Shakespearean (Elizabethan or English) Sonnet A rigid 14-line verse form, with variable structure and rhyme scheme. Shakespearean Sonnet (Elizabethan or English) – three quatrains (four-line stanzas) and concluding couplet (two rhyming lines) in iambic pentameter (10 syllables per line) rhyming abab, cdcd, efef, gg.

“Romeo and Juliet” -- Chorus Two households, both alike in dignity, A In fair Verona, where we lay our scene, B From ancient grudge break to new mutiny, A Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean. B From forth the fatal loins of these two foes C A pair of star-cross'd lovers take their life; D Whose misadventured piteous overthrows C Do with their death bury their parents' strife. D The fearful passage of their death-mark'd love, E And the continuance of their parents' rage, F Which, but their children's end, nought could remove, E Is now the two hours' traffic of our stage; F The which if you with patient ears attend, G What here shall miss, our toil shall strive to mend. G

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).

Sonnet 130 William Shakespeare My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun; Coral is far more red than her lips' red; If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun; If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head. I have seen roses damask'd, red and white, But no such roses see I in her cheeks; And in some perfumes is there more delight Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks. I love to hear her speak, yet well I know That music hath a far more pleasing sound; I grant I never saw a goddess go; My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground: And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare As any she belied with false compare.

Sonnet 18 William Shakespeare 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 dimm'd; And every fair from fair sometime declines, By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd; But thy eternal summer shall not fade Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest; Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade, When in eternal lines to time thou growest: So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, So long lives this and this gives life to thee.