I am sorry that by hanging thee I can [run-on] But shorten your life one week. And thou, fresh piece [run-on] Of excellent witchcraft, who of force must know [end-stopped] The royal fool thou cop'st with...--" --_Winter's Tale_, IV, iv, 427-434. Since Shakespeare keeps constantly increasing his use of run-on lines in plays for which dates are known, it seems reasonable to assume that he did this in all his work, that it was a habit which grew on him from year to year. Hence, if we sort out his plays in order, putting those with the fewest run-on lines first and those with the greatest number last, we shall have good reason for believing that this represents roughly the order in which they were written. A second form of metrical evidence is found in the proportion of 'masculine' and 'feminine' endings in the verse. A line has a masculine ending when its last syllable is stressed; when it ends, for example, on words or phrases like _behold'_, _control'_, _no more'_, _begone'_. On the other hand, if the last stressed syllable of the line is followed by an unstressed one, the two together are called a feminine ending. Instances of this would be lines ending in such words or phrases as, _unho'/ly_, _forgive' /me_, _benight'/ed_. Notice the difference between them in the following passage:-- "Our revels now are ended. These our actors [feminine] As I foretold you, were all spirits, and [masculine] Are melted into air, into thin air; [masculine] And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, [feminine] The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces, [feminine] {81} The solemn temples, the great globe itself, [masculine] Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve, [masculine] And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, [feminine] Leave not a rack behind." --_Tempest_, IV, i, 147-166. In the main, although with some exceptions, the number of feminine endings, like the number of run-on lines, increases as the plays become later in date. A third form of ending, which practically does not appear at all in the early plays, and which recurs with increasing frequency in the later ones, is what is called a 'weak ending.'[4] This occurs whenever a run-on line ends in a word which according to the meter needs to be stressed, and according to the sense ought not to be. Here there is a clash between meter and meaning, and the reader compromises by making a pause before the last syllable instead of emphasizing the syllable itself. Below are two examples of weak endings:-- "It should the good ship so have swallowed, and The fraughting souls within her." "I will rend an oak And peg thee in his knotty entrails _till_ Thou hast howled away twelve winters."