REN - Major Sonnet Forms: The Shakespearean Lesson

William Shakespeare, a prominent playwright during the Renaissance, was also famous for his sonnets. William Shakespeare wrote his sonnets for a private audience and may have been surprised when they were published in 1609 at the height of his fame as a playwright. He wrote 154 sonnets in all.

The sonnets are addressed to two people - a young man, whom the speaker seems to love, and the mysterious and aloof "dark" lady, with whom the speaker might have had an affair.

The sonnets' sequences fall into three clear groupings: Sonnets 1 to 126 are addressed to the young man, Sonnets 127-152 are addressed to the dark lady, and Sonnets 153-154 are adaptations of two classical Greek poems.

Characteristics of the Shakespearean Sonnet

The Shakespearean Sonnet, created by William Shakespeare, is often called the English Sonnet and includes the following characteristics:

• Three four-line stanzas, or groups of lines, called
  quatrains followed by a concluding two-line stanza
  called a couplet
• A rhyme scheme of abab cdcd efef gg
• 10 syllables per line in lambic Pentameter
• Three quatrains that relate ideas, and the couplet
  (volta) that sums up the poet's conclusion or message.

View the sonnets below, each from the different set in Shakespeare's sonnet sequence. Notice how the tone changes with each set of sonnets and attempt to identify the characteristics that categorize the poem as a Shakespearean Sonnet:

"Sonnet 8"

Music to hear, why hear'st thou music sadly?  
Sweets with sweets war not, joy delights in joy.
Why lov'st thou that which thou receiv'st not gladly,
Or else receiv'st with pleasure thine annoy?  
If the true concord of well-tuned sounds,  
By unions married, do offend thine ear,  
They do but sweetly chide thee, who confounds
In singleness the parts that thou shouldst bear.  
Mark how one string, sweet husband to another,  
Strikes each in each by mutual ordering,  
Resembling sire and child and happy mother  
Who all in one, one pleasing note do sing:  
      Whose speechless song, being many, seeming one,
      Sings this to thee: 'Thou single wilt prove none.'

"Sonnet 140"

Be wise as thou are cruel; do not press

My tongue-tied patience with too much disdain,

Lest sorrow lend me words, and words express

The manner of my pity-wanting pain.

If I might teach thee wit, better it were,

Though not to love, yet love, to tell me so,

As testy sick men, when their deaths be near,

No new but health from their physicians know.

For if I should despair, I should grow mad,

And in my madness might speak ill of thee.

Now this ill-wresting world is grown so bad,

Mad sland'rers by mad ears believed be.

    That I may not be so, nor thou belied,

     Bear thine eyes straight, though thy proud heart go wide.

"Sonnet 154"

The little Love-god lying once asleep
Laid by his side his heart-inflaming brand,
Whilst many nymphs that vow'd chaste life to keep
Came tripping by; but in her maiden hand
The fairest votary took up that fire  
Which many legions of true hearts had warm'd;
And so the general of hot desire  
Was sleeping by a virgin hand disarm'd.
This brand she quenched in a cool well by,  
Which from Love's fire took heat perpetual,  
Growing a bath and healthful remedy  
For men diseased; but I, my mistress' thrall,
     Came there for cure, and this by that I prove,
     Love's fire heats water, water cools not love.

Practice the TPCASTT process to analyze the Shakespearean sonnets in the lesson.