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Couplet poems consist of two rhyming lines of the same metric length, often eight or ten syllables. They have been used in English poetry for centuries and can be found in longer poems and other forms such as sonnets. Geoffrey Chaucer may have been the first to use couplets regularly. In the 17th and 18th centuries, they were used in heroic poems by poets such as John Dryden and Alexander Pope. Couplets are concise and often used to close other poetic forms such as the Shakespearean sonnet. However, they fell out of favor in the 19th century but remain an important form of English poetry.
Couplet poems are poems composed of two lines that usually rhyme. The two lines are usually of the same metric length. In English poetry, meter is usually measured in syllables and lines are often eight or ten syllables long. Couplet poems have been used in English poetry for hundreds of years, ever since rhyme became a feature of English poetry. The couplet has also been used as the basic unit, or stanza, in longer and more extensive poems, and also appears in other poetic forms such as the sonnet.
Writing in the 14th century, Geoffrey Chaucer may have been the first English poet to regularly use the couplet. The general Prologue to his Canterbury Tales is written in rhyming couplets, as are some of the stories in the collection. Chaucer wrote in ten-syllable lines of five accents called iambic pentameter, which became the standard meter of most couplet poems.
Couplets were sometimes used in late 16th-century plays, which are best known for being written in the unrhymed form known as blank verse. In plays, Shakespeare and his contemporaries occasionally used couplets to mark the end of characters’ speeches as well as scenes and acts. Usually these were closed couplets, or two lines of text that could stand on their own as a single sentence or unit.
In the 17th and 18th centuries, rhyming couplets were often used in extended verse compositions called couplet heroic poems. The heroic couplet gets its name from being used in such epic and dramatic poems. John Dryden used heroic couplets in plays such as Tyrannick Love and poems including Mac Flecknoe. Alexander Pope is also often regarded as a master of the form. Significant heroic couplets by Pope include The Rape of the Lock and An Essay on Man.
Couplets have long been considered suitable for closing other types of poetic forms because they are so concise. The English or Shakespearean sonnet is an example of this. This form begins with three four-line stanzas, each typically developing a thought or idea. The final couplet of the Shakespearean sonnet is called the turning point and can summarize the poet’s feelings or express an ironic interpretation of the previous stanzas.
Beginning in the 19th century, couplets began to fall out of favor as a poetic device. Since then, they have largely been replaced by other rhyme schemes and non-rhymed poetry in general. Nonetheless, they remain an important form of English poetry.
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