Shakespearean Sonnet Structure: Rhythm, Meter and Rhyme

What is a sonnet? A sonnet is a fourteen-line poem in iambic pentameter.

Iambic Pentameter  Iambic Pentameter is the rhythm and meter in which poets and playwrights wrote in Elizabethan England.

Heartbeat. Quite simply, it sounds like this: dee DUM, dee DUM, dee DUM, dee DUM, dee DUM. It consists of a line of five iambic feet, ten syllables with five unstressed and five stressed syllables. It is the first and last sound we ever hear, it is the rhythm of the human heart beat.

Pentameter? An ‘iamb’ is ‘dee Dum’ – it is the heart beat. Penta is from the Greek for five. Meter is really the pattern So, there are five iambs per line! (Iambic penta meter )

It is percussive and attractive to the ear and has an effect on the listener's central nervous system. An Example of Pentameter from Shakespeare: but SOFT what LIGHT through YONder WINdow BREAKS

Give it a Whirl!!! Look at the previous example and try to write your own line using iambic pentameter. Your topic is “Love at first sight.”

Syllables What is a syllable? Well, there are three syllables (separate sounds) in the word syllable! “But soft, what light through yonder window breaks.” How many syllables are there in that quotation?

Back to sonnets. A sonnet it is a poetic form that has a certain structure as well as a rhyming pattern.

Rhyming patterns The Shakespearean sonnet has three quatrains followed by a couplet, the scheme being: abab cdcd efef gg. More head scratching?

Quatrain Quatrains are four line stanzas and there are three quatrains in every sonnet Each quatrain, or four line stanza, has its own theme or topic that transitions into the next quatrain.

Couplet A Couplet is the last two lines of a sonnet. These final lines end with the same sound/rhyme. The couplet is usually the resolution to the sonnet and often gives new insights to the theme or subject of the sonnet.

Sonnet 14     Not from the stars do I my judgement pluck; And yet methinks I have Astronomy, But not to tell of good or evil luck, Of plagues, of dearths, or seasons' quality; Nor can I fortune to brief minutes tell, Pointing to each his thunder, rain and wind, Or say with princes if it shall go well By oft predict that I in heaven find: But from thine eyes my knowledge I derive, And, constant stars, in them I read such art As truth and beauty shall together thrive, If from thyself, to store thou wouldst convert;     Or else of thee this I prognosticate:    Thy end is truth's and beauty's doom and date