Shakespearean Sonnets

An Introduction to Sonnets

A sonnet is a type of poem that has fourteen lines and follows a specific rhyming pattern, or rhyme scheme. There are several different styles of sonnet, and each follows a specific structure. Sonnets have existed since the 1200s!

Shakespeare and Sonnets

In the early 1600s, Shakespeare published a collection of 154 sonnets. Although they range in subject matter from time and mortality to beauty and happiness, almost all of them are somehow about love. Indeed, sonnets are so often about love that love is strongly associated with form. In addition to this published collection of sonnets, at least two of Shakespeare's plays, Romeo and Juliet and Love's Labours Lost, contain "embedded sonnets," where Shakespeare has written dialogue using the structure and rhyme scheme of a sonnet.

Structure

Basic Structure

At its most basic, a Shakespearean sonnet (also called an English Sonnet or an Elizabethan Sonnet) is fourteen lines long and consists of three quatrains and a couplet. A quatrain is four lines of poetry, and a couplet is two lines of poetry which usually rhyme. The rhyme scheme of a Shakespearean sonnet is ABAB CDCD EFEF GG.

Rhyme Scheme

The rhyme scheme is the pattern of rhyming lines in a poem. Lines can be labeled with letters, and each line with the same letter ends with words that rhyme with each other.

In the example on the right, Shakespeare's Sonnet 130 has been color-coded to show the basic structure of a Shakespearean sonnet: three quatrains followed by a rhyming couplet.

The letters to the right of each line show the rhyme scheme. Each pair of rhyming words has also been marked to show the pattern of rhyming. When a poem follows this structure--fourteen lines organized into three quatrains followed a couplet, with the rhyme scheme at right--it is a Shakespearean sonnet.

Iambic Pentameter

Shakespeare's poetry is written in a metrical style called iambic pentameter. This refers to the rhythm of the words and which syllables are emphasized. The words are measured out into small collections of syllables called "feet."

An iamb is a two-syllable "foot" where the first syllable is not stressed and second syllable is stressed:

(da DUM) (da DUM) (da DUM) (da DUM) (da DUM)

In the example above, there are five iambic feet, which is where the word pentameter comes from (penta means "five"). The following two lines come from Shakespeare's Sonnet 29 and clearly illustrate how the stressed syllables form iambic pentameter:

When IN / dis GRACE / with FOR- / tune AND / men’s EYES

I ALL / a LONE / be WEEP / my OUT- / cast STATE

When two back-to-back lines written in iambic pentameter rhyme, it is called a heroic couplet. Thus, Shakespeare's sonnets end with heroic couplets.

The Volta

The volta is the turning point of the poem. The poem may seem to be going in one direction, but then--bam!--the poet makes some kind of shift that takes the poem in a new direction. This new direction could be a different idea or a reversal of an idea already expressed, or it might even be a change in tone or the answer to a question the poem has posed.

In Shakespeare's sonnets, the volta most often occurs in the last couplet. Shakespeare uses the first twelve lines to establish the ideas of the poem, then a change occurs in the last two lines. But be careful--this is not always the case! Sometimes the volta occurs earlier in the poem, such as in line 9, which is the beginning of the last quatrain.

In the example on the right, Sonnet 130's volta occurs in line 13, the start of the couplet. Shakespeare even gives a clue that he is shifting his thoughts in some way by starting the line with the words "And yet."

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