Rhyme royal

Rime Royal (or Rhyme royal) is a rhyming stanza form that was introduced into English poetry by Geoffrey Chaucer.

Form

The rhyme royal stanza consists of seven lines, usually in iambic pentameter. The rhyme scheme is a-b-a-b-b-c-c. In practice, the stanza can be constructed either as a tercet and two couplets (a-b-a, b-b, c-c) or a quatrain and a tercet (a-b-a-b, b-c-c). This allows for a good deal of variety, especially when the form is used for longer narrative poems and along with the couplet, it was the standard narrative metre in the late Middle Ages.

History

Chaucer first used the rhyme royal stanza in his long poems Troilus and Criseyde and Parlement of Foules. He also used it for four of the Canterbury Tales including the Prioress' Tale and in a number of shorter lyrics. He may have adapted the form from a French ballade stanza or from the Italian Ottava rima, with the omission of the fifth line.

James I of Scotland used rhyme royal for his Chaucerian poem The Kingis Quair, and it is believed that the name of the stanza derives from this royal use. English and Scottish poets were greatly influenced by Chaucer in the century after his death and most made use of the form in at least some of their works. John Lydgate used the stanza for many of his occasional and love poems, while Robert Henryson in his translation of Aesop's Fables and in The Testament of Cresseid and the anonymous The Flower and the Leaf were both early adopters of the form. In the 16th century Thomas Wyatt used it in his poem They flee from me that sometime did me seek, Thomas Sackville in the Induction to The Mirror for Magistrates, Alexander Barclay in his Ship of Fools and Stephen Hawes in his Pastime of Pleasure.

The seven-line stanza began to go out of fashion during the Elizabethan era but it was still used by John Davys in Orchestra and by William Shakespeare in The Rape of Lucrece. Edmund Spenser wrote his Hymn of Heavenly Beauty using rhyme royal but he also derived his own Spenserian stanza with the rhyme scheme a-b-a-b-b-c-b-c-c partly by adapting rhyme royal. Like all stanzaic forms, rhyme royal it fell out of fashion during the Restoration, and has never really recovered anything like its original status. Probably the most important 20th century poems in the form are W. H. Auden's Letter to Lord Byron and The Shield of Achilles.

Some examples

Here is the opening stanza of Troilus and Criseyde:

The double sorwe of Troilus to tellen,

That was the king Priamus sone of Troye,

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

and this is the first stanza of the Wyatt poem:

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.

Ballade Royal

The ballade royal is a poem form that uses rhyme royal stanzas within the discipline of a ballade. Ballade royal may use iambic pentameters or iambic tetrameters. Typically, there are four stanzas with the final stanza taking the place of the more usual envoi. The final line of each stanza is a repeated refrain. Chaucer used this form in his Ballade of Good Counsel.

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