Act the Third: Scene XX
DEMON [within]. Ware! beware! He's mad! he's mad!
GOVERNOR. What is this?
LELIUS. I'll go and see.
GOVERNOR. In this palace hall these cries,From what cause can they arise?
FLORUS. Something serious it must be.
LELIUS. This confusion is occasioned(Hear a singular adventure),Sir, by Cyprian, who being absentMany days again has enteredAntioch completely mad.
FLORUS. It was doubtless the fine essenceOf his mind that thus has brought himTo this lamentable ending.
Words in this poem
- beware v. t.
- To avoid; to take care of; to have a care for.
- singular a.
- Separate or apart from others; single; distinct. [OE. singuler, F. singulier, fr. L. singularius, singularis, fr. singulus single. See Single, a.]
- cyprian a.
- Belonging to Cyprus.
- doubtless a.
- Free from fear or suspicion.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Act the Third: Scene XX is in the public domain. This text is taken from The Wonder-Working Magician, Project Gutenberg ebook #6372, the Denis Florence MacCarthy translation; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Pedro Calderón de la Barca, Act the Third: Scene XX, in The Wonder-Working Magician (1873), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #6372, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/calderon-magico-prodigioso/act-the-third-scene-xx.html, id L26651.
Form and metre
Act the Third: Scene XX is 14 lines in 7 stanzas. This poem did not settle on a metre of its own; the book it comes from is in trochaic tetrameter.
See other poems in trochaic tetrameter.
Measured by Laurel's pipeline, not copied from a handbook: how stress and metre are counted, how rhyme is lettered, how a drifted rhyme is found. Where the dictionary cannot confirm a rhyme the letter is withheld, not guessed.
Rhyme words, stanza by stanza
The word that ends each line, lettered by the rhyme it makes; a dash is a line whose rhyme the dictionary could not confirm.
- 4 AA criesA · ariseA
- 6 ---AA occasioned · adventure · absent · enteredA · madA
Scansion, line by line
Each line with its syllable count and the stresses the words themselves fix: / stressed, ˘ unstressed, · a syllable the word leaves free and the metre decides. Read against trochaic tetrameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| DEMON [within]. Ware! beware! He's mad! he's mad! | 11 | /˘···˘/···· |
| GOVERNOR. What is this? | 6 | /˘˘··· |
| LELIUS. I'll go and see. | 6 | ······ |
| GOVERNOR. In this palace hall these cries, | 9 | /˘··/˘··· |
| From what cause can they arise? | 7 | ·····˘/ |
| FLORUS. Something serious it must be. | 9 | ··/˘/˘··· |
| LELIUS. This confusion is occasioned | 10 | ···˘/˘·˘/˘ |
| (Hear a singular adventure), | 8 | ··/˘˘˘/˘ |
| Sir, by Cyprian, who being absent | 9 | ··/˘˘·//˘ |
| Many days again has entered | 8 | /˘·˘/·/˘ |
| Antioch completely mad. | 7 | /˘·˘/˘· |
| FLORUS. It was doubtless the fine essence | 10 | ····/˘··/˘ |
| Of his mind that thus has brought him | 8 | ········ |
| To this lamentable ending. | 8 | ··˘/˘˘/˘ |
The reader shows the same poem with its rhymes coloured and a stress row above each line, the notes beside their stanzas, and any word's definition on a tap; the analysis page takes the whole book apart. How every part of this site was made.