ANALYZING THE POETRY OF HAMILTON. We have seen several plays by David Ives which demonstrate the power of clever rhymed couplets to delight and amuse and to make every bit of dialogue interesting. . This article by Joel Eastwood and Erik Hinton analyzes some of the complex rhyming that Hamilton uses.
Perfect rhymes. They begin with perfect rhyme, as exemplified by “squalor” and “scholar” in the passage I quoted yesterday:
(How does a bastard, orphan, son of a whore and a
Scotsman, dropped in the middle of a
Forgotten spot in the Caribbean by providence
Impoverished, in squalor
Grow up to be a hero and a scholar?)
Off rhymes. Eastwood and Hinton use red letters to point out the internal rhymes in the passage—-SCOTSman, DROPPED in, forGOTTen, SPOT.
Eastwood and Hinton point out that: “These imperfect, internal rhymes are a hallmark of rap and hip-hop.” They link to a verse from The Fugees, performed by Lauryn Hill, “which is littered with imperfect rhymes”.