another language. The practice was welcomed by the actors from its
serving as a signal for clapping when they made their exit. In
Shakespeare, on the other hand, the transitions are more easy: all
changes of forms are brought about insensibly, and as if of
themselves. Moreover, he is generally fond of heightening a series of
ingenious and antithetical sayings by the use of rhyme. We find other
passages in continued rhyme, where solemnity and theatrical pomp were
suitable, as, for instance, in the mask,[30] as it is called, in _The
Tempest_ and in the play introduced in _Hamlet_. Of other pieces, for
instance, the _Midsummer Night's Dream_, and _Romeo and Juliet_, the
rhymes form a considerable part; either because he may have wished to
give them a glowing color, or because the characters appropriately
utter in a more musical tone their complaints or suits of love. In
these cases he has even introduced rhymed strophes, which approach to
the form of the sonnet, then usual in England. The assertion of
Malone, that Shakespeare in his youth was fond of rhyme, but that he
afterward rejected it, is sufficiently refuted by his own chronology
of the poet's works. In some of the earliest, for instance in the
second and third part of _Henry the Sixth_, there are hardly any
rhymes; in what is stated to be his last piece, _Twelfth Night, or
What You Will_, and in _Macbeth_, which is proved to have been
composed under the reign of King James, we find them in no
inconsiderable number. Even in the secondary matters of form
Shakespeare was not guided by humor and accident, but, like a genuine
artist, acted invariably on good and solid grounds. This we might also
show of the kinds of verse which he least frequently used (for
instance, of the rhyming verses of seven and eight syllables), were we
not afraid of dwelling too long on merely technical peculiarities.

In England the manner of handling rhyming verse, and the opinion as to