Rhyme royal (or rime royal) is a type of poem with a specific rhyme pattern. Geoffrey Chaucer introduced this form to English poetry. It was very popular in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Even though its influence has been less strong in more recent times, it has still affected English poetry.

Form

The rhyme royal stanza has seven lines, often written in iambic pentameter. The rhyme pattern follows the order A B A B B C C. This stanza can be arranged in two ways: as a group of three lines and two pairs of lines (A B A B B C C) or as a group of four lines and a group of three lines (A B A B B C C). These arrangements allow for variety, especially in longer poems that tell a story.

Because the rhyme royal stanza has more space than quatrains and ends with a pair of lines that create a sense of closure, it is believed to have a repeating, thoughtful quality.

History

Geoffrey Chaucer first used the rhyme royal stanza in his long poems Troilus and Criseyde and The Parlement of Foules, written in the late 1300s. He also used it in four of The Canterbury Tales: The Man of Law's Tale, The Prioress' Tale, The Clerk's Tale, and The Second Nun's Tale, as well as in many shorter poems. He may have borrowed the form from a French ballade or an Italian ottava rima, but he left out the fifth line. His contemporary, John Gower, used rhyme royal in In Praise of Peace and a short section of Confessio Amantis. By the 1400s, rhyme royal became a common form in Middle English poetry, used alongside rhyming couplets.

James I of Scotland used rhyme royal in his poem The Kingis Quair. The name "rhyme royal" might come from its use in royal poems or from its use in poems written for royalty during festivals. After Chaucer's death, many English and Scottish poets used the form. John Lydgate used it in many of his poems and in his long work The Fall of Princes. Poets like Thomas Hoccleve, John Capgrave, George Ashby, and the anonymous author of The Flower and the Leaf also used rhyme royal. The Scottish poet Robert Henryson used it in his long works The Morall Fabillis and Testament of Cresseid. Some 15th-century Middle English romances, such as Generides, Amoryus and Cleopes, and The Romans of Partenay, also used the form. Rhyme royal appeared in drama, such as in The Digby Conversion of Saint Paul from the late 1400s.

In the early 1500s, poets like John Skelton, Stephen Hawes, Thomas Sackville, Alexander Barclay, William Dunbar, and David Lyndsay used rhyme royal in their works. Sir Thomas Wyatt used it in his poem "They flee from me that sometime did me seek." The seven-line stanza became less common during the Elizabethan era but was still used by John Davies in Orchestra and by William Shakespeare in The Rape of Lucrece.

In the late 1500s, Edmund Spenser used rhyme royal in Hymn of Heavenly Beauty but also created his own Spenserian stanza, which has a different rhyme pattern (ABABBCBCC). His stanza differs from iambic pentameter in its final line, which is a longer line called an English alexandrine. In the 1600s, John Milton extended the seventh line of rhyme royal into an alexandrine in poems like On the Death of a Fair Infant Dying of a Cough and On the Morning of Christ's Nativity. Like many poetic forms, rhyme royal fell out of use during the Restoration period in the late 1600s and was rarely used after that.

In the 1700s, Thomas Chatterton used a modified version of rhyme royal with an alexandrine in his fake Middle English poems, such as Elinoure and Juga and An Excelente Balade of Charitie. Romantic poets like William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who were influenced by Chatterton, used the modified form in works like Wordsworth's Resolution and Independence and Coleridge's Psyche.

In the late 1800s, William Morris, who admired Chaucer, used the rhyme scheme ABABBCBCC in parts of The Earthly Paradise. In the United States, Emma Lazarus used rhyme royal in some sections of her poem Epochs.

In the 20th century, notable poems in rhyme royal include W. H. Auden's Letter to Lord Byron (and some stanzas in The Shield of Achilles), W. B. Yeats's A Bronze Head, and John Masefield's Dauber.

English examples

Each example below comes from a different century. The first is from Chaucer, who may have introduced this form into English. The second is from 15th-century Scotland, where the Scottish Chaucerians used it widely. The third is from Thomas Wyatt.

The double sorrow of Troilus to tell,
That was the king Priamus' son of Troy,
In loving, how his adventures fell
From woe to weal, and after out of joy,
My purpose is, before I part from you,
Thesiphone, thou help me for tendyte
This woful verse, that weep as I write. (Troilus and Criseyde 1.1–7)

(Describing the god Saturn from an extremely cold realm)

His face fronsit, his lyre was like the leid,
His teeth chatterit and cheverit with the chin,
His eye drowpit, how sonkin in his head,
Out of his nois the meldrop fast can rin,
With lippis bla and cheikis leine and thin;
The ice-schoklis that fra his hair doun hang
Was wonder greit and as ane speir als lang. (Testament of Cresseid 155–161)

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)

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)

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)

Although most lines in English poetry use iambic pentameter, sometimes other lines are used. 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)

Percy Bysshe Shelley in his poem On an Icicle that Clung to the Grass of a Grave used anapestic tetrameter 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)

Other languages

Rhyme royal was not very popular in countries where English is not spoken. It was used in French poetry during the 15th century. It sometimes appeared in Spanish and Portuguese poetry. Saint John of the Cross wrote a poem called Coplas hechas sobre un éxtasis de harta contemplación. Portuguese poet and playwright Gil Vicente used the rhyme royal pattern in his Villancete. In the English translation by Aubrey Fitz Gerald Aubertine, the rhyme pattern of the original text is different:

Adorae montanhas O Deos das alturas, Tambem as verduras, Adorae desertos E serras floridas O Deos dos secretos, O Senhor das vidas; Ribeiras crescidas Louvae nas alturas Deos das creaturas. Louvae arvoredos De fruto presado, Digam os penedos: Deos seja louvado, E louve meu gado Nestas verduras Deos das alturas.

Worship, O mountains, The God unseen. And ye pastures green; Ye deserts adore, And ye flowered hills, The Lord who earth fills With life evermore. Praise Him, rivers and rills, God of earth and sky: Praise Him on high. With fruits' fair stock Ye woods Him praise. Ye mountain-ways And every rock; Praise Him, my flock. In these pastures green. The God unseen.

The villancete is similar in form to the Italian ballata mezzana (used by Guido Cavalcanti) or to the Spanish glosa. It has three parts: the first is a short introduction, followed by two stanzas with seven lines each.

Danish poet Adam Oehlenschläger used rhyme royal in one poem from his collection Nordens guder.

In Eastern Europe, rhyme royal is very rare. Polish poet Adam Asnyk used it in the poem Wśród przełomu (At the breakthrough). In Czech literature, František Kvapil wrote the poem V hlubinách mraků (In Depths of Darkness) using rhyme royal.