Shakespearean couplets are two-line rhymed remarks found in Shakespeare’s works, including sonnets and plays. Sonnet couplets provide an answer or commentary on the poem’s theme. Rhyming couplets have the same ending sound, while heroic couplets are written in iambic pentameter. Blank verse is also used, sometimes paired with rhyming couplets for dramatic effect.
The term Shakespearean couplet derives its name from the works of William Shakespeare, a famous English writer who composed several famous works during the 16th and 17th centuries. Although his works are perhaps best known, Shakespeare also composed several poems called sonnets. These works – along with some of his plays – contained two-line rhymed remarks known as couplets. Specific Shakespearean couplets found in sonnets include rhyming couplets or heroic couplets. The writer’s plays often contained a form called a closing couplet.
Sonnet couplets comprised the majority of Shakespearean couplets. Shakespeare’s sonnets contained fourteen lines. The first twelve lines introduced a problem or theme, usually related to love. Two separate lines at the conclusion of the poem, normally rhyming and of equal length, are the couplet. The couplets found in the sonnets either provided an answer to the problem or question presented in the first part of the poem, or served as a general commentary on the poem’s theme.
When the final words in each line of a couplet have the same ending sound, the couplet is known as a rhyming couplet. Rhyming verse was common in Shakespeare’s plays, and particularly in Shakespearean couplets. Consider Shakespeare’s final lines of his first sonnet: “Pity the world, or else this glutton be / To eat the world’s due, for the grave and for thee.” A typical symbolic representation of this type of rhyme scheme is AA, which indicates that two successive lines rhyme.
In Shakespearean couplets, a rhymed couplet can be further classified as a heroic couplet. This form occurs when the lines of the couplet are written in iambic pentameter. Meters specifically refer to the rhythm that the lines of the poem create. Rhythm is built by combining different patterns of stressed and unstressed syllables. Five pairs of one unstressed syllable and one stressed syllable – for a total of ten syllables in a line – are what make up iambic pentameter.
Much of Shakespearean literature is written in blank verse, which is rhythmic poetry without a rhyme scheme. However, Shakespearean couplets known as cover couplets are sometimes paired with this technique. Blank verse was employed by Shakespeare in plays so that his characters sound natural but still somewhat refined. Many of the lengthy monologues or dialogues often employed blank verse, and Shakespeare sometimes concluded these speeches with a rhyming couplet to provide contrast and dramatic flair to the speech’s conclusion, as in the historical play Henry V: “His jest shall be savoring but of superficial spirit / When thousands cry more than they laughed”.
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