"And perspective it is best painter's art" (Shakespeare: Sonnet 24)

[Annabel Lee]

Has anyone here heard of "perspective" being pronounced with the first syllable ("per") stressed? I haven't seen any dictionaries that mention that pronunciation. "Spec" is always the stressed syllable, isn't it? I have a hard time believing it was any different during Shakespeare's time. My question is motivated by the metrical challenge posed by the fourth line of Shakespeare's Sonnet #24:

Mine eye hath played the painter and hath stelled​

Thy beauty's form in table of my heart;​

My body is the frame wherein 'tis held,​

And perspective it is best painter's art.​

I enjoy metrical analysis and found the fourth line particularly difficult to analyze as iambic pentameter. But I came up with an analysis I like, involving an additional unstressed syllable in the first foot (not uncommon) and (here's the key thing) a metrical pause, or omitted unstressed syllable (^), between "best" and "painter's." It is that part of my analysis that might be said to be daring, but I like it:

and per SPEC | tive IT | is BEST | ^ PAIN | ter's ART​

But then I looked at a couple of books I have on Shakespeare's sonnets, and they each put an accent mark on "per" -- with no discussion of the legitimacy of that move! I'm wondering whether there is any historical justification for that pronunciation or whether settling for a butchered pronunciation there was the only way the authors could think to save the iambic pentameter in that line:

and PER | spec TIVE | it IS | best PAIN | ter's ART​

What do you think?

Thank you.

 

[emsr2d2]

Here's a recording of Sir John Gielgud reading that sonnet. An actor of his standing would be absolutely certain of the correct stress.
(Just in case you can't open the link, the stress does indeed come on "per".)

 

[Annabel Lee]

Thank you, Emsr2d2! That's good enough proof for me. I bow down to Sir John Gielgud's English.

I can't hear his name without thinking of Chariots of Fire and Shine, two of my all-time favorite films.

 

[jutfrank]

 

[Annabel Lee]

Thanks, Jutfrank. I didn't think a version with Elizabethan pronunciation could be so easily found.

Both recordings agree in the stress pattern of "perspective": PER-spect-(TIVE). Where I put all caps in parentheses, I mean to indicate secondary stress. I wonder if that was just how "perspective" was pronounced in those days, or if the stress pattern was felt to be unfixed in that word and therefore easily tiltable by poetic meter.

I do hear a slight difference, metrically, between the Gielgud recording and the Elizabethen recording. Gielgud seems to me to place equal stress on "best" and "paint-," whereas the fellow who does the Elizabethan recording makes "best" unstressed. Also, interestingly, in neither recording is there a discernable difference in stress between "it" and "is."

Gielgud: and PER | spec (TIVE) | it is | BEST PAIN | ter's ART​

Elizabethan: and PER | spec (TIVE) | it is | best PAIN | ter's ART​

​

Gielgud seems to use a pyrrhic foot followed by a spondee in the third and fourth foot. However, if one listens closely to Gielgud's spondee, one might say that there is a discernable pause between the two stressed syllables. If it coud be analyzed as a metrical pause, that would allow for the possibility my scansion, with its modernized pronunciation.

Me: and per SPEC | tive IT | is BEST | ^ PAIN | ter's ART​

I also place more emphasis on "it" than on "is." Even if they do carry the same level of stress, as they do in the Gielgud and Elizabethan recordings, "it" must still, I think, be said to carry more stress than "-tive." In my scansion, "it" and "is" do not even occur in the same metrical foot. I hear both "-tive IT" and "is BEST" as iambs.