Decasyllabic Quatrain - Criticisms of The Form

Criticisms of The Form

When discussing the auditory impression created by the sound of the decasyllabic quatrain, Ralph Waldo Emerson described how he would hum the tune created by the pattern of the rhyme scheme then long to fill the sounds in with the words of a poem. However, Henry David Thoreau, when writing about Emerson's "Ode to Beauty" criticizes the use of the decasyllabic quatrain by suggesting that its tune is unworthy of the thoughts expressed.

George Saintsbury, in A History of English Prosody from the Twelfth Century to the Present Day, argues that the heroic quatrain, while breaking from the conventions of the heroic couplet, contains limitations that outweigh its liberating characteristics. To Saintsbury, the decasyllabic quatrain contains a stiffness that can not be overcome:

You can not vary your stops, as in blank verse or the Spenserian, there is not room enough: and the recurrent divisions necessatated by the stanza lack at once the conciseness and the continuity of the couplet, the variety and amplitude of the rhyme-royal, octave, or Spenserian itself.

In his essay on Annus Mirabilis, A. W. Ward suggests that the decasyllabic quatrain used by Davenant and Dryden, with its insistence on providing each quatrain with the "completeness" given by the final period, causes the verse to strike the reader as "prosy". While Ward respects Dryden's willingness to use a new form despite his mastery of the heroic couplet, he believes that Annus Mirabilis exemplifies the weaknesses of the form and hinders Dryden's ability to use poetry to fully express his philosophical conceits. Saintsbury, agreeing with this assessment, suggesed that Dryden's choice to revert to the heroic couplet for his three poems on the restoration.