The Shakespearean Sonnet
Shakespeare's sonnets are a collection of 154 sonnets, dealing with themes such as the passage of time, love beauty and mortality.
Structure:
The sonnets are almost all constructed from three four-line stanzas (called quatrains) and a final couplet composed in iambic pentameter. This is also the meter used extensively in Shakespeare's plays.
The rhyme scheme is abab cdcd efef gg. Sonnets using this scheme are known as Shakespearean sonnets. Often, the beginning of the third quatrain marks the volta ("turn"), or the line in which the mood of the poem shifts, and the poet expresses a revelation or epiphany.
The rhyme scheme is abab cdcd efef gg. Sonnets using this scheme are known as Shakespearean sonnets. Often, the beginning of the third quatrain marks the volta ("turn"), or the line in which the mood of the poem shifts, and the poet expresses a revelation or epiphany.
Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer's Day? (Sonnet 18):
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, 1st Quatrain
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, 2nd Quatrain
By chance or nature's changing course untrimmed;
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, 3rd Quatrain
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. Rhyming Couplet
Vocabulary:
Shakespearean Sonnet: The sonnet form used by Shakespeare, composed of three quatrains and a terminal couplet in iambic pentameter with the rhyme pattern abab cdcd efef gg. Also called Elizabethan sonnet, English sonnet.
Iambic Pentameter: Iambic pentameter is the name given to a line of verse that consists of five iambs (an iamb being one unstressed syllable followed by one stressed, such as "before").
Stanza: One of the divisions of a poem, composed of two or more lines usually characterized by a common pattern of meter, rhyme, and number of lines.
Quatrain: A stanza or poem of four lines.
Couplet: A unit of verse consisting of two successive lines, usually rhyming and having the same meter and often forming a complete thought or syntactic unit.
Epiphany: a sudden realization--a flash of recognition in which someone or something is seen in a new light.
Iambic Pentameter: Iambic pentameter is the name given to a line of verse that consists of five iambs (an iamb being one unstressed syllable followed by one stressed, such as "before").
Stanza: One of the divisions of a poem, composed of two or more lines usually characterized by a common pattern of meter, rhyme, and number of lines.
Quatrain: A stanza or poem of four lines.
Couplet: A unit of verse consisting of two successive lines, usually rhyming and having the same meter and often forming a complete thought or syntactic unit.
Epiphany: a sudden realization--a flash of recognition in which someone or something is seen in a new light.
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