For an overview of the game that we call “the sonnet,” watch the video lecture below. The lecture details the various rules and strategies that went into sonnet creation.

Rules of the Game

A sonnet requires:

• 14 lines
• Iambic pentameter
• A rhyme scheme

The pieces:

A sonnet can includes combinations of the following pieces/patterns:

• Iamb (a “foot” consisting of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable)
• Trochee (a “foot” consisting of a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed syllable)
• Spondee (a foot consisting of two stressed syllables)
• Pyrrhic (a foot consisting of two unstressed syllables)
• Iambic pentameter (a line consisting mostly of five iambs)
• Quatrain (a grouping of four lines, bound together by a rhyme scheme)
• Octave (a grouping of eight lines, or two quatrains)
• Sestet (a grouping of six lines, or a quatrain and couplet)
• Couplet (final two rhyming lines of a sonnet)
• Turn, or vola (an emotional or thematic shift within a sonnet, usually between the octave and the sestet or before the couplet.)

Improving Your Play

Meter Matters

Note how Spenser and Donne use meter to reinforce the content of their poetry.  In the first lines of this sonnet by Spenser, the regular iambic pentameter, with its alternation of stressed and unstressed lines, mimics the regular lapping of the waves:

ONE day | I wrote | her name | upon | the strand,

But came | the waves | and wash | èd it | away:

Again | I wrote | it with | a se | cond hand,

But came | the tide | and made |my pains | his prey.

The tortured meter of the first lines of Donne’s “Batter My Heart,” by contrast, mimics the violence that the poet imagines (fantasizes) God the metalworker taking to beat his soul into shape, with she stresses falling fast and furious like blows:

Batter | my heart, | three-per| son’d God; | for you

As yet | but knock ; | breathe, shine, |and seek | to mend;

That I |may rise, | and stand, | o’erthrow | me,and bend

Your force, | to break, | blow, burn, | and make | me new.

Structure Matters

Shakespeare and Spenser have gave their names to two very different forms of sonnet.  The Shakespearean sonnet has the rhyme scheme ABAB CDCD EFEF GG, while the Spenserian sonnet follows there rhyme scheme ABAB BCBC CDCD EE.  These forms allow their practitioners to approach a theme in very different ways.  Let’s compare how Shakespeare and Spenser treat the same theme—the passage of time.  Spenser reflects on this theme during the first two quatrains (octave) of his sonnet; he then takes a whole sestet to explain his solution, namely, that poetry confers immortality.  By contrast, Shakespeare devotes three whole quatrains to the problem of aging and dying before trotting out the solution (“breed!”) in a pithy couplet

A Spenserian Sonnet 

• Introduces a problem or dilemma (like the passage of time) over an octave (i.e., two quatrains); and
• Explains the solution over a sestet (i.e., a quatrain and a couplet).

Example:

One day I wrote her name upon the strand, 

But came the waves and washed it away: 

Again I wrote it with a second hand, 

But came the tide, and made my pains his prey. 

“Vain man,” said she, “that dost in vain assay, 

A mortal thing so to immortalize; 

For I myself shall like to this decay, 

And eke my name be wiped out likewise.” 

“Not so,” (quod I) “let baser things devise (← The TURN)

To die in dust, but you shall live by fame: 

My verse your vertues rare shall eternize, 

And in the heavens write your glorious name: 

Where whenas death shall all the world subdue, 

Our love shall live, and later life renew.” 

A Shakespearean Sonnet 

• Introduces a problem or dilemma (like the passage of time) over three quatrains; and
• Announces a solution in a couplet. 

Example:

When I do count the clock that tells the time,

And see the brave day sunk in hideous night;                            

When I behold the violet past prime,

And sable curls all silvered o’er with white;

When lofty trees I see barren of leaves,

Which erst from heat did canopy the herd,                    

And summer’s green all girded up in sheaves,

Borne on the bier with white and bristly beard:

Then of thy beauty do I question make,

That thou among the wastes of time must go,

Since sweets and beauties do themselves forsake

And die as fast as they see others grow;

And nothing ’gainst Time’s scythe can make defence (← The TURN)

  Save breed to brave him when he takes thee hence.               have children; defy

The Expansion Game

Sometimes sonnets weren’t self-contained. Writers experimented and played with the poetic form across numerous sonnets, producing narratives and elaborating on complex themes. For example, some wrote:

• Sonnet sequences: narratives or dialogues that unfold over the course of multiple sonnets. Sir Philip Sidney wrote the first known English sonnet sequence, Astrophil and Stella, in the 1580s. His niece Mary Sidney Wroth composed a sonnet sequence, Pamphilia to Amphilanthus.
• Corona (pl. coronae), or crowns: sequences of sonnets in which the last line of a sonnet becomes the first line of the next sonnet and so on until the end.  Wroth’s Pamphilia to Amphilanthus includes a magnificent 14-sonnet corona on love]

Competitive Play

At OSU, you can play sonnets competitively.  Find out how at the end of this bundle!

Further Reading

This overview  gives you the “quick and dirty” on the sonnet—for more detail on this intricate literary game, its origins, and its history, read Shaun Russell’s “The Sonnet” in the next section.