Shakespearean
Sonnets
English 10
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What is a sonnet?
A sonnet is a fourteen-
line poem in iambic
pentameter.
Iambic what?
Let’s take a look…
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Iambic Pentameter
Iambic Pentameter is a poetic form which poets and
playwrights typically used to write poems in Elizabethan
England. It is the meter that Shakespeare mostly uses.
Meter in poetry is a rhythm of
accented and unaccented syllables
arranged into feet.
Iamb: has the first syllable unaccented and the second accented.
Shall I / com pare / thee to / a sum / mer’s day? 3
Shakespeare’s “Sonnet 18"
foot
Syllables
What is a syllable?
A syllable is the unit of sound
It is either stressed or unstressed
“But soft, what light through yonder window breaks.”
How many syllables are there in that quotation?
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Meter: Meter in poetry is a rhythm of accented
and unaccented syllables arranged into feet.
- Meter in poetry is what brings the poem to life and is the internal
beat or rhythm with which it is read.
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Pentameter
Well an ‘iamb’ is ‘dee Dum’ – it is like a heart beat.
Pentameter:
Penta is from the Greek for five.
Meter is really the pattern
So, there are five iambs per line!
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For the sound of Iambic Pentameter,
think of a heartbeat
it sounds like this:
dee DUM, dee DUM, dee DUM,
dee DUM, dee DUM.
It consists of
a line of five iambic feet
ten syllables with five
unstressed and five stressed
syllables
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An example of Iambic
pentameter from
Shakespeare’s Romeo &
Juliet:
but SOFT what LIGHT through YONder WINdow BREAKS
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Iambic Pentameter – put it all together
Iamb
Shall I / com pare / thee to / a sum / mer’s day?
foot foot foot foot foot
Pentameter
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Rhyming patterns
The Shakespearean sonnet has three
quatrains followed by a couplet, the
scheme being: abab cdcd efef gg.
Quatrain: 4 lines of Couplet: 2 lines of
rhymed verse rhymed verse
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Sonnet 116
3 Quatrains
Let me not to the marriage of true minds (a)
Admit impediments. Love is not love (b)
Which alters when it alteration finds,(a)
Or bends with the remover to remove:(b)
O, no! it is an ever-fixed mark,(c)
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;(d)
It is the star to every wandering bark,(c)
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.(d)
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks(e)
Within his bending sickle's compass come;(f)
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,(e)
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.(f)
If this be error and upon me proved,(g) Couplet
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.(g)
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The sonnet’s argument
A sonnet is also an argument — it builds up a certain
way. And how it builds up is related to its metaphors
and how it moves from one metaphor to the next. In a
Shakespearean sonnet, the argument builds up like this:
First quatrain: An exposition of the main theme and main
metaphor.
Second quatrain: Theme and metaphor extended or
complicated; often, some imaginative example is given.
Third quatrain: Peripetia [per-uh-pi-tahy-uh, -tee-uh] (a
twist or conflict), often introduced by a "but" (very often
leading off the ninth line).
Couplet: Summarizes and leaves the reader with a new,
concluding image.
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Sonnet 18 – First Quatrain
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,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date.
First quatrain: Shakespeare establishes the theme of
comparing "thou" (or "you") to a summer's day, and why to
do so is a bad idea. The metaphor is made by comparing his
beloved to summer itself.
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Sonnet 18 – Second Quatrain
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature's changing course, untrimmed
Second quatrain: Shakespeare extends the theme,
explaining why even the sun, supposed to be so great, gets
obscured sometimes, and why everything that's beautiful
decays from beauty sooner or later. He has shifted the
metaphor: In the first quatrain, it was "summer" in general,
and now he's comparing the sun and "every fair," every
beautiful thing, to his beloved.
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Sonnet 18 – Third Quatrain
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest,
Nor shall death brag thou wanderest in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest.
Third quatrain: Here the argument takes a big left turn with the
familiar "But." Shakespeare says that the main reason he won't compare
his beloved to summer is that summer dies — but she won't. He refers to
the first two quatrains — her "eternal summer" won't fade, and she won't
"lose possession" of the "fair" (the beauty) she possesses. So he keeps the
metaphors going, but in a different direction. And for good measure, he
throws in a negative version of all the sunshine in this poem — the
"shade" of death, which, evidently, his beloved won't have to worry
about.
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Sonnet 18 – final couplet
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
Couplet: How is his beloved going to escape death? In
Shakespeare's poetry, which will keep her alive as long as
people breathe or see. This bold statement gives closure to
the whole argument — it's a surprise.
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