Sonnet Form

English/Shakespearean Sonnet

- Typically in iambic pentameter, however may vary in meter- 14 lines:

o 3 Quatrainso 1 Couplet

- ABAB, CDCD, EFEF, GG Rhyme Scheme- Couplet often resolves issues or questions presented in the 3 quatrains- Made popular by William Shakespeare

Sonnet XVIII (18)

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?Thou art more lovely and more temperate:Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,And summer’s lease hath all too short a date:Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,And often is his gold complexion dimmed,And every fair from fair sometime declines,By chance, or nature’s changing course untrimmed:But thy eternal summer shall not fade,Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st,Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade,When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st, So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see, So long lives this, and this gives light to thee.

Spenserian Sonnet

- 14 lines:o 3 Quatrainso 1 Couplet

- ABAB, BCBC, CDCD, EE Rhyme Scheme- Interlocking rhyme scheme pushes the sonnet toward the final couplet, which makes a key

point or comment.- Is a variant of the English/Shakespearean Sonnet- Named for Edmund Spenser, who (believe it or not) wrote in iambic meter more often than

Shakespeare.

Sonnet 75 (from Amoretti)

One day I wrote her name upon the strand,··But came the waves and washed it away:··Again I wrote it with a second hand,But came the tide, and made my pains his prey.Vain man, said she, that doest in vain assay··A mortal thing so to immortalize,··For I myself shall like to this decay,And eek my name be wiped out likewise.Not so (quoth I), let baser things devise··To die in dust, but you shall live by fame:··My verse your virtues rare shall eternize,And in the heavens write your glorious name.··Where whenas Death shall all the world subdue,··Our love shall live, and later life renew.

Petrarchan/Italian Sonnet

- First sonnet form to be written in the English language- 14 lines:

o 2 Stanzas: 8-line Octave 6-line Sestet

o Sestet typically responds to a question or situation posed by the octave- Rhyme scheme:

o Octave: ABBAABBAo Sestet: CDECDE

- Made popular by John Milton (particularly with Paradise Lost)- Named for Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch), an Italian scholar and poet

When I consider how my light is spent,··Ere half my days in this dark world and wide,··And that one talent which is death to hideLodged with me useless, though my soul more bentTo serve therewith my Maker, and present··My true account, lest He returning chide;··“Doth God exact day-labor, light denied?”I fondly ask. But Patience, to preventThat murmur, soon replies, “God doth not needEither man’s work or His own gifts. Who bestBear His mild yoke, they serve Him best. His stateIs kingly: thousands at His bidding speed,And post o’er land and ocean without rest;They also serve who only stand and wait.”