Poetic Form
Sonnet
Reading
• Highlight important main ideas and key
supporting details on pages 2 -3 in the Romeo
and Juliet workbook.
• Borrow a highlighter if you need it.
Sonnet
• 14 line poem
• The Shakespearean sonnet has three
quatrains followed by a couplet, the scheme
being: abab cdcd efef gg.
• Usually compares two VERY unlikely things,
called a conceit
Quatrain
• Four lines of poetry in a stanza
Roses are red
Violets are blue
I’m in love
Are you?
Couplet
• Two lines that rhyme:
When Silly Sally irons her clothes, they come out
looking awful.
She did not read the label and her iron was
meant to waffle.
The Organization of Ideas
• The poet first questions something and then
provides an answer
• Or there is a problem and the solution is
offered
• Or an idea is introduced for thought, and the
main idea is driven home in the couplet
The two major sonnet forms:
Petrarchan (Italian)
A
B
B
A
A
B
B
A
C
D
E
C
D
E
Octave (8 lines)
The TURN
Sestet (6 lines)
Shakespearean
A
B
A
B
C
D
C
D
E
F
E
F
G
G
3 quatrains
The TURN
Rhyming
Couplet
Example:
Sonnet 116
• Let me not to the marriage of true minds (a)
Admit impediments. Love is not love (b)
Which alters when it alteration finds,(a)
Or bends with the remover to remove:(b)
•
O, no! it is an ever-fixed mark,(c)
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;(d)
• It is the star to every wandering bark,(c)
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.(d)
•
•
•
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks(e)
Within his bending sickle's compass come;(f)
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,(e)
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.(f)
If this be error and upon me proved,(g)
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.(g)
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.
Translated
• Oh baby , I think I shall compare you to a summer day
But, you know, you're prettier and even better, even calm
Because sometimes it gets windy and the buds on the trees get shaken off
And sometimes summer doesn't last very long
Sometimes it's too hot
And everything gorgeous loses its looks
By getting hit by a truck Or just because everyone and everything gets old
and ugly and shabby
BUT (and here's the turn) you're going to keep your looks for ever
Your beauty will last for ever
I'm going to make sure that you never lose your good looks
And that nasty old Death can never brag about owning you
Because I shall write this poem about you
As long as men can breathe (are you breathing?)
As long as men can see (are you looking at this poem?)
Then this poem lives, and it gives life and memory to your beauty.
Rude Lyrics
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