Shakespearean Sonnets All That You Needed To Know…and MORE!

What is a Sonnet?  A form of poetry invented in Italy  14 lines with a specific rhyme scheme  The topic of most sonnets written in Shakespeare's time was love.

Before Shakespeare…  The Italian poet Petrarch ( ) popularized the sonnet more than two centuries before Shakespeare was born.

SHAKESPEARE!  William Shakespeare wrote 154 sonnets  Sonnets 1 through 126: address an unidentified young man with outstanding physical and intellectual attributes.  The first 17 of these urge the young man to marry so that he can pass on his superior qualities to a child!

Shakespeare! cont…  In Sonnet 18, Shakespeare declares his own poetry may be all that is necessary to immortalize the young man and his qualities.  In Sonnets , Shakespeare addresses a mysterious "dark lady"–a sensuous, irresistible woman of questionable morals who captivates him

Shakespeare! cont..  Shakespeare wrote his sonnets in London in the 1590s during an outbreak of plague that closed theaters and prevented playwrights from staging their dramas.

Anatomy of the Shakespearean Sonnet  Rhyme Scheme of Shakespeare’s sonnets: ABAB CDCD EFEF GG  The first, second, and third stanzas have four lines with alternate rhymes, called quatrains  The fourth stanza is called a couplet.

Sonnet # My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun; 2. Coral is far more red than her lips' red; 3. If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun; 4. If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head. 5. I have seen roses damask'd, red and white, 6. But no such roses see I in her cheeks; 7. And in some perfumes is there more delight 8. Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks. 9. I love to hear her speak, yet well I know 10. That music hath a far more pleasing sound; 11. I grant I never saw a goddess go; 12. My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground: 13. And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare 14. As any she belied with false compare.