Yes, usually in such cases the words used to rhyme (and sometimes still do, as with Brits pronouncing "rain" and "again"). Once you know this, pronouncing it an

Yes, usually in such cases the words used to rhyme (and sometimes still do, as with Brits pronouncing "rain" and "again"). Once you know this, pronouncing it any other way feels unfair to the author, as in Sonnet 116 by Shakespeare: Let me not to the marriage of true minds Admit impediments. Love is not love Which alters when it alteration finds, Or bends with the remover to remove: O no; it is an ever-fixed mark, That looks on tempests, and is never shaken; It is the star to every wandering bark, Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken. Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks Within his bending sickle's compass come; Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, But bears it out even to the edge of doom. If this be error and upon me proved, I never writ, nor no man ever loved. All of the rhymes were exact in the accent of Shakespeare's day ("original pronunciation", or OP), so reading them today in a "proper" accent makes it seem like the Bard dropped the ball on his rhyme scheme. (For example, in OP "love" rhymes with "remove" and "come" rhymes with "doom".) For more on this subject, see here: http://youtu.be/gPlpphT7n9s http://youtu.be/gPlpphT7n9s and here: http://originalpronunciation.com/ http://originalpronunciation.com/ To hear Sonnet 116 in OP, see here: http://www.pronouncingshakespeare.com/op-recordings/ http://www.pronouncingshakespeare.com/op-recordings/