On the Christ-Church Play
“At Christ-Church ‘Marriage,’ done before the king,Lest that those mates should want an offering,The king himself did offer—What? I pray.He offer’d twice or thrice to go away.”
About this text
On the Christ-Church Play is in the public domain. This text is taken from The Poems of Richard Corbet, late bishop of Oxford and of Norwich 4th edition, Project Gutenberg ebook #65375; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Richard Corbet, On the Christ-Church Play, in Poems (1647), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #65375, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/corbet-poems/on-the-christ-church-play.html, id L08900.
Form and metre
On the Christ-Church Play is 4 lines in a single stanza. It is in rhyming couplets: heroic couplets. This poem did not settle on a metre of its own; the book it comes from is in iambic pentameter. 92% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 10.0 syllables. 1 line ends on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending.
See other poems in heroic couplets, other poems in iambic pentameter.
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.
- 1 AABB kingA · offeringA · prayB · awayB
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 iambic pentameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| “At Christ-Church ‘Marriage,’ done before the king, | 10 | ···/˘····· |
| Lest that those mates should want an offering, | 10 | ·······/˘˘ |
| The king himself did offer—What? I pray. | 10 | ··˘/·/˘··· |
| He offer’d twice or thrice to go away.” | 10 | ·/˘·····˘/ |
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.