An alexandrine is a line of poetic meter

Meter (poetry)

In poetry, metre is the basic rhythmic structure of a verse or lines in verse. Many traditional verse forms prescribe a specific verse metre, or a certain set of metres alternating in a particular order. The study of metres and forms of versification is known as prosody...

 comprising 12 syllable

Syllable

A syllable is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds. For example, the word water is composed of two syllables: wa and ter. A syllable is typically made up of a syllable nucleus with optional initial and final margins .Syllables are often considered the phonological "building...

s. Alexandrines are common in the German literature

German literature

German literature comprises those literary texts written in the German language. This includes literature written in Germany, Austria, the German part of Switzerland, and to a lesser extent works of the German diaspora. German literature of the modern period is mostly in Standard German, but there...

 of the Baroque period and in French poetry of the early modern and modern periods. Drama

Drama

Drama is the specific mode of fiction represented in performance. The term comes from a Greek word meaning "action" , which is derived from "to do","to act" . The enactment of drama in theatre, performed by actors on a stage before an audience, presupposes collaborative modes of production and a...

 in English often used alexandrines before Marlowe

Christopher Marlowe

Christopher Marlowe was an English dramatist, poet and translator of the Elizabethan era. As the foremost Elizabethan tragedian, next to William Shakespeare, he is known for his blank verse, his overreaching protagonists, and his mysterious death.A warrant was issued for Marlowe's arrest on 18 May...

 and Shakespeare

William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...

, by whom it was supplanted by iambic pentameter

Iambic pentameter

Iambic pentameter is a commonly used metrical line in traditional verse and verse drama. The term describes the particular rhythm that the words establish in that line. That rhythm is measured in small groups of syllables; these small groups of syllables are called "feet"...

 (5-foot verse). In non-Anglo-Saxon or French contexts, the term dodecasyllable

Dodecasyllable

Dodecasyllable verse is a line of verse with twelve syllables. 12 syllable lines are used in a variety of poetic traditions, including Italian and French poetry, and in poetry of the Southern Slavs...

 is often used.

Syllabic verse

In syllabic verse

Syllabic verse

Syllabic verse is a poetic form having a fixed number of syllables per line regardless of the number of stresses that are present. It is common in languages that are syllable-timed, such as Japanese or modern French or Finnish — as opposed to stress-timed languages such as English, in which...

, such as that used in French literature

French literature

French literature is, generally speaking, literature written in the French language, particularly by citizens of France; it may also refer to literature written by people living in France who speak traditional languages of France other than French. Literature written in French language, by citizens...

, an alexandrine is a line of twelve syllables. Most commonly, the line is divided into two equal parts by a caesura

Caesura

thumb|100px|An example of a caesura in modern western music notation.In meter, a caesura is a complete pause in a line of poetry or in a musical composition. The plural form of caesura is caesuras or caesurae...

 between the sixth and seventh syllables. Alternatively, the line is divided into three four-syllable sections by two caesuras.

The dramatic works of Pierre Corneille

Pierre Corneille

Pierre Corneille was a French tragedian who was one of the three great seventeenth-century French dramatists, along with Molière and Racine...

 and Jean Racine

Jean Racine

Jean Racine , baptismal name Jean-Baptiste Racine , was a French dramatist, one of the "Big Three" of 17th-century France , and one of the most important literary figures in the Western tradition...

 are typically composed of rhyming alexandrine couplets. (The caesura after the 6th syllable is here marked || )

Nous partîmes cinq cents ; || mais par un prompt renfort

Nous nous vîmes trois mille || en arrivant au port

(Corneille, Le Cid Act IV , scene 3)

Baudelaire's

Charles Baudelaire

Charles Baudelaire was a French poet who produced notable work as an essayist, art critic, and pioneering translator of Edgar Allan Poe. His most famous work, Les Fleurs du mal expresses the changing nature of beauty in modern, industrializing Paris during the nineteenth century...

 Les Bijoux (The Jewels) is a typical example of the use of the alexandrine in 19th-century French poetry :

La très-chère était nue, || et, connaissant mon cœur,

Elle n'avait gardé || que ses bijoux sonores,

Dont le riche attirail || lui donnait l'air vainqueur

Qu'ont dans leurs jours heureux || les esclaves des Mores.

Even a 20th-century Surrealist, such as Paul Éluard

Paul Éluard

Paul Éluard, born Eugène Émile Paul Grindel , was a French poet who was one of the founders of the surrealist movement.-Biography:...

, used alexandrines on occasion, such as in these lines from L'Égalité des sexes (in Capitale de la douleur) (note the variation between caesuras after the 6th syllable, and after 4th and 8th):

Ni connu la beauté || des yeux, beauté des pierres,

Celle des gouttes d'eau, || des perles en placard,

Des pierres nues || et sans squelette, || ô ma statue

Modern references

In the comic book Asterix and Cleopatra

Asterix and Cleopatra

Asterix and Cleopatra is the sixth book in the Asterix comic book series by René Goscinny and Albert Uderzo. It was first published in serial form in Pilote magazine, issues 215-257, in 1963.-Synopsis:...

, the author Goscinny inserted a pun about alexandrines: when the Druid Panoramix ("Getafix" in the English translation) meets his Alexandrian (Egyptian) friend the latter exclaims Je suis, mon cher ami, || très heureux de te voir at which Panoramix observes C'est un Alexandrin ("That's an alexandrine!"/"He's an Alexandrian!"). The pun can also be heard in the theatrical adaptations. The English translation renders this as "My dear old Getafix || How good to see you here", with the reply "Aha, an Alexandrine".

Accentual-syllabic verse

In accentual-syllabic verse

Accentual-syllabic verse

Accentual-syllabic verse is an extension of accentual verse which fixes both the number of stresses and syllables within a line or stanza. Accentual-syllabic verse is highly regular and therefore easily scannable...

, it is a line of iambic hexameter - a line of six feet or measures ("iambs"), each of which has two syllables with an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable. It is also usual for there to be a caesura between the sixth and seventh syllables (as the examples from Pope

Alexander Pope

Alexander Pope was an 18th-century English poet, best known for his satirical verse and for his translation of Homer. He is the third-most frequently quoted writer in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, after Shakespeare and Tennyson...

 below illustrate). Robert Bridges

Robert Bridges

Robert Seymour Bridges, OM, was a British poet, and poet laureate from 1913 to 1930.-Personal and professional life:...

 noted that in the lyrical sections of Samson Agonistes

Samson Agonistes

Samson Agonistes is a tragic closet drama by John Milton. It appeared with the publication of Milton's Paradise Regain'd in 1671, as the title page of that volume states: "Paradise Regained / A Poem / In IV Books / To Which Is Added / Samson Agonistes"...

, Milton

John Milton

John Milton was an English poet, polemicist, a scholarly man of letters, and a civil servant for the Commonwealth of England under Oliver Cromwell...

 significantly varied the placement of the caesura.

In the poetry of Edmund Spenser

Edmund Spenser

Edmund Spenser was an English poet best known for The Faerie Queene, an epic poem and fantastical allegory celebrating the Tudor dynasty and Elizabeth I. He is recognised as one of the premier craftsmen of Modern English verse in its infancy, and one of the greatest poets in the English...

's The Faerie Queene

The Faerie Queene

The Faerie Queene is an incomplete English epic poem by Edmund Spenser. The first half was published in 1590, and a second installment was published in 1596. The Faerie Queene is notable for its form: it was the first work written in Spenserian stanza and is one of the longest poems in the English...

8 lines of pentameter are followed by an alexandrine, the 6-foot line slowing the regular rhythm of the 5-foot lines. After Spenser, alexandrine couplets were used by Michael Drayton

Michael Drayton

Michael Drayton was an English poet who came to prominence in the Elizabethan era.-Early life:He was born at Hartshill, near Nuneaton, Warwickshire, England. Almost nothing is known about his early life, beyond the fact that in 1580 he was in the service of Thomas Goodere of Collingham,...

 in his Poly-Olbion

Poly-Olbion

The Poly-Olbion is a topographical poem describing England and Wales. Written by Michael Drayton and published in 1612, it was reprinted with a second part in 1622. Drayton had been working on the project since at least 1598.-Content:...

.

Alexander Pope

Alexander Pope

Alexander Pope was an 18th-century English poet, best known for his satirical verse and for his translation of Homer. He is the third-most frequently quoted writer in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, after Shakespeare and Tennyson...

 famously characterized the alexandrine's potential to slow or speed the flow of a poem in two rhyming couplet

Couplet

A couplet is a pair of lines of meter in poetry. It usually consists of two lines that rhyme and have the same meter.While traditionally couplets rhyme, not all do. A poem may use white space to mark out couplets if they do not rhyme. Couplets with a meter of iambic pentameter are called heroic...

s consisting of an iambic pentameter followed by an alexandrine:

A needless alexandrine ends the song

that like a wounded snake, drags its slow length along.

A few lines later Pope continues:

Not so, when swift Camilla scours the Plain,

Flies o'er th'unbending corn and skims along the Main.

Alexandrines are sometimes introduced into predominantly pentameter verse for the sake of variety. The Spenserian stanza

Spenserian stanza

The Spenserian stanza is a fixed verse form invented by Edmund Spenser for his epic poem The Faerie Queene. Each stanza contains nine lines in total: eight lines in iambic pentameter followed by a single 'Alexandrine' line in iambic hexameter. The rhyme scheme of these lines is...

, for instance, is eight lines of pentameter followed by an alexandrine. Alexandrines appear rarely in Shakespeare's

William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...

 blank verse

Blank verse

Blank verse is poetry written in unrhymed iambic pentameter. It has been described as "probably the most common and influential form that English poetry has taken since the sixteenth century" and Paul Fussell has claimed that "about three-quarters of all English poetry is in blank verse."The first...

. In the Restoration

English Restoration

The Restoration of the English monarchy began in 1660 when the English, Scottish and Irish monarchies were all restored under Charles II after the Interregnum that followed the Wars of the Three Kingdoms...

 and eighteenth century, poetry written in couplets is sometimes varied by the introduction of a triplet in which the third line is an alexandrine, as in this example from Dryden

John Dryden

John Dryden was an influential English poet, literary critic, translator, and playwright who dominated the literary life of Restoration England to such a point that the period came to be known in literary circles as the Age of Dryden.Walter Scott called him "Glorious John." He was made Poet...

, which introduces a triplet after two couplets:

But satire needs not those, and wit will shine

Through the harsh cadence of a rugged line:

A noble error, and but seldom made,

When poets are by too much force betrayed.

Thy generous fruits, though gathered ere their prime,

Still showed a quickness; and maturing time

But mellows what we write to the dull sweets of rhyme.

Alexandrines also formed the first line of the couplet form Poulter's Measure (the second line being a fourteener

Fourteener (poetry)

A Fourteener, in poetry, is a line consisting of 14 syllables, usually having 7 iambic heptametric feet, most commonly found in English poetry produced in the 16th and 17th centuries...

) as exemplified in Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey

Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey

Henry Howard, KG, , known as The Earl of Surrey although he never was a peer, was an English aristocrat, and one of the founders of English Renaissance poetry.-Life:...

's poem, Complaint of the Absence of her lover, being upon the sea (1547).

Origin

There is some doubt as to the origin of the name; but most probably it is derived from a collection of Alexandrine romances

Alexander Romance

Alexander romance is any of several collections of legends concerning the mythical exploits of Alexander the Great. The earliest version is in Greek, dating to the 3rd century. Several late manuscripts attribute the work to Alexander's court historian Callisthenes, but the historical figure died...

, collected in the 12th century, of which Alexander the Great was the hero, and in which he was represented, somewhat like the British Arthur

King Arthur

King Arthur is a legendary British leader of the late 5th and early 6th centuries, who, according to Medieval histories and romances, led the defence of Britain against Saxon invaders in the early 6th century. The details of Arthur's story are mainly composed of folklore and literary invention, and...

, as the pride and crown of chivalry. Before the publication of this work most of the trouvère

Trouvère

Trouvère , sometimes spelled trouveur , is the Northern French form of the word trobador . It refers to poet-composers who were roughly contemporary with and influenced by the troubadours but who composed their works in the northern dialects of France...

 romances appeared in octosyllabic verse. There is also a theory that the form was invented by the 12th-century poet Alexander of Paris

Alexander of Paris

Alexander of Paris, also known as Alexander of Bernay, was a Norman poet of the 12th century, who wrote Li romans d'Alexandre , one of the first poems written in French on the mythical exploits of Alexander the Great. It was composed in twelve-syllabled lines, called after him alexandrines. He was...

. The new work, which was henceforth to set the fashion to French literature, was written in lines of twelve syllables, but with a freedom of pause which was afterwards greatly curtailed. The new fashion, however, was not adopted all at once. The metre fell into disuse until the reign of Francis I

Francis I of France

Francis I was King of France from 1515 until his death. During his reign, huge cultural changes took place in France and he has been called France's original Renaissance monarch...

, when it was revived by Jean-Antoine de Baïf

Jean-Antoine de Baïf

Jean Antoine de Baïf was a French poet and member of the Pléiade.-Life:He was born in Venice, the natural son of the scholar Lazare de Baïf, who was at that time French ambassador at Venice...

, one of the seven poets known as La Pléiade

La Pléiade

The Pléiade is the name given to a group of 16th-century French Renaissance poets whose principal members were Pierre de Ronsard, Joachim du Bellay and Jean-Antoine de Baïf. The name was a reference to another literary group, the original Alexandrian Pleiad of seven Alexandrian poets and...

.