Introduction to Sonnets

1. Introduction to Sonnets (Shakespearean)

2. Lyric Poetry • Short poem with a single speaker • Expresses personal thoughts and feelings • Does NOT tell the entire story • Characteristics: • Sense of rhythm and melody • Imaginative language • Exploration of a single thought or feeling • Ex. Ode, Haiku, Cinquain, Sonnet

3. Sonnets • A sonnet is a fourteen-line poem consisting of iambic pentameter lines. • The two major sonnet forms are: • Italian(Petrarchan) • English (Shakespearean).

4. English/Shakespearean Sonnet • The English sonnet is a fourteen-line poem consisting of: • three quatrains • and a couplet • The poem’s thoughts are broken into separate motifs (distinctive feature or dominant ideas) for each quatrain. • The couplet at the end sums up the poem’s theme/message. • (three sets of four lines and one set of two lines).

5. The rhyme scheme is: When forty winters shall besiege thy brow, AAnd dig deep trenches in thy beauty's field, BThy youth's proud livery so gazed on now, AWill be a tattered weed of small worth held: BThen being asked, where all thy beauty lies, CWhere all the treasure of thy lusty days; DTo say within thine own deep sunken eyes, CWere an all-eating shame, and thriftless praise. DHow much more praise deserved thy beauty's use, EIf thou couldst answer 'This fair child of mineFShall sum my count, and make my old excuse‘ EProving his beauty by succession thine. FThis were to be new made when thou art old, GAnd see thy blood warm when thou feel'st it cold. G • ababcdcdefefgg • Ex:

6. To Do: • Mark off the Stanzas (three quatrains, one couplet) • Mark the iambic pentameter of one of the stanzas • Circle the words that show the rhyme scheme • Find three examples of imagery • Find a metaphor • Note the “motif” of each quatrain • Where is the main message/theme of the sonnet? How do you know? • What is the emotion of this sonnet? Sonnet 130 My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun; Coral is far more red than her lips’ red; If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun; If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head. I have seen roses damasked, red and white, But no such roses see I in her cheeks; And in some perfumes is there more delight Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks. I love to hear her speak, yet well I know That music hath a far more pleasing sound; I grant I never saw a goddess go; My mistress when she walks treads on the ground. And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare As any she belied with false compare.

7. 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. What is the rhyme scheme of this poem? Summarize the theme of the poem. How many syllables are in each line? Why might the last two lines be indented? Draw lines between the lines to show where you would create stanzas if you were the poet. Copy down an excellent example of alliteration. What metaphor is in this poem? What two things are being compared? Where is an example of personification? What is “this” in the last line? How long will it last? Sonnet 18

8. Sonnet 116