Shakespearean Sonnets

SHAKESPEAREAN SONNETS

14 LINES

3 QUATRAINS AND 1 COUPLET

Time vs. Love

Seasons

Eternity

Summer = perfect and brief

Winter = death

Spring == rebirth, alive, begin anew, begin the growing season

Summer == growth, full bloom, beauty

Fall == growing season ending, march to death, a winding down

Winter == death, nothing grows or lives

SONNET #18

LINE # WORDS RHYME SCHEME

1 Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? A

2 Though art more lovely and more temperate B

3 Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May A

4 And summer’s lease hath all too short a date; B QUATRAIN 1

5 Sometime too hot the eye of Heaven shines, C

6 And often is his gold complexion dimm’d, D

7 And every fair from fair sometime declines, C

9 But thy eternal summer shall not fade, E

10 Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st, F

11 Nor shall Death brag thou wand’rest in his shade, E

13 So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, G

14 So long lives this, and this gives life to thee. G COUPLET

10 total syllables

Five IAMS == Unstressed syllables (U) followed by stressed (/) syllables

U / U / U / U / U /

== Ti-TUM Ti-TUM Ti-TUM Ti-TUM Ti-TUM

The more rich, sophisticated, educated characters speak in this

ie. “A-lack the-day He’s-gone, he’s-killed he’s-dead.”

Servants speak in prose instead

Broken up into five ACTS, which are broken up into SCENES, which are broken up into LINES

Write a line in iambic penameter:

Write a quatrain with rhyme scheme AABB:

How many couplets are in the above quatrain? ______

PETRARCH –

SONNET FORM –