Quick Facts
0 1593 – 1601 composed, published 1609
0 154 Sonnets Total
0 Two groupings0 Sonnet 1-126, addressed to a beloved friend, a handsome
and noble young man
0 Sonnet 127-154, to a malignant but fascinating “Dark Lady”
whom the poet loves in spite of himself
0 Speaker – Male
0 Chief Subject – Love
Questions to Consider
0 Is the sonnets’ speaker a dramatic character invented
by Shakespeare or is he the poet himself?
0 If the sonnets are about the real man Shakespeare,
then who are the real people behind the characters
the sonnets mention?
0 Is the order in which the sonnets were originally
published the correct or intended sequence?
0 Could they be arranged to tell a more coherent story?
0 Should they be arranged?
Background of Sonnets
0 Sonnet form popularized by Petrarch
0 Sonnet – sonetto – “little sound” “song”
0 Sonnet: a fourteen line lyric poem that conforms to a
strict pattern of rhythm and rhyme
0 Influenced by:
0 Sir Thomas Wyatt, Henry Howard,
0 Sir Philip Sydney’s Astrophel and Stella
0 Edmund Spenser’s Armoretti
Shakespearean Sonnet
0 Invented by George Gascoigne, Perfected by
Shakespeare
0 Logical Organization: (VARIES)
0 A question and tentative answers
0 The Turn
0 A final answer
0 Formal Organization:
0 14 iambic pentameter lines
0 Divided into THREE quatrains and a couplet
0 Rhyme Scheme abab cdcd efef gg
Sonnet 18
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 sometime declines,
By chance, or nature's changing course, untrimmed;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st,
Nor shall death brag thou wand'rest in his shade,
When in eternal lines to Time thou grow'st.
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
Meter
0 Meter- Rhythmic pattern
0 Iambic Pentameter –
0 The syllables are divided into five pairs called iambs or
iambic feet.
0 An iamb is a metrical unit made up of one unstressed
syllable followed by one stressed syllable.
0 An example of an iamb would be good BYE
Quatrains
0 Quatrain – Four Line Unit
0 Often express related ideas
Couplets
0 Couplets are any two lines working as a unit, whether
they comprise a single stanza or are part of a larger
stanza.
0 Heroic Couplet- two lines of iambic pentameter, also
the last two lines of the English sonnet.
0 Often a second turn of great impact – final summary
or explanation of all that came before
Diction
0 1)Word choice.
0
0 2) The author’s choice of words. An author has
the option of choosing any word from our
language, why does he/she choose to use certain
words and not others? In order to create a
certain tone.
Imagery
0 The use of description that helps the reader
imagine how something looks, sounds, feels,
smells, or tastes. Most of the time, it refers to
appearance.
Simile & Metaphor
0 Simile – uses the word like or as to compare to unlike
things
0 Metaphor – equates two unlike things