The Shakespearean sonnet is a 14-line poem with a distinct rhyming structure of three quatrains and a rhyming couplet. It replaced the Petrarchan sonnet and uses alternating rhyme. Shakespeare wrote 154 sonnets, the first 17 being about procreation and the rest about love, including “Sonnet 130.” After their initial popularity, they were replaced by metaphysical poetry but revived in the 18th century and remain popular today.
A Shakespearean sonnet is a variation of a sonnet poem popularized, but not invented, by William Shakespeare. The sonnet is a 14-line poem first translated into English by Thomas Wyatt in the early 16th century. In Shakespeare’s day, it came to have a distinct rhyming structure of three quatrains and a rhyming couplet for an ending. The Shakespearean sonnet, like many other types of sonnet, uses the structure of iambic pentameter.
Petrarchan sonnets were the first to appear in English. The Shakespearean sonnet did away with the Petrarchan octave and sestet stanzas and merged the sonnet into a 14-line poem. The rhyme system has also changed. Petrarch’s sonnet had a well-defined rhyme system, as demonstrated like this: ‘bat-ten-men-hat, cat-hen-den-mat, hoop-fruit-reel, loop-chute-meal’. The Shakespearean sonnet, on the other hand, uses alternating rhyme and a rhyming couplet like this: hen-hat, bat, loop-chute, hoop-fruit, arm-rest, harmless, love-dove.
There are 154 sonnets attributed to the poet and playwright William Shakespeare. The first 152 were first published in 1609 with two more published in a separate publication. These appeared at a time when Shakespeare’s output appeared to be in decline; four years later, in 1613, he will stop writing comedies and poems.
The first 17 poems in the collection are known as the “procreation sonnets” and are written to a young man who urges him to marry and have children. The next 109 poems develop from this on the theme of love. They conclude with 28 poems about a dark and treacherous woman including “Sonnet 130,” which demonstrates the Shakespearean sonnet in full:
“My mistress’s eyes are not like the sun;
The coral is much redder than the red of her lips;
If the snow is white, why then are her breasts wet?
If the hair is threads, black threads grow on his head.
I have seen damask roses, red and white,
But none of these roses do I see on my cheeks;
And in some perfumes there is more pleasure
That in the breath that stinks from my mistress.
I like hearing her talk, yet I know it well
That music has a much nicer sound;
I grant that I have never seen a goddess leave;
My mistress, when she walks, tramples the ground:
Yet, by heavens, I think my love is rare
Like everyone she denied with a false comparison.
After Shakespeare wrote sonnets like ‘130’, their popularity began to fade. For a time they were replaced by metaphysical poetry. Their value was re-evaluated and revived by 18th-century poets such as William Wordsworth. The sonnet remains popular into the modern period and has been used by poets such as Robert Frost and William Butler Yeats.
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