Samuel Daniel (1562-1619) was one of the greatest poets of the English Renaissance, and his abilities as a writer of rhymed verse made him unusually well-placed to issue a rebuttal to Thomas Campion’s Observations in the Art of English Poesie. Published in 1602, the Observations promotes quantitative metre, whereby syllables are patterned according to whether they are long or short, as a challenge to the usual practice of organising syllables based on whether they are stressed or unstressed; and, largely because the latter type of verse normally employed rhyme, it also criticises rhyme itself. Campion advises that poets can perhaps still make use of rhyme “sparingly”, but he nevertheless links it with …
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Citation: Layram, Miles . "A Defence of Rhyme". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 24 May 2017 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=36015, accessed 21 November 2024.]
