In the last issue of the Simpson Street Free Press, I reviewed an amazing collection of poetry and essay excerpts called Things I Have To Tell You. The poems in that collection are examples of free verse, poetry without set rhyme sequences or meter. (Meter is the rhythm and number of accented syllables in one line of poetry).

Another common type of poetry is the sonnet.

Sonnets are lyrical poems with set rhyme sequences and meter. The fantastic poems in Things I Have To Tell You were written fairly recently by teenagers. But, poets from long ago wrote some of the best sonnets. William Shakespeare is the most famous author of sonnets.

Shakespeare was born in 1564 in Stratford-upon-Avon, a little town in the English countryside. Shakespeare sometimes worked with his father, who was a butcher by trade. Shakespeare’s father was later appointed mayor and justice of peace in the town of Stratford, but he ruined the family name when he failed to keep the peace. This mistake was compunded when he failed to pay his fine of £40. William Shakespeare helped restore his family’s position in the 1590s by earning quite a bit of money.

Historians know little about Shakespeare’s early life, but they assume he attended Stratford Grammar School and it is  believed he was a teacher for the Roman Catholic Houghton family from 1580 to 1582.

When he was eighteen years old, William married Anne Hathaway, a girl who lived near him. She was eight years older than Shakespeare. Anne gave birth to a baby girl named Susannah six months after their marriage. Twins Hamnet and Judith were born in 1585. Hamnet, Shakespeare’s only son, died at the age of eleven and many say Shakespeare’s grief over his son’s death is reflected in some of his great works.

Later in life, Shakespeare began his famous writing career. He was a poet, an actor, and a dramatist. He wrote dozens of plays that are still performed today. Shakespeare also authored hundreds of sonnets in his lifetime.

Many historians consider Shakespeare to be the greatest dramatist of all time and some of his plays, such as Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet are still some of the world’s most famous works of literature. Hamlet was first printed in 1603 and is Shakespeare’s longest drama. Romeo and Juliet was based on a story of two real lovers who lived and died in Verona during Shakespeare’s lifetime.

Shakespeare wrote his first sonnets in 1598, but they weren’t published until 1609. All of his sonnets refer mysteriously to different persons, some of whom could be based on actual people. In some of his works Shakespeare describes a handsome young man, a woman called the “Dark Lady,” and a rival poet.

Shakespeare died on April 23, 1616. He left a third of his estate to Anne, his widow. Anne died seven years after Shakespeare and according to legend, it was the wish of both Anne and her daughter to be buried in Shakespeare’s grave.

All of Shakespeare’s sonnets followed a modified form of the sonnet, the English sonnet. The original sonnet form was created in Italy around the thirteenth century. In the fourteenth century, an Italian man named Petrarch perfected the sonnet. He named his form of the sonnet the Petrarchan sonnet, which is often referred to today as the Italian sonnet.

The Italian sonnet is written in iambic pentameter, a type of meter. A poem written in iambic pentameter has five pairs of stressed and unstressed syllables in each line. The Italian sonnet consists of an octave, an eight-lined stanza, and a sestet, a six-lined stanza. The octave has an ABBAABBA rhyme sequence. The sestet has one of three rhyme sequences: CDECDE, CDCCDC, or CDEDCE. The poet introduces the story or asks a question in the octave and comments on the story or solves the problem in the sestet.

Thomas Wyatt and his associate Surrey introduced the Italian sonnet form into England. Surrey and other poets modified the Italian form of sonnets over time, creating a new sonnet form called the English sonnet. Because Shakespeare gained so much fame for the best English sonnets ever written, this form is sometimes referred to as the Shakespearean sonnet.

The English sonnet consists of three quatrains, or four-lined stanzas, and a rhymed couplet. Each quatrain has its own rhyme sequence. The rhyme scheme of an English sonnet is ABAB CDCD EFEF GG. The English sonnet is also written in iambic pentameter. The quatrains tell a story, or ask a question, while the couplet comments on the narrative or answers the question.

The Spenserian sonnet combines these two forms. It is written in iambic pentameter and consists of three quatrains and a couplet, but uses the following rhyme sequence: ABAB BCBC CDCD EE.

Writing sonnets calls for a lot of technical skill from the poet, which is why Shakespeare is so admired for his work using this form of poetry. The writer’s hard work pays off when the beautiful, rhyming, fourteen-lined poems create the desired musical effect and please the reader’s ear.

[Sources: http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/shakespe.htm, http://english.upenn.edu/~afrilreis/88/sonnet.html]