Shakespeare’s Sonnets

English I Honors

Mrs. Pilgreen

Rhyme Scheme Those hours, that with gentle work did frame A

The lovely gaze where every eye doth dwell, BWill play the tyrants to the very same AAnd that unfair which fairly doth excel; BFor never-resting time leads summer on CTo hideous winter, and confounds him there; DSap checked with frost, and lusty leaves quite gone, CBeauty o'er-snowed and bareness every where: DThen were not summer's distillation left, EA liquid prisoner pent in walls of glass,FBeauty's effect with beauty were bereft, ENor it, nor no remembrance what it was: F   But flowers distilled, though they with winter meet, G   Leese but their show; their substance still lives sweet. G

Line Structure

• 14 total lines

• 3 quatrains: group of 4 lines

• Followed by a couplet: group of 2 lines

• Lyric poetry: expresses the thoughts & emotions of a single speaker, usually love

• Contains a volta at the 3rd stanza: change in tone or attitude

Metrical Patterns

• unstressed syllable: u• Stressed syllable: /

• Iamb: u /• Trochee: / u• Anapest: u u /• Dactyl: / u u• Spondee: / /

• 1 foot: monometer• 2 feet: dimeter• 3 feet: trimeter• 4 feet: tetrameter• 5 feet: pentameter• 6 feet: hexameter• 7 feet: heptameter• 8 feet: octameter

Metrical Patterns

• Iambic Pentameter: 5 (feet of) iambs

u / u / u / u / u /

Example:

What light through yon-der win-dow breaks?

The Sonnets

• Sonnets 1-126 addressed to a “fair youth” – urging him to marry and have children so that

he can leave behind a duplicate of his beauty– love & admiration

• Sonnet 127-152 addressed to a “dark lady,” the speaker’s mistress – The fair youth has stolen the dark lady from

the speaker– Object of infatuation & lust