Rhyme Royal

A rhyme royal poem is a type of poem that is set in iambic pentameter, which is a meter of ten syllables in each line. The poem consists of seven lines and has a rhyming scheme of ababbcc. Rhyme royal poetry was, like heroic couplets, was first used by fourteenth-century poet Geoffrey Chaucer. Rhyme royal poetry are another way to bring an impacting and passionate air to stories of adventure, tragedy, grandeur, and more.

During the fourteenth-Century, all the way to the sixteenth-century, rhyme royal poetry was the favorite form of poetry to all audiences. Interest in rhyme royal poetry fizzled out but still held a strong position when wanting to display dramatic tales. The last significant rhyme royal poem was written by William Shakespeare. Its name was, "Rape of Lucrece" released in 1954. 

A type of poetry consisting 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.

Example

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.