Every town of any importance had its Chamber
of Rhetoric. "These Chambers," says Longfellow in his _Poets and
Poetry of Europe_, "were to Holland, in the fifteenth century, what
the Guilds of the Meistersingers were to Germany, and were numerous
throughout the Netherlands. Brussels could boast of five; Antwerp
of four; Louvain of three; and Ghent, Bruges, Malines, Middelburg,
Gouda, Haarlem, and Amsterdam of at least one. Each Chamber had its
coat of arms and its standard, and the directors bore the title
of Princes and Deans. At times they gave public representations
of poetic dialogues and stage-plays, called _Spelen van Sinne_,
or Moralities. Like the Meistersingers, they gave singular titles
to their songs and metres. A verse was called a _Regel_; a strophe,
a _Clause_; and a burden or refrain, a _Stockregel_. If a half-verse
closed as a strophe, it was a _Steert_, or tail. _Tafel-spelen_,
and _Spelen van Sinne_, were the titles of the dramatic exhibitions;
and the rhymed invitation to these was called a _Charte_, or _Uitroep_
(outcry). _Ketendichten_ (chain-poems) are short poems in which the
last word of each line rhymes with the first of the line following;
_Scaekberd_ (checkerbourd), a poem of sixty-four lines, so rhymed,
that in every direction it forms a strophe of eight lines; and
_Dobbel-steert_ (double-tail), a poem in which a double rhyme closes
each line.
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