Poet’s Corner: The Sonnet–Shakespeare 1

13 January 2026

(7 February 2014) Today we look at the second sonnet form, the English, or Shakespearean, and we choose a favorite by the man himself, Shakespeare, from his sonnet sequence. The writing of a sequence of sonnets was popular during the Renaissance, used by Sir Philip Sidney–Astrophil & Stella–Edmund Spenser–Amoretti. Each of these sequences involves someone the poet loves, so the sequence chronicles the ‘love story’ from the beginning to its most often ambiguous conclusion–the poet’s desire is thwarted in some way, leading him to write the sequence. The most common rhyme scheme of the English form is ababcdcdefefgg–notice the division into three quatrains (4 line stanzas) followed by the final couplet. Similar to the octave in Italian form, these three quatrains set up the poetic problem; the final couplet ‘resolves’ the problem, and this reveals why so few poets use this form: the need for a witty couplet that resolves the problem set up in the three quatrains. Few poets had/have the ability to do this. . . .

Also, as previously mentioned, Petrarch is the source of the sonnet, and sonnet sequence, and we call any sonnet “Petrarchan” that praises the virtues/attributes of the poet’s love. To illustrate this, we share one of Shakespeare’s sonnets, #18, a well known example of a Petrarchan sonnet:

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:

Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines
And often is his gold complexion dimmed;
And every fair from fair sometimes declines,
By chance or nature’s changing course untrimmed [summer becomes fall, and the beautiful summer clothes are lost];

But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession fo that fair thou ow’st [owned];
Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st: [enduring poetry]

So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

A typical English and Petrarchan sonnet! Again, divided to draw attention to the structure–three quatrains followed by a witty couplet. The problem? Like a summer day that will end, replaced by autumn (old age), and winter (death), the beauty of the beloved will fade with time. The second quatrain reinforces the idea of fading beauty, for summers can be hot, withering beauty before its time, and the inevitable march of the seasons. In the third quatrain the poet makes the boast that he can and will preserve that beauty forever in these lines, or the poem itself, which will outlast both poet and beloved, as expressed in the final witty couplet: as long as there are men who can read, as long as the poem lasts, men will remember the great beauty of the beloved. Notice that over 500 years later, we still read this sonnet, we are still touched by the beauty of Shakespeare’s ‘beloved’, who is unknown, in spite of many theories: the first 126 sonnets were written to this mystery person, the rest to the ‘dark lady’, who is also unknown.

We will return the day after tomorrow with another romantic sonnet, one of my all time favorites and an example of the ‘anti-Petrarchan’ sonnet, also by Shakespeare. . . . If your are interested in our poetry, find it here!