometimes found at the beginning of soft or subordinate syllables, as in the words for, whil, in the lines:

   ‘Danne I frained hir faire · for hym dat hir made;’

   ‘And with him to wonye and wo · whil god is in hevene;’”

   Though Piers Plowman was first printed in 1550, and reappeared in 1561, I have quoted from the modern edition since I am dealing only with the meter.

10. G. K. Smart, “Non Dramatic Blank Verse,” Anglia, LXI (June, 1937), pp. 384-386. Smart was criticizing the inflexibility of Gascoigne's blank verse; he made no reference to the native, accentual tradition.

11. George Gascoigne, “Certain Notes of Instruction Concerning the Making of Verse,” Complete Works, ed. John W. Cunliffe, I, 465-473.

12. G. D. Wilcock, “Passing Pitefull Hexameters: A Study of the Quality and Accent in English Renaissance Verse,” Modern Language Review, XXVII (January, 1934), 1-19.

13. Raymond Macdonald Alden, English Verse (New York, 1903), p. 174.