rhyme royal

rhyme royal, seven-line iambic pentameter stanza rhyming ababbcc. The rhyme royal was first used in English verse in the 14th century by Geoffrey Chaucer in Troilus and Criseyde and The Parlement of Foules. Traditionally, the name rhyme royal is said to derive from The Kingis Quair (“The King’s Book), attributed to James I of Scotland (1394–1437), but some critics trace the name to the French chant royal. Chaucer probably borrowed it from the French poet and musician Guillaume de Machaut (c. 1300–77), who may have invented it or derived it from earlier French and Provençal poets.

Rhyme royal became the favourite form for long narrative poems during the 15th and early 16th centuries. Shakespeare’s Rape of Lucrece (1594) was the last important poem of the period in rhyme royal. Later, Milton experimented with the form, and it was successfully used by William Morris in the 19th century and by John Masefield in the 20th.