Abstract

Certain types of run-on lines were utilized from the earliest days of the Spanish theater, undoubtedly to avoid the monotony of a pause at the end of each line and to approximate natural speech. Other types of run-on lines were rather rare until Calderón's time. In his earliest plays Calderón's use of the run-on line resembles that of his predecessors. However, he rapidly expanded his utilization of this poetic device, more than tripling its use by the end of his career. He employed all the types that had been unused or rarely used before and even had recourse to the extremely rare lexical type. His Influence upon his contemporaries in this respect is patent. While it appears likely that the run-on line continued to be used primarily to provide greater rhythmic variety, it seems equally certain that it was also frequently employed for a specific aesthetic purpose, which involves the placement of the first element of the separated syntactical unit in the final stressed syllable of the line.

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