Sonnets are probably what you think of with the word “poetry”: ordered, rhyming, Shakespearean.
Not exactly a glowing impression, to be sure. Highly structured poems like sonnets may be infamous for being — well, structured, sometimes rigidly so — but their patterned rhymes are pleasing in their patterned, rhyming way, and provide a helpful structure to build off of or an useful starting point when free verse and prose don’t seem all that different.
If, for an aforementioned or some other, brilliant reason, you want to write a sonnet, here are (some) of the things to know.
Brief History
The sonnet is attributed to Giacomo da Lentini, a 13th century Italian poet, who wrote in Sicilian. From him, the Italian Petrarchan sonnet was developed, which was the form translated and introduced into English, allowing for the development of the Shakespearean (English) sonnet. More variations emerged based on those two forms, from the Miltonic sonnet to modern versions. Sonnets are usually focused around one topic, which is commonly romantic love.
Sonnet Forms
The renowned, most-dearly-beloved Shakespearean sonnet is only one of the two main forms of sonnets. As mentioned previously, the other main form is the Petrarchan sonnet, which is the original version. However, regardless of form, sonnets traditionally are written in iambic pentameter, have 14 lines, and follow a regular rhyme scheme.
Put simply, iambic pentameter is when a line is written with 10 syllables following an unstressed (syllable)-stressed (syllable) pattern. For example, the first line of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 55:
Not marble, nor the gilded monuments
(Not marble, nor the gilded monuments)
Iambic pentameter?
Petrarchan Sonnets
The Petrarchan sonnet is named after Francesco Petrarca, a 14th century Italian poet. Its structure is more easily followed in Italian than English (which, given that it was originally an Italian form of poetry, makes sense).
Petrarchan sonnets have 14 lines, each with 11 syllables, separated into two stanzas — the first stanza with 8 lines (the octave) and the second with 6 (the sestet), following an ABBAABBA rhyme scheme.
A famous example of a Petrarchan sonnet is The New Colossus by Emma Lazarus, the poem that is engraved at the base of the Statue of Liberty. Although it doesn’t strictly follow the 11-syllable-per-line rule, it has 14 lines and the octave and sestet.
Shakespearean Sonnets
The Shakespearean (or English) sonnet is the form adapted from the Petrarchan sonnet by Sir Thomas Wyatt and Henry Howard, earl of Surrey, as they were the first ones to translate the Italian sonnets into English.
Like the Petrarchan sonnet, Shakespearean sonnets have 14 lines, but instead of an octave and a sestet, they have 4 stanzas of 4 lines (quatrains) and a couplet, allowing for the poet to build up the poem’s topic with the quatrains before concluding (or refuting) the topic with the ending couplet.
The best-known examples of Shakespearean sonnets are generally Shakespeare’s sonnets (shocking!), such as Sonnet 18 (“Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?”), or in his plays, such as the opening of Romeo and Juliet (“Two houses, both alike in dignity…”
Further Reading
There are other variations upon variations of sonnets; if you are interested, check out this (https://www.poetryfoundation.org/learn/glossary-terms/sonnet).
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