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Poetry Knowledge Zone
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The Soulful Sonnet – 2
Form of Sonnet
The form into which a poet puts his or her words is always something of
which the reader ought to take conscious note. And when poets have chosen
to work within such a strict form, that form and its strictures make up
part of what they want to say. In other words, the poet is using the
structure of the poem as part of the language act: we will find the
"meaning" not only in the words, but partly in their pattern as well.
Sonnet is a fourteen-line poem in iambic pentameter with a carefully
patterned rhyme scheme. Other strict, short poetic forms occur in English
poetry (the sestina, the villanelle, and the haiku, for example), but none
has been used so successfully by so many different poets. The Italian, or
Petrarchan sonnet, named after Francesco Petrarch (1304-1374), the Italian
poet, was introduced into English poetry in the early 16th century by Sir
Thomas Wyatt (1503-1542). Its fourteen lines break into an octave (or
octet), which usually rhymes abbaabba, but which may sometimes be
abbacddc or even (rarely) abababab; and a sestet, which may
rhyme xyzxyz or xyxyxy, or any of the multiple variations
possible using only two or three rhyme-sounds. (Refer to the example in
the previous page)
The transition from octave to sestet usually coincides with a 'turn'
(Italian, volta) in the argument or mood of the poem. In a variant form
used by the English poet John Milton, however, the 'turn' is delayed to a
later position around the tenth line. Some later poets--notably William
Wordsworth--have employed this feature of the 'Miltonic sonnet' while
relaxing the rhyme scheme of the octave to abbaacca. The Italian
pattern has remained the most widely used in English and other languages.
The English (Shakespearean) sonnet, on the other hand, is so different
from the Italian (though it grew from that form) as to permit of a
separate classification. Instead of the octave and sestet divisions, this
sonnet characteristically embodies four divisions: three quatrains (each
with a rhyme-scheme of its own) and a rhymed couplet. Thus the typical
rhyme-scheme for the English sonnet is abab cdcd efef gg.
The couplet at the end is usually a commentary on the foregoing, an
epigrammatic close. The Spenserian sonnet combines the Italian and the
Shakespearean forms, using three quatrains and a couplet but employing
linking rhymes between the quatrains, thus
abab bcbc cdcd ee.
The English or Shakespearean sonnet, developed first by Henry Howard, Earl
of Surrey (1517-1547), consists of three quatrains and a couplet –that is,
it rhymes abab cdcd efef gg. An important variant of this is the
Spenserian sonnet (introduced by the Elizabethan poet Edmund Spenser),
which links the three quatrains by rhyme, in the sequence
ababbabccdcdee. In either form, the 'turn' comes with the final
couplet, which may sometimes achieve the neatness of an epigram.
The most famous rhyme scheme used for sonnets is abab, cdcd, efef, gg
as in this famous sonnet by Shakespeare:
My mistress eyes are nothing like the sun; (a)
Coral is far more red than her lips red: (b)
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun; (a)
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head. (b)
I have seen roses damasked, red and white, (c)
But no such roses see I in her cheeks; (d)
And in some perfumes is there more delight (c)
Than in her breath that from my mistress reeks. (d)
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know (e)
That music hath a far more pleasing song: (f)
I grant I never saw a goddess go, (e)
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground. (f)
And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare (g)
As any she belied with false compare. (g)
– Continued
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