1. What is a Sonnet?
Understanding the forms, meter, rhyme, and other aspects of the sonnet.

2. Sonnet Form A sonnet has 14 lines
A sonnet is usually written in iambic pentameter
A sonnet must follow a specific rhyme scheme (the pattern is different depending on the type of sonnet)

3. Iambic Pentameter
A line of Iambic Pentameter is a line with ten beats (syllables)
An “Iamb” is two beats, or one “foot”
“Penta” is five (line has five “feet”)
“Meter” is the rhythm of the poem
A “foot” is made of an ‘unstressed’ syllable and a ‘stressed’ syllable (heartbeat)

4. English Sonnet
An English Sonnet is also called a Shakespearean Sonnet.
It includes three quatrains (groups of four lines) and a couplet (two lines).
The rhyme scheme is often abab cdcd efef gg

5. Italian Sonnet An Italian Sonnet is also called a Petrarchan Sonnet.
It includes an octave (eight lines) and a sestet (six lines).
The rhyme scheme must begin with abbaabba, and can conclude with any variation of c, d, and e (cdecde, cdcdee, etc.).

6. Sonnet 18 (of 154)
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.