And to clarify: in my loyalty to exact rhyme I do also mean precision of thought behind the rhyme. Nobody wants just a rhyme for its own sake - that's doggerel. The insight is in the thought; the craft is in the rhyme, so that the thought is perfectly captured.
There is a lovely passage in Tom Stoppard's The Real Thing where the playwright is trying to explain the difference between a bad script that has been put before him for perusal, and good writing. He likens a bad piece of writing to a log of wood hitting a ball and going only so far, and well-crafted work to a cricket bat, which has been shaped and sprung (i.e. crafted) to make the ball sail further. If the writing is well crafted, the point sails into the audience with greater effect, to paraphrase weakly the more precise exact wording of this wonderful passage.
It's not just in lyric writing. Imagine if those astonishing artists of the Greek statuary had not cared about the precise effect of the marble folds of the tunics and peploi - but they did - and they created something for their present but something that can be admired through the ages. It almost looks as if the breeze is still brushing against the fluted folds of the dress - and it's marble! ( 'S Marble-ous, 'S Wonderful...oh, sorry, couldn't resist). Imagine if Michelangelo had said, "That'll do," on the first go at roof of the the Sistine Chapel.
And of course, add to that list of the Golden Greats - Ira Gershwin, Fields, Harburg, Harnick, Merrill amongst so many others.... |
