Introduction

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the idea of rhyme as a binding force, which is fundamental to poetic theory in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Early modern poets consistently imagined rhyme as a band, fetter, or link that tied the poem together. Indeed, many theorists believed that rhyme's connective function made it essential to the structural integrity of verse. This understanding of rhyme as a band, fetter, or jointure made it apt to be seen as an analogy for other types of bonds, particularly those that unite friends, lovers, or political communities. Therefore, the same questions that fascinated sonneteers and plagued political theorists—What powers can bind the freeborn mind? Are these powers natural or artificial? What is the scope of individual liberty? Can limitation be productive?—also animated debates about rhyme and its place in English verse. By telling the dynamic story of rhyme from Elizabeth's reign—when the couplet was a sign of ancient liberty—to the Restoration, this book investigates what it meant for poets to subject themselves to what they so often described as the bands or fetters of rhyme.