THE SHAKESPEAREAN SONNET

Shakespeare’s Sonnets Shakespeare wrote a total of 154 sonnets, composed during the time period 1592 – 1598. Sonnets cover the topics of Love (different kinds of love; all sorts of themes about love) Lust (the power and dangers of lust) Impermanence (life, love, and beauty) Autobiographical? No one quite knows…

A SHAKESPEAREAN SONNET A 14 line stanza written in iambic pentameter, with a specific rhyme scheme which can be divided into three quatrains and a heroic couplet

Poetic Terms: Stanza – a poetry “paragraph” QUATRAIN – A four line stanza COUPLET – A two line stanza HEROIC COUPLET – a rhyming couplet in iambic pentameter Rhyme – a matching similarity of sounds in two or more words, especially when their accented vowels and all succeeding consonants are identical. Half Rhyme/Slant rhyme – rhymes created out of words with similar but not identical sounds. In most of these instances, either the vowel segments are different while the consonants are identical, or vice versa. Ex – how/row ; lovely/funny ; tongue / from

The Rhyme Scheme of Sonnets There are several variations on the sonnet form. Two of the most popular are: Petrarchan *Shakespearean a a b b b a a b a b c b d a c d c d e e f c e d f e g

Iambic Pentameter Lines of poetry that can be divided into 5 metric feet (10 syllables total) with alternatively unstressed and stressed syllables Video Example

Rhyme Schemes When discussing poetry, we assign letters to different rhymes. If a word at the end of the line is unrhymed, it is simply labeled X. (Example—John Keats’ “When I Have Fears” When I have fears that I may cease to be A Before my pen has glean'd my teeming brain, B Before high-piled books, in charactery, A Hold like rich garners the full ripen'd grain; B When I behold, upon the night's starr'd face, C Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance, D And think that I may never live to trace C Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance; D And when I feel, fair creature of an hour, E That I shall never look upon thee more, F Never have relish in the faery power E Of unreflecting love;--then on the shore F Of the wide world I stand alone, and think G Till love and fame to nothingness do sink. G

Don’t forget about the VOLTA! Volta – an essential part of a sonnet where there is a change in the sonnet’s meaning. It is through the volta that the poet’s true thoughts (or theme, if you will) are revealed. There will often be some sort of signal word or punctuation (like “but” or “and yet” or a dash “---”) to key you in to the presence of the volta. In a Shakespearean sonnet, the volta often (but not always) occurs in the last couplet.

Sonnet 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 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 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 life to thee.