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Shakespearean Sonnet Basics - Minmin
Shakespearean Sonnet Basics - Minmin
POBLETE
BSED 3-ENGLISH
When I / do COUNT / the CLOCK / that TELLS / the TIME (Sonnet 12)
When IN / dis GRACE / with FOR / tune AND / men's EYES
I ALL / a LONE / be WEEP / my OUT/ cast STATE (Sonnet 29)
Shakespeare's plays are also written primarily in iambic pentameter, but the lines are
unrhymed and not grouped into stanzas. Unrhymed iambic pentameter is called blank
verse. It should be noted that there are also many prose passages in Shakespeare's
plays and some lines of trochaic tetrameter, such as the Witches' speeches in Macbeth.
Sonnet Structure
There are fourteen lines in a Shakespearean sonnet. The first twelve lines are divided
into three quatrains with four lines each. In the three quatrains the poet establishes a
theme or problem and then resolves it in the final two lines, called the couplet. The
rhyme scheme of the quatrains is abab cdcd efef. The couplet has the rhyme scheme
gg. This sonnet structure is commonly called the English sonnet or the Shakespearean
sonnet, to distinguish it from the Italian Petrarchan sonnet form which has two parts: a
rhyming octave (abbaabba) and a rhyming sestet (cdcdcd). The Petrarchan sonnet style
was extremely popular with Elizabethan sonneteers, much to Shakespeare's disdain (he
mocks the conventional and excessive Petrarchan style in Sonnet 130).
Only three of Shakespeare's 154 sonnets do not conform to this structure: Sonnet 99,
which has 15 lines; Sonnet 126, which has 12 lines; and Sonnet 145, which is written in
iambic tetrameter.
In this lesson, we'll look at one of the most important received forms in English
literature. This form is the Petrarchan sonnet, also known as the Italian sonnet.
Named after 14-century Italian poet Francesco Petrarcha, the Petrarchan sonnet
is a 14-line poem that uses iambic pentameter and a somewhat flexible rhyme
scheme
When I use the term 'iambic pentameter,' I simply mean that each line contains
five iambs, or a weak syllable followed by a strong syllable, such as the word
'aRISE' or the phrase 'the NIGHT.' For the purposes of this lesson, however, we'll
be focusing more on the rhyme scheme of the Petrarchan sonnet.
When I say that rhyme scheme is somewhat flexible, I mean that the first eight
lines, or octave, of a Petrarchan sonnet almost always follows the same rhyme
scheme: abbaabba. A good way to remember this is to think of the Swedish pop
band ABBA. The rhyme scheme of the last six lines, or sestet, of a Petrarchan
sonnet varies from poem to poem. Some of the most common rhyme schemes for
the sestet are cdecde, cdcdcd, cddcdd, and cddece. Of course, these aren't the
only rhyme schemes available for the sestet.