rhyme royal, seven-lineiambic pentameterstanza rhymingababbcc. The rhyme royal was first used in English verse in the 14th century byGeoffrey Chaucer inTroilus and Criseyde andThe Parlement of Foules. Traditionally, the namerhyme royal is said toderive fromThe Kingis Quair (“The King’s Book), attributed toJames I of Scotland (1394–1437), but some critics trace the name to the Frenchchant royal. Chaucer probably borrowed it from the French poet and musicianGuillaume 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’sRape 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 byWilliam Morris in the 19th century and byJohn Masefield in the 20th.