Dennis McCarthy on All The Mysteries That Remain

Finally, (Part 3 of my response), you are absolutely right that many of North's plays of the 1550s, 1560s, and 1570s were originally in end-stopped rhyme--but then he began changing them to freer blank verse by the 1580s. Indeed, it is indisputable that both Romeo and Juliet and Richard II were originally written in end-stopped rhyme and then were altered from their original form. That’s why so many of their lines still contain end-stopped rhyme—and why we find lines with what Dover-Wilson called “internal rhymes.” That is, the author merely rearranged the line so the rhyme didn’t fall at the end of the line.