Rhyme royal
Rhyme royal (or rime royal) is a rhyming stanza form that was introduced to English poetry by Geoffrey Chaucer.[1] The form enjoyed significant success in the fifteenth century and into the sixteenth century. It has had a more subdued but continuing influence on English verse in more recent centuries.
Form
The rhyme royal stanza consists of seven lines, usually in iambic pentameter. The rhyme scheme is ABABBCC. In practice, the stanza can be constructed either as a tercet and two couplets (ABA BB CC) or a quatrain and a tercet (ABAB BCC). This allows for variety, especially when the form is used for longer narrative poems.
Thanks to the form's spaciousness compared to quatrains, and the sense of conclusion offered by the couplet of new rhyme in the sixth and seventh lines, it is thought to have a cyclical, reflective quality.[2]
History
Introduction and success
Chaucer first used the rhyme royal stanza in his long poems
Early-modern uses
In the early sixteenth century rhyme royal continued to appear in the works of poets such as
The later sixteenth-century poet
Revivals
In the eighteenth century, Thomas Chatterton used Milton's modified rhyme royal stanza with a terminal alexandrine for some of his forged faux-Middle English poems, such as "Elinoure and Juga" and "An Excelente Balade of Charitie". The Romantic writers William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, both figures who were influenced by Chatterton, adopted Milton's modified rhyme royal stanza in some works, such as Wordsworth's "Resolution and Independence" and Coleridge's "Psyche".
In the later nineteenth century William Morris, strongly influenced by Chaucer, wrote many parts of The Earthly Paradise with the related rhyme scheme ABABBCBCC.[7] In the United States, Emma Lazarus wrote some short sections of her cycle poem "Epochs" in rhyme royal.
Notable twentieth-century poems in orthodox rhyme royal are W. H. Auden's Letter to Lord Byron (as well as some of the stanzas in The Shield of Achilles), W. B. Yeats's A Bronze Head and John Masefield's Dauber.
English examples
Iambic pentameter
Each example below is from a different century. The first is from Chaucer who may have introduced the form into English. The second is from 15th-century Scotland where the
- 14th century — Chaucer
The double sorwe of Troilus to tellen,
That was the king
In lovinge, how his aventures fellen
Fro wo to wele, and after out of Ioye,
My purpos is, er that I parte fro ye,
Thesiphone, thou help me for tendyte
Thise woful vers, that wepen as I wryt (Troilus and Criseyde 1.1–7)
- 15th century — Henryson
(Describing the god Saturn hailing from an extremely cold realm)
His face fronsit, his lyre was lyke the leid,
His teith chatterit and cheverit with the chin,
His
Out of his nois the meldrop fast can rin,
With lippis
The ice-schoklis that fra his hair doun hang
Was wonder greit and as ane
- 16th century — Wyatt
They flee from me that sometime did me seek
With naked foot, stalking in my chamber.
I have seen them gentle, tame, and meek,
That now are wild and do not remember
That sometime they put themself in danger
To take bread at my hand; and now they range,
Busily seeking with a continual change. ("They Flee from Me" 1–7, modern spelling)
- 19th century — Emma Lazarus
It comes not in such wise as she had deemed,
Else might she still have clung to her despair.
More tender, grateful than she could have dreamed,
Fond hands passed pitying over brows and hair,
And gentle words borne softly through the air,
Calming her weary sense and wildered mind,
By welcome, dear communion with her kind. ("Sympathy" 1–7)
- 20th century – W. B. Yeats
Here at right of the entrance this bronze head,
Human, superhuman, a bird's round eye,
Everything else withered and mummy-dead.
What great tomb-haunter sweeps the distant sky
(Something may linger there though all else die)
And finds there nothing to make its terror less
Hysterica passio of its own emptiness? ("A Bronze Head" 1–7)
Other meters
Although in English verse the rhyme royal stanza is overwhelmingly composed in iambic pentameter, occasionally other lines are employed. Thomas Wyatt used iambic dimeter in his Revocation:
What should I say?
—Since Faith is dead,
And Truth away
From you is fled?
Should I be led
With doubleness?
Nay! nay! mistress. (1–7)[8]
Percy Bysshe Shelley in his poem On an Icicle that Clung to the Grass of a Grave used anapestic tetrameter[9] instead of iambic pentameter:
Oh! take the pure gem to where southerly breezes,
Waft repose to some bosom as faithful as fair,
In which the warm current of love never freezes,
As it rises unmingled with selfishness there,
Which, untainted by pride, unpolluted by care,
Might dissolve the dim icedrop, might bid it arise,
Too pure for these regions, to gleam in the skies. (1–7)[10]
Other languages
Outside English-speaking countries rhyme royal was never very popular. It was used in French poetry in the 15th century. Sometimes it occurred in Spanish and Portuguese poetry. Saint John of the Cross wrote the poem Coplas hechas sobre un éxtasis de harta contemplación.[11] Portuguese playwright and poet Gil Vicente used rhyme royal scheme in his Villancete (in the English translation by Aubrey Fitz Gerald Aubertine, the rhyme scheme of the original text is altered):
Adorae montanhas |
Worship, O mountains, |
| —Gil Vicente | —Aubrey Fitz Gerald Aubertine |
The villancete is similar in form to the Italian ballata mezzana (used by Guido Cavalcanti) or to the Spanish glosa. It consists of three stanzas: the first is a short envoi, followed by two seven-line stanzas.
Danish poet Adam Oehlenschläger used rhyme royal in one poem in his Nordens guder.[13]
In Eastern Europe, rhyme royal is extremely rare. Polish poet Adam Asnyk used it in the poem Wśród przełomu (At the breakthrough).[14] In Czech literature František Kvapil wrote the poem V hlubinách mraků[15] (In Depths of Darkness) in rhyme royal.[16]
References
- ^ "Rhyme royal | poetic form | Britannica". www.britannica.com.
- ^ a b c T Krier, "Rhyme Royal", in The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics, edited by Roland Greene, 4th edition (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press).
- ^ James Dean, "Gower, Chaucer, and Rhyme Royal", Studies in Philology 88 (1991), 251–75.
- ^ Martin Stevens, "The Royal Stanza in Early English Literature", PMLA 94 (1979), 62–76.
- ^ Elizabeth Robertson, "Rhyme Royal and Romance", in The Transmission of Medieval Romance: Metres, Manuscripts and Early Prints, edited by Ad Putter and Judith A. Jefferson (Cambridge: Brewer, 2018), pp. 50–68 (pp. 53–4).
- ^ Elizabeth Robertson, "Rhyme Royal and Romance", in The Transmission of Medieval Romance: Metres, Manuscripts and Early Prints, edited by Ad Putter and Judith A. Jefferson (Cambridge: Brewer, 2018), pp. 50–68 (p. 60).
- ^ Joseph Berg Esenwein and Mary Eleanor Roberts, The Art of Versification, Revised edition (Springfield, 1921), pp 111–112.
- ^ "36. A Revocation". February 27, 2023.
- ^ Edward Morton Payson, English versification, Modern Language Notes, Vol. 18, No. 6., p. 175.
- ^ "text at Infoplease".
- ^ "Coplas hechas sobre un éxtasis de harta contemplación - Wikisource". es.wikisource.org.
- ^ Lyrics of Gil Vicente by Aubrey F. G. Bell, Second Edition, Basil Blackwell, Oxford 1921.
- ^ Oehlenschläger, Adam (March 23, 1870). "Nordens guder. Et episk digt af Oehlenschläger". Kjøbenhavn, Selskabet til udgivelse af Oehlenschls̈agers skrifter – via Internet Archive.
- ^ "Poezye T. 1 (Adam Asnyk)/Wśród przełomu - Wikiźródła, wolna biblioteka". pl.wikisource.org.
- ^ Zaváté stopy. Verše Františka Kvapila, V Praze, Nakladatelství J. Otto Knihtiskárna, 1887, s. 53–54.
- ^ Jakub Říha, Rym a strofika v českém verši, obzlváště u Jana Nerudy, Praha 2015, p. 93.
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