The Brothers: Act the Fourth: Scene III
Aye, go your ways! I'll work your old shrunk shanksAs you deserve, old Drybones!--AEschinusLoiters intolerably. Dinner's spoil'd.Ctesipho thinks of nothing but his girl.'Tis time for me to look to myself too.Faith, then I'll in immediately; pick outAll the tid-bits, and tossing off my cups,In lazy leisure lengthen out the day. (Exit.
About this text
The Brothers: Act the Fourth: Scene III is in the public domain. This text is taken from The Comedies of Terence, Project Gutenberg ebook #22695; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Terence, The Brothers: Act the Fourth: Scene III, in The Comedies of Terence (1765), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #22695, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/terence-comedies/the-brothers-act-the-fourth-scene-iii.html, id L25837.
Form and metre
The Brothers: Act the Fourth: Scene III is 8 lines in a single stanza. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 80%).
See 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 -----A-A shanks · aeschinus · spoil'd · girl · too · outA · cups · exitA
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Aye, go your ways! I'll work your old shrunk shanks | 10 | ·········· |
| As you deserve, old Drybones!--AEschinus | 10 | ··˘/······ |
| Loiters intolerably. Dinner's spoil'd. | 10 | /˘˘/˘˘˘/˘· |
| Ctesipho thinks of nothing but his girl. | 10 | ·····/˘··· |
| 'Tis time for me to look to myself too. | 10 | ········/· |
| Faith, then I'll in immediately; pick out | 10 | ····˘/˘˘·· |
| All the tid-bits, and tossing off my cups, | 10 | ·····/˘··· |
| In lazy leisure lengthen out the day. (Exit. | 12 | ·/˘/˘/˘···/˘ |
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.