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Here are lines from "Richard III":

Farewell. The leisure and the fearful time

Cuts off the ceremonious vows of love

And ample interchange of sweet discourse

Which so long sundered friends should dwell upon.

Not just these lines, but the entire monologue scans perfectly. Except for the line that contains the word "ceremonious." Which, according to today's dictionaries, has five syllables. For the line to scan properly, it should be four.

This is, perhaps, the opposite of the "ambitious" thing (the word oft-repeated in Antony's monologue in "Julius Caesar": "But Brutus says he was ambitious." For the line properly to scan, it requires one more syllable. The one hypothesis I ran across somewhere stated that back in Shakespeare's time, the word ambitious was pronounced "am-bi-shey-es," providing that necessary extra syllable).

Has "ceremonious" undergone the ... uh ... reverse transformation? Was it pronounced "ce-re-mon-yes" or something like that back in Shakespeare's day?

Ricky
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    Such "extrametrical" unstressed syllables can be elided, or spoken so lightly the meter is not disturbed. For another example you need look no farther than the second line of the same speech, Who prays continually for Richmond's good. – StoneyB on hiatus Oct 29 '15 at 00:48
  • Thank you. Is that an official term, "extrametrical"? – Ricky Oct 29 '15 at 00:57
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    Both ceremonious and ambitious probably had two pronunciations back then ... ious could likely be one or two syllables, depending on what the meter needed. I don't think anybody pronounces ambitious with four syllables today, but pronouncing ceremonious with four sounds fine to me. – Peter Shor Oct 29 '15 at 01:08
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    @Ricky Fersher. Bridges' classic essay on Milton has an entire Appendix on "The Extrametrical Syllable". – StoneyB on hiatus Oct 29 '15 at 01:12
  • @PeterShor: Are you saying that if someone attempted to write something for the stage TODAY, in iambic pentameter, ceremonious with four vowels would be okay? Not too archaic (in the same vein as "o'r") perhaps? This is kind of important to me. – Ricky Oct 29 '15 at 01:35
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    @Ricky: That's exactly what I meant to say. – Peter Shor Oct 29 '15 at 01:37
  • @PeterShor: So, let me just make sure: NOT too archaic-sounding? – Ricky Oct 29 '15 at 01:38
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    I think ceremonious is acceptable with four syllables today. But if you look at other -ious words in Shakespeare, he has both a two-syllable and a three-syllable pronunciation of curious, and the two-syllable pronunciation doesn't work today. So it appears that -ious for Shakespeare was either one or two syllables, no matter what word contained it. – Peter Shor Oct 29 '15 at 01:45
  • @PeterShor: My ear isn't as finely attuned to these nuances as yours, so please indulge me a little further: ceremonious works with the subtraction of one syllable (that sounds like, or actually becomes, in casual speech flow, a diphthong (.... right? ...), but curious does not. Why not? Is there a way to make two separate lists of words ending in -ious? Those that will withstand ... uh ... diphthongization ... subtraction ... and those that won't ... today? – Ricky Oct 29 '15 at 01:59
  • How about "imperial" with three syllables? – Ricky Oct 29 '15 at 02:03
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    I don't know if there's a rule. ingenious is always three syllables in AmE (although BrE dictionaries seem to disagree), and curious is always three syllables, while I think ceremonious sounds fine with either four or five syllables. Part of it is the consonant before the -ious suffix, but individual words with the same consonant seem to behave differently ... I don't know why. – Peter Shor Oct 29 '15 at 04:22
  • Could the "r" be that consonant? ... melodious? amphibious? obsequious? oblivious? And then nefaRious, spuRious, stentoRious? What do you think? – Ricky Oct 29 '15 at 05:55
  • Even if it can be pronounced as 4 syllables, I don't think that's the point here, as the word still doesn't fit the iambic pattern. Iambic pentameter really means predominantly made of 5 iambs—with scope for other kinds of feet for variety (as it gets very monotonous to have endless iambs). Even if restricted to 4 syllables, the word still doesn't fit the iambic pattern. You often see more than 10 syllables in a line of iambic pentameter. – ralph.m Nov 23 '15 at 02:19
  • @ralph.m: I agree with you about variety. I disagree about the other thing. Words that are supposed to fit the pattern should fit the pattern. – Ricky Nov 23 '15 at 02:24
  • Do you mean all iambic pentameter lines should contain 10 syllables? That's not how it works. There are many (hundreds? thousands?) of lines even in Shakespeare's work that contain more or fewer than 10 syllables. Likewise, words or often inserted deliberately to break the stress pattern, to create variety, impact etc. and to avoid an endless dee-dum-dee-dum-dee-dum pattern. – ralph.m Nov 23 '15 at 02:29
  • No, I didn't say that. Whatever gave you that idea? You can pretty much tell, most of the time, whether the line's supposed to scan iambically or not. – Ricky Nov 23 '15 at 02:34

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There are many English words where elision of syllables is perfectly common, and therefore acceptable in stage speech.

In this case, the actor will say seh-reh-mone-yus and the audience will understand him perfectly.

egrunin
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