Editing Couplet (section)

==In English poetry==
Regular rhyme was not originally a feature of English poetry: [[Old English]] verse came in metrically paired units somewhat analogous to couplets, but constructed according to [[alliterative verse]] principles. The rhyming couplet entered English verse in the early [[Middle English]] period through the imitation of [[medieval Latin]] and [[Old French]] models.<ref>Max Kaluza, ''A Short History of English Versification'', translated by A. C. Dunstan (London: Allen, 1911), pp. 144–56.</ref> The earliest surviving examples are a metrical paraphrase of the [[Lord's Prayer]] in short-line couplets, and the ''[[Poema Morale]]'' in septenary (or "heptameter") couplets, both dating from the twelfth century.<ref>T. L. Kington-Oliphant, ''The Sources of Standard English'' (London: Macmillan, 1873), p. [https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Page:The_Sources_of_Standard_English.djvu/106 77].</ref>

Rhyming couplets were often used in Middle English and [[Early Modern English|early modern English]] poetry. [[Chaucer]]'s ''[[The Canterbury Tales|Canterbury Tales]]'', for instance, is predominantly written in rhyming couplets, and Chaucer also incorporated a concluding couplet into his [[rhyme royal]] stanza. Similarly, [[Shakespearean]] [[sonnet]]s often employ rhyming couplets at the end to emphasize the theme. Take one of Shakespeare's most famous sonnets, [[Sonnet 18]], for example (the rhyming couplet is shown in italics):

:: Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
:: Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
:: Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
:: And summer's lease hath all too short a date:
:: Sometimes too hot the eye of heaven shines,
:: And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
:: And every fair from fair sometime declines,
:: By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd;
:: But thy eternal summer shall not fade
:: Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
:: Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
:: When in eternal lines to time thou growest:
:: ''So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,''
:: ''So long lives this and this gives life to thee.''<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.shakespeare-online.com/sonnets/18.html|title=Shakespeare Sonnet 18 – Shall I compare thee to a summer's day|first=Amanda|last=Mabillard|website=shakespeare-online.com|url-status=live|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131112213943/http://www.shakespeare-online.com/sonnets/18.html|archive-date=2013-11-12}}</ref>

In the late seventeenth century and early eighteenth-century English rhyming couplets achieved the zenith of their prestige in English verse, in the popularity of [[Heroic couplet|heroic couplets]]. The heroic couplet was used by famous poets for ambitious translations of revered Classical texts, for instance, in [[John Dryden]]'s translation of the ''[[Aeneid]]'' and in [[Alexander Pope]]'s translation of the ''[[Iliad]]''.<ref>Max Kaluza, ''A Short History of English Versification'', translated by A. C. Dunstan (London: Allen, 1911), pp. 288–96.</ref>

Though poets still sometimes write in couplets, the form fell somewhat from favour in English in the twentieth century; contemporary poets writing in English sometimes prefer unrhymed couplets, distinguished by layout rather than by matching sounds.<ref>J. A. Cuddon, ''The Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory'', 4th edition, revised by C. E. Preston (London: Penguin, 1999), p. 186.</ref>