The only reading I can come up with, and it's really stretching generosity here, is that the works were written smack in the middle of the Great Vowel Shift. So

The only reading I can come up with, and it's really stretching generosity here, is that the works were written smack in the middle of the Great Vowel Shift. Some of the rhymes are lost/opaque for modern speakers. But that doesn't really change the core inanity of the parenthetical.