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Bradley, A. C. Shakespearean Tragedy: Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth.
2nd ed. London: Macmillan, 1905.
PAGE 479
NOTES ON MACBETH

can be absolutely trusted. The result of its application is briefly as follows. Until quite a late date, light and weak endings occur in Shakespeare's works in such small numbers as hardly to be worth consideration.1 But in the well-defined group of last plays the numbers both of light and of weak endings increase greatly, and, on the whole, the increase apparently is progressive (I say apparently, because the order in which the last plays are generally placed depends to some extent on the test itself). I give Prof. Ingram's table of these plays, premising that in Pericles, Two Noble Kinsmen, and Henry VIII. he uses only those parts of the plays which are attributed by certain authorities to Shakespeare (New Shakspere Soc. Trans., 1874).

Light
endings.
Weak.Percentage
of light in
verse lines.
Percentage
of weak in
verse lines.
Percentage
of
both.
Antony and Cleopatra,71282.531.003.53
Coriolanus,60442.341.714.05
Pericles,20102.781.394.17
Tempest,42252.881.714.59
Cymbeline,78522.901.934.83
Winter's Tale,57433.122.365.48
Two Noble Kinsmen,50343.632.476.10
Henry VIII.,45373.933.237.16

     Now, let us turn to our four tragedies (with Timon). Here again we have one doubtful play, and I give the figures for the whole of Timon, and again for the parts of Timon assigned to Shakespeare by Mr. Fleay, both as they appear in his amended text and as they appear in the Globe (perhaps the better text).

Light.Weak.
Hamlet,80
Othello,20
Lear,51
Timon (whole),165
     (Sh. in Fleay),147
     (Sh. in Globe),132
Henry VIII.,212

     Now here the figures for the first three plays tell us prac-

   1The number of light endings, however, in Julius Caesar (10) and All's Well (12) is worth notice.

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