Where’d that syllable go?

When you have to get what you have to say into a set number of syllables—ten per line if you’re writing in iambic pentameter—(or eleven if you can sneak in a feminine ending) you sometimes have to get creative. The most common way for poets to do that is with elision—taking out a vowel or consonant from a word to reduce syllables. We do this in normal speech when we use contractions—can’t for cannot. A poet will use ne’erinstead of never. Or e’en instead of even (sometimes used as “the e’en” to mean “the even” or “the evening”). In Elizabethan English, poets commonly used elision to eliminate syllables that we no longer pronounce in Modern English—the final -ed of some past participles, like despiséd, for example—or that we no longer use—like the second person singular ending in -est. So we may find Shakespeare writing despis’d or pour’st. Easy enough, right? Not so fast. Unfortunately, in Shakespeare’s day, written language was a bit looser than it is today. And going from a written manuscript to a printed page was a process that required several individuals—each with his own ideas about how the words should look. The result is that usually if you were supposed to pronounce the final -ed of a past participle, it was printed out fully, like despised, and if you were not, it was printed with an apostrophe, like despis’d. BUT, occasionally, you will see a full form when the -ed was not supposed to be pronounces and rarely an ‘d when it was meant to be pronounced. How do you tell what you’re supposed to do? You have to trust your ear. (In the text I’ve provided there’s no need to worry—I’ve made the necessary adjustments.)

Those are the easy ones. There are other forms of elision. Like pris-ner for prisoner, or spir’t for spirit. These are usually not indicated with apostrophes but assumed to be compressed forms of speech—not unlike normal speech sometimes. And just to make things interesting, a word like spirit will be found to be pronounced with one syllable in one place and two syllables in another (sometimes in the same line!). I don’t usually indicate these with apostrophes in my text because I think they’re too hard to read. Again, you have to trust your ear.

But wait, it gets a little more complicated. Sometimes a poet needs an extra syllable. So we find words that are pronounced with more syllables than we might expect. Like hours, which can be pronounced as one syllable or two (how-ers). And then there are words that were probably normally pronounced with more syllables in Shakespeare’s day than in Modern English—like gracious (gra-ci-ous) and spacious (spa-ci-ous). It’s hard to know how words were pronounced hundreds of years ago, but we have some linguistic evidence to guide us. (See Cercignani in reading list—warning: very dense reading.) And while we’re on the subject of pronunciation, there’s also the issue of which syllable a word is accented on. This may also have differed for some words, and I have indicated unusual accents in my text when I think the evidence is sufficient. But sometimes I’ve found some circular reasoning at play—a different accent from the modern is suggested to make a line conform to a regular meter and this is used as evidence that the accent was different in Shakespeare’s day. I’m ok with this if a modern accent results in a reading that cannot be made to sound right (see my blog, “Why can’t I read that line?”). But if an irregular line sounds ok, that’s no reason to reject a modern accentuation of a word. IMHO. For this reason, there are occasions when I disagree with mainstream authorities about the accents on words in The Sonnets. When I do, I say so in my discussion.

In the end, when you come across a line that you just can’t get to come out right, count the syllables one by one. First, make sure you know what type of verse it is. (Almost all The Sonnets are in iambic pentameter, but one of them is written in tetramers!) If you’re expecting ten syllables but come out with 11, check to see if the line has an unaccented final syllable—a feminine ending. If it does, you might be ok if the meter otherwise works out ok. If you have some other problem with the number of syllables, look for words that might be pronounced with more or fewer syllables than you think, or with a different accent. (If you’re reading my text, you shouldn’t have to worry about the accent—I’ve marked those. And I’ve tried to indicate in my discussion the words that have a different number of syllables than you would think.) Then, just go with the flow and see where the meter takes you. Usually, it will show you the way.