Shakespeare
Sonnets
William Shakespeare
● English poet, playwright, and actor.
● Baptised April 26, 1564
o
Birthday unknown.
● Died April 23, 1616
● “Bard of Avon”
What is a Sonnet?
● A sonnet is a fourteen-line poem in iambic
pentameter.
Iambic Pentameter
● Iambic Pentameter is the rhyme and meter
in which poets and playwrights wrote in
Elizabethan England.
● It is a meter that Shakespeare uses.
Iambic Pentameter
● The rhythm is like a heartbeat.
● It sounds like: dee DUM dee DUM dee DUM
dee DUM dee DUM.
● Consists of five iambic feet, ten syllables
with five stressed syllables.
What is a Pentameter?
● An “iamb” is the “dee DUM” - the heartbeat.
● “Penta” is the Greek name for five.
● Meter is the recurrence of a pattern of
stressed and unstressed syllables.
o
Basically, meter is really the pattern.
What is a Syllable?
● How many words are in the word “syllable?”
● “But soft, what light through yonder window
breaks.”
o
How many syllables are there in that quotation?
Stressed Words
● “Iamb” is the dee DUM.
● The stress is on DUM.
● “But soft, what light through yonder window
breaks.”
o
o
Write this quotation down and put a stress mark on
top of the stressed words.
Stress mark = /
Sonnet: Rhyme Pattern
● The Shakespearean sonnet has three
quatrains followed by a couplet.
● The rhyme pattern in a Shakespearean
sonnet is: abab cdcd efef gg.
What is a Couplet?
● Couplets are two line stanzas of any kind.
o
a stanza a grouping of two or more lines of a poem
in terms of length, metrical form, or rhyme scheme.
What is a Quatrain?
● Quatrains are four line stanzas of any kind.
● In the next slide, I have divided the following
sonnet into the three quatrains and its
couplet.
o
You will also see the rhyme pattern:
 abab cdcd efef gg.
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)
Paraphrasing
• A paraphrase takes difficult language and
explains it in easier, more understandable
language. It is usually about the same
length as the original piece but does not
contain much of the original language.
Sonnet 116 Paraphrased
Let me not declare any reasons why two
True-minded people should not be married. Love is not love
Which changes when it finds a change in circumstances,
Or bends from its firm stand even when a lover is unfaithful:
Oh no! it is a lighthouse
That sees storms but it never shaken;
Love is the guiding north star to every lost ship,
Whose value cannot be calculated, although its altitude can be measured.
Love is not at the mercy of Time, though physical beauty
Comes within the compass of his sickle.
Love does not alter with hours and weeks,
But, rather, it endures until the last day of life.
If I am proved wrong about these thoughts on love
Then I recant all that I have written, and no man has ever [truly] loved.
Reading Strategy
• Through their structure, sonnets often
express complex ideas. These strategies will
help you better understand sonnets:
 Identify the situation, problem, or question introduced at the
beginning of the poem.
 Identify the turning point, if there is one.
 Determine how the situation is clarified, the problem resolved, or the
question answered.