The Brothers: Act the Third: Scene VIII
Be of good cheer, my Sostrata; and comfort,As much as in your pow'r, poor Pamphila!I'll find out Micio, if he's at the Forum,And tell him the whole story: if he'll actWith honor in it, why 'tis well; if not,Let him but speak his mind to me, and thenI shall know how to act accordingly. (Exit.
Words in this poem
- forum n.
- A market place or public place in Rome, where causes were judicially tried, and orations delivered to the people. [L.; akin to foris, foras, out of doors. See Foreign.]
- shall v. i.
- To owe; to be under obligation for. [OE. shal, schal, imp. sholde, scholde, AS. scal, sceal, I am obliged, imp. scolde, sceolde, inf. sculan; akin to OS. skulan, pres. skal, imp. skolda, D. zullen,]
- accordingly adv.
- Agreeably; correspondingly; suitably; in a manner conformable.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
The Brothers: Act the Third: Scene VIII 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 Third: Scene VIII, in The Comedies of Terence (1765), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #22695, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/terence-comedies/the-brothers-act-the-third-scene-viii.html, id L25834.
Form and metre
The Brothers: Act the Third: Scene VIII is 7 lines in a single stanza. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 83%).
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-A comfortA · pamphila · forum · act · notA · then · 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 |
|---|---|---|
| Be of good cheer, my Sostrata; and comfort, | 11 | ·········/˘ |
| As much as in your pow'r, poor Pamphila! | 10 | ·········· |
| I'll find out Micio, if he's at the Forum, | 11 | ·········/˘ |
| And tell him the whole story: if he'll act | 10 | ·····/˘··· |
| With honor in it, why 'tis well; if not, | 10 | ·/˘······· |
| Let him but speak his mind to me, and then | 10 | ·········· |
| I shall know how to act accordingly. (Exit. | 11 | ······˘/˘/˘ |
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.