I've been reading Eliot's allusion to this for decades and never gotten around to seeking out the original, even though I have an anthology that includes it. Many thanks for filling in that blank, at least partially.
I actually would probably say it, were I acting or giving a dramatic reading, as "The FRIÈNDless BÒDies of ÙN-BÙRied MÈN, inverting the third foot to a trochee to slow the line down.
Five or six years ago now, Kevin Williamson suggested in NR that one could make a course out of the footnotes to The Wasteland. I followed this advice. We read The Wasteland then selections from the books mentioned in the footnotes. The students put on a play of The Duchess of Malfi, which was very imaginatively conceived.
I watched Shakespeare in Love recently, only for the second time. I think Tom Stoppard wrote the screenplay and his conception of the teenage Webster as a horrid, ghoulish boy who carries rodents on his person and rats out the production to the highest bidder is hilarious. Funny because probably true.
I've been reading Eliot's allusion to this for decades and never gotten around to seeking out the original, even though I have an anthology that includes it. Many thanks for filling in that blank, at least partially.
"'The friendless bodies of unburied men.' That’s about as good as pentameter gets in English..."
Not bad for a tetrameter either.
How you getting tetrameter out of that, Eric? The FRIÈNDless BÒDies ÒF unBÙRied MÈN.
I read the line as “the FRIENDless BOdies of UNburied MEN”. Mind you, it’s a well-wrought line no matter how we scan it.
I actually would probably say it, were I acting or giving a dramatic reading, as "The FRIÈNDless BÒDies of ÙN-BÙRied MÈN, inverting the third foot to a trochee to slow the line down.
Technically speaking, English can't accommodate three unstressed syllables in a row. That "of" will always get a minor stress.
Five or six years ago now, Kevin Williamson suggested in NR that one could make a course out of the footnotes to The Wasteland. I followed this advice. We read The Wasteland then selections from the books mentioned in the footnotes. The students put on a play of The Duchess of Malfi, which was very imaginatively conceived.
I watched Shakespeare in Love recently, only for the second time. I think Tom Stoppard wrote the screenplay and his conception of the teenage Webster as a horrid, ghoulish boy who carries rodents on his person and rats out the production to the highest bidder is hilarious. Funny because probably true.