A sonnet is a
fourteen-line lyric poem, traditionally written in iambic pentameter—that is,
in lines ten syllables long, with accents falling on every second syllable. The
sonnet form first became popular during the Italian Renaissance, when the poet
Petrarch published a sequence of love sonnets addressed to an idealized woman
named Laura. Taking firm hold among Italian poets, the sonnet spread throughout
Europe to England, where, after its initial Renaissance, “Petrarchan”
incarnation faded, the form enjoyed a number of revivals and periods of renewed interest.
In
Elizabethan England the sonnet was the form of choice for lyric
poets, particularly lyric poets seeking to engage with traditional themes of
love and romance. (In addition to Shakespeare’s monumental sequence, the Astrophel
and Stellasequence by Sir Philip Sydney stands as one of the most important
sonnet sequences of this period.) Sonnets were also written during the height
of classical English verse, by Dryden and Pope, among others, and written again
during the heyday of English Romanticism, when Wordsworth, Shelley, and
particularly John Keats created wonderful sonnets. Today, the sonnet remains
the most influential and important verse form in the history of English poetry.
The
Shakespearean sonnet, the form of sonnet utilized throughout Shakespeare’s
sequence, is divided into four parts. The first three parts are each four lines
long, and are known as quatrains, rhymed ABAB; the fourth part is called the
couplet, and is rhymed CC. The Shakespearean sonnet is often used to develop a
sequence of metaphors or ideas, one in each quatrain, while the couplet offers
either a summary or a new take on the preceding images or ideas.