Breaking Down the Bard - Sonnets

If you've ever wondered what a sonnet is, I'm gonna break it down for you right now!

Simply put, a sonnet is a type of poem, following a set structure. There are many kinds of sonnets (which this Wikipedia article details). It doesn't necessarily have to be about love, but a lot of them are, because love is a wonderfully rich and complicated topic! We're going to look at the type of sonnet Shakespeare is famous for, called the English Sonnet, the Elizabethan* Sonnet, or the Shakespearean Sonnet.

*Elizabeth I was Queen of England during much of Shakespeare's life, and he wrote many plays and poems during the Elizabethan era.

 

 

The basic structure for this type of sonnet is three quatrains and a couplet - click the links if you missed those or need a reminder. This type of sonnet is typically in iambic pentameter and has a total of fourteen lines. One way to think of the rhyme scheme is this:

- - - - - - - - A

- - - - - - - - B

- - - - - - - - A

- - - - - - - - B

- - - - - - - - - C

- - - - - - - - - D

- - - - - - - - - C

- - - - - - - - - D

- - - - - - - - - - E

- - - - - - - - - - F

- - - - - - - - - - E

- - - - - - - - - - F

- - - - - - - - - - - G

- - - - - - - - - - - G

Let's look at Sonnet 91:

 

 

And here's the same sonnet, but I've shown where the quatrains and the couplet each start and end:

 

 

In the first quatrain, we see that "skill" in the first line rhymes with "ill" in the third line, and "force" in the second line rhymes with "horse" in the fourth. This is contrasted by the couplet that ends the sonnet, where two lines immediately rhyme with each other, "take" and "make".

Another noteworthy Sonnet by Shakespeare is in Romeo and Juliet. The very first time the young lovers speak to each other, they share lines that form a sonnet! Check it out:

 

 

Here, I've marked the structure so that you can easily see the Sonnet form that's hidden in Act I, Scene 5:

 

 

I think it's really cool that Shakespeare had his two star-crossed lovers so on the same page that they could improvise a Sonnet together at their very first meeting!

Shakespeare is not the only person to try his hand at the Elizabethan Sonnet - in fact, many others did, too - but he wrote at least 154 of them, and now you know what makes them tick!

What's your favorite sonnet? Let me know in the comments!

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