BLANK VERSE

In some modern languages, the heroic verse of five feet without rhymes. Blank verse is peculiar to the Italian, English, and German languages; having been imported into the two latter from the first. In Italian the line is of eleven syllables; and is used invariably in the drama, and frequently in serious poetry, epic or didactic. In English it was also first adopted by the dramatists, and transferred to epic poetry by Milton. The Miltonic verse is constructed with closer attention to the melody of the cadence and caesura than the dramatic: it admits also le frequently of the eleventh syllable, which in English poetry must be regarded as a sort of license; while Shakspeare and other dramatists occasionally double the short syllable at the end, and thus extend the number to twelve. [s. 163]