Your poem can contain words of any length-”temperate” and “to” both fit within iambic pentameter-but you may find it easier to practice writing iambic pentameter with one syllable words. Even though the end of each line may have a different rhyme, the rhythm of the meter should remain the same throughout the length of a Shakespearean sonnet. That’s true for the rhyming couplet at the end of the poem, as well as for the quatrains. He included five iambs within each line, resulting in a total of ten syllables per line. Shakespeare used iambs throughout his sonnets. Thou art more lovely and more temper ate:Ī foot of poetry that contains an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable is called an iamb. You can write about repeating characters and settings to give your sonnets a dramatic arc over the course of a collection. The Poetry Foundation explains, “Drama is conjured within individual poems, as the speaker wrestles with some problem or situation it is generated by the juxtaposition of poems, with instant switches of tone, mood, and style it is implied by cross-references and interrelationships within the sequence as a whole.” As a poet, you have the ability to allude to your own sonnets, the same way Shakespeare did. Playing with some of the same characters, Shakespeare began with the “young man” sonnets (1-126), then continued with the “dark lady” sonnets (127-152), before concluding with two sonnets about Cupid.
If you’re writing more than one sonnet, you might want to connect your poems by introducing recurrent characters and motifs. Shakespearean sonnets can be appreciated individually or as a collection. That said, an aspiring poet might do well to address a central question about love throughout the course of the poem and to conclude with a resounding final couplet in response to that question. Sonnet 18 starts, “Shall I compare thee to a summer day?” A negative comparison introduces Sonnet 130: “My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun.” Among the 154 sonnets attributed to Shakespeare, not all follow the same introductory structure. The British Library notes, “…Their main concern is ‘love’, but they also reflect upon time, change, aging, lust, absence, infidelity and the problematic gap between ideal and reality when it comes to the person you love.” Many sonnets begin with a question or a comparison. Under that umbrella, Shakespeare tackled a huge range of nuanced topics. Shakespeare’s sonnets covered romantic subjects. The rhyme scheme includes three quatrains and a couplet: ABAB CDCD EFEF GG. As is typical for an English sonnet, Sonnet 18 was written in iambic pentameter and contains ten syllables per line. Most sonnets are also composed of a single fourteen-line stanza. Like most other sonnets, this sonnet consists of fourteen lines and ends with a rhyming couplet. We’ve labeled the rhymes in the poem to make them easier to see. So long lives this, and this gives life to thee. So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, (G) When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st (F) Nor shall Death brag thou wander’st in his shade, (E) Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st (F) Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines, (C)Īnd often is his gold complexion dimm’d (D)Īnd every fair from fair sometime declines, (C)īy chance, or nature’s changing course, untrimm’d (D)īut thy eternal summer shall not fade (E) Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, (A)Īnd summer’s lease hath all too short a date: (B) Thou art more lovely and more temperate: (B) Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? (A) It comes from the introductory line of Sonnet 18 by William Shakespeare.
For example, “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” is a turn of phrase that almost any English speaker can recognize. In fact, some of the most famous lines of English-language poetry come from sonnets. Amazingly, these rhyming 14-line poems have remained popular-in Italy and around the world-ever since. The word “sonnet” comes from the Italian word sonetto. A sonnet is a poetic form that originated in Sicily during the 13th century.