The Sonnet

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The Sonnet

• A timeless form of poetry

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Shall I Compare Thee to a Summers Dayby William
Shakespeare

• 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.

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The History

• Sonnet originally meant little song and could
  be any short poem or song.
• In Italy, during the 13th and 14th centuries,
  poets developed the sonnet into a set form for
  poetry with a specific pattern.
• Petrarch, an Italian poet in the 14th century,
  made the sonnet form famous by writing 317
  sonnets about his love, Laura.
• Sonnets that follow Petrarchs model are now
  called Petrarchan sonnets, or Italian sonnets.

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The History

• The sonnet form became all the rage in England
  during the 16th century.
• One problem Italian is a language easy to
  rhyme, but English is not.
• Solution A new pattern was developed by English
  poets that came to be known as the English
  sonnet.
• William Shakespeare is famous for writing poems
  in this form, so the English sonnet is often
  called the Shakespearean sonnet.

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The History

• For more history, visit http//www.sonnets.org/ear
  ly.htm and check out the links to Petrarchan
  sonnets and the Encyclopedia Britannica.

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The Key Elements of Sonnets

• Length
• Rhyme scheme
• Rhythm
• Reason

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Length

• A sonnet always has 14 lines.

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Rhyme Scheme

• A rhyme scheme is the pattern of how the words
  rhyme at the end of each line.
• A letter is assigned for each word at the lines
  end, and any time the end words rhyme, the same
  letter is used.
• For example

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Shall I Compare Thee to a Summers Dayby William
Shakespeare

• Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? A
• Thou art more lovely and more temperate B
• Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, A
• And summer's lease hath all too short a date B
• Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines, C
• And often is his gold complexion dimm'd 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 F
• So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see, G
• So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
  G

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Rhyme Scheme

• Shakespearean sonnet rhyme scheme ABAB CDCD
  EFEF GG
• Petrarchan sonnet rhyme scheme ABBA ABBA CDE
  CDE

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Rhythm

• Sonnets are written in iambic pentameter, the
  natural rhythm of English speech.
• Iambic pentameter Each line contains 10
  syllables consisting of 5 stressed syllables and
  5 unstressed syllables in alternating order.
• For example
• Shall I compare thee to a summers day?

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Reason

• Usually love poetry by a man about an
  unattainable woman
• Sets up a problem and tries to solve it
• For example in Shall I Compare
• Problem How to immortalize a beautiful person
  who will one day die.
• Solution Write a poem about them.
• So long lives this, and this gives life to
  thee.

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Sonnets Today

• Still 14 lines long
• Still typically in iambic pentameter
• Shakespearean or Petrarchan rhyme schemes are
  generally followed but with some variation
• Not always about love. Poets such as Claude
  McKay wrote sonnets in the 1940s about racism.

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