Shakespearean sonnet

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A Shakespearean sonnet, or Elizabethan sonnet or English sonnet, is a verse form used to write lyric poetry, consisting of 14 lines of iambic pentameter (in which a pattern of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable is repeated five times). The rhyme scheme in a Shakespearean sonnet is a-b-a-b, c-d-c-d, e-f-e-f, g-g; the last two lines are a rhyming couplet.

The form is named after William Shakespeare, not because he was the first to write in this form but because he became its most famous practitioner. The form consists of fourteen lines structured as three quatrains and a couplet. The third quatrain generally introduces an unexpected sharp thematic or imagistic "turn"; the volta. In Shakespeare's sonnets, however, the volta usually comes in the couplet, and usually summarizes the theme of the poem or introduces a fresh new look at the theme. With only a rare exception, the meter is iambic pentameter, although there is some accepted metrical flexibility (e.g., lines ending with an extra-syllable feminine rhyme, or a trochaic foot rather than an iamb, particularly at the beginning of a line). The usual rhyme scheme is end-rhymed a-b-a-b, c-d-c-d, e-f-e-f, g-g.

Shakespeare circulated his sonnets privately among his friends; 154 of them were published in. The Prologue to Romeo and Juliet is also a sonnet, as is Romeo and Juliet's first exchange in Act One, Scene Five, lines 104-117, beginning with "If I profane with my unworthiest hand" (104) and ending with "Then move not while my prayer's effect I take." (117).

This example, Shakespeare's Sonnet 116, illustrates the form (with some typical variances one may expect when reading an Elizabethan-age sonnet with modern eyes):

Example of the form
 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 fixÃ¨d mark (c)** That looks on tempests and is never shaken; (d)*** It is the star to every wand'ring 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)*
 * CXVI
 * If this be error and upon me proved, (g)*
 * I never writ, nor no man ever loved. (g)*

''* PRONUNCIATION/RHYME: Note changes in pronunciation since composition.  ** PRONUNCIATION/METER: "Fixed" pronounced as two-syllables, "fix-ed."'' ''*** RHYME/METER: Feminine-rhyme-ending, eleven-syllable alternative. ''