The Shakespearean or English Sonnet

  

Basic features & history of the verse form:
  
Number of lines 14
Structure / divisions Three quatrains followed by a couplet
Rhyme scheme Three quatrains followed by a couplet
Meter Usually iambic pentameter
Refrain line or lines No
Time / place of origin 16th-century England (modified from the Italian form by Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey)
Medieval / Renaissance poets
  associated with this form 		Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey; William Shakespeare, Michael Drayton
Examples written in English
  by or before — 		16th century (Surrey)

  

An example of a Shakespearean sonnet:

Sonnet LXIV
by William Shakespeare (1564-1616)

  1. (a)  When I have seen by Time's fell hand defac'd
  2. (b)  The rich proud cost of outworn buried age;
  3. (a)  When sometime lofty towers I see down-ras'd
  4. (b)  And brass eternal slave to mortal rage;
  5. (c)  When I have seen the hungry ocean gain
  6. (d)  Advantage on the kingdom of the shore,
  7. (c)  And the firm soil win of the wat'ry main,
  8. (d)  Increasing store with loss and loss with store;
  9. (e)  When I have seen such interchange of state,
  10. (f)   Or state itself confounded to decay;
  11. (e)  Ruin hath taught me thus to ruminate,
  12. (f)  That Time will come and take my love away.
  13. (g)  This thought is as a death, which cannot choose
  14. (g)  But weep to have that which it fears to lose.

A Brief Guide to Some Medieval and Renaissance Verse Forms

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Table and its contents copyright © 2002 by Jennifer M. Tom    ( Jennifer Monroe Franson )