Shakespearean Sonnets

1. Shakespeare’s
Sonnets
English I Honors
Mrs. Pilgreen

2. Rhyme Scheme
Those hours, that with gentle work did frame A
The lovely gaze where every eye doth dwell, B
Will play the tyrants to the very same A
And that unfair which fairly doth excel; B
For never-resting time leads summer on C
To hideous winter, and confounds him there; D
Sap checked with frost, and lusty leaves quite gone, C
Beauty o'er-snowed and bareness every where: D
Then were not summer's distillation left, E
A liquid prisoner pent in walls of glass,F
Beauty's effect with beauty were bereft, E
Nor 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

3. 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 voltaat the 3
rd
stanza: change in
tone or attitude

4. Metrical Patterns
•unstressed syllable: u
•Stressed syllable: /
•Iamb: u /
•Trochee: / u
•Anapest: u u /
•Dactyl: / u u
•Spondee: / /
•Pyrrhic: u u
•1 foot: monometer
•2 feet: dimeter
•3 feet: trimeter
•4 feet: tetrameter
•5 feet: pentameter
•6 feet: hexameter
•7 feet: heptameter
•8 feet: octameter

5. Metrical Patterns
•Iambic Pentameter: 5 (feet of) iambs
u / u / u / u / u /
Example:
What light through yon-der win-dow breaks?

6. 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