II.  The Enjambement or Overflow test is also known as the End-stopped and Run-on line test.  A line may be called ‘end-stopped’ when the sense, as well as the metre, would naturally make one pause at its close; ‘run-on’ when the mere sense would lead one to pass to the next line without any pause.[287] This distinction is in a great majority of cases quite easy to draw:  in others it is difficult.  The reader cannot judge by rules of grammar, or by marks of punctuation (for there is a distinct pause at the end of many a line where most editors print no stop):  he must trust his ear.  And readers will differ, one making a distinct pause where another does not.  This, however, does not matter greatly, so long as the reader is consistent; for the important point is not the precise number of run-on lines in a play, but the difference in this matter between one play and another.  Thus one may disagree with Koenig in his estimate of many instances, but one can see that he is consistent.

In Shakespeare’s early plays, ‘overflows’ are rare.  In the Comedy of Errors, for example, their percentage is 12.9 according to Koenig[288] (who excludes rhymed lines and some others).  In the generally admitted last plays they are comparatively frequent.  Thus, according to Koenig, the percentage in the Winter’s Tale is 37.5, in the Tempest 41.5, in Antony 43.3, in Coriolanus 45.9, in Cymbeline 46, in the parts of Henry VIII. assigned by Spedding to Shakespeare 53.18.  Koenig’s results for the four tragedies are as follows:  Othello, 19.5; Hamlet, 23.1; King Lear, 29.3; Macbeth, 36.6; (Timon, the whole play, 32.5). Macbeth here again, therefore, stands decidedly last:  indeed it stands near the first of the latest plays.

And no one who has ever attended to the versification of Macbeth will be surprised at these figures.  It is almost obvious, I should say, that Shakespeare is passing from one system to another.  Some passages show little change, but in others the change is almost complete.  If the reader will compare two somewhat similar soliloquies, ’To be or not to be’ and ’If it were done when ‘tis done,’ he will recognise this at once.  Or let him search the previous plays, even King Lear, for twelve consecutive lines like these: 

     If it were done when ’tis done, then ’twere well
     It were done quickly:  if the assassination
     Could trammel up the consequence, and catch
     With his surcease success; that but this blow
     Might be the be-all and the end-all here,
     But here, upon this bank and shoal of time,
     We ’ld jump the life to come.  But in these cases
     We still have judgement here; that we but teach
     Bloody instructions, which, being taught, return
     To plague the inventor:  this even-handed justice
     Commends the ingredients of our poison’d chalice
     To our own lips.