The Italian Sonnet
The rules of the Italian sonnet were established by Guittone d'Arezzo (1235-1294), who wrote almost 300 sonnets. Other Italian poets of the time, including Dante Alighieri (1265-1321) and Guido Cavalcanti (c. 1250-1300) wrote sonnets, but the most famous early sonneteer was Francesco Petrarca (1304-1374)
In its original form, the Italian sonnet was divided into a octave of eight lines followed by a sestet of six lines. The octave stated a proposition and the sestet stated its solution with a clear break between the two. The octave rhymed a-b-b-a, a-b-b-a. For the sestet there were two different possibilities, c-d-e-c-d-e and c-d-c-c-d-c. In time, other variants on this rhyming scheme were introduced. Typically, the ninth line created a "turn" or volta, which signaled the change in the topic or tone of the sonnet.
The first known sonnets in English, written by Sir Thomas Wyatt and Henry Howard, Earl of Surry, used this Italian scheme, as did sonnets by later English poets including John Milton, William Wordsworth and Elizabeth Barrett Browning. However, these poets tended to ignore the strict logical structure of proposition and solution.
This example, On His Being Arrived to the Age of Twenty-three by Milton, gives a sense of the Italian Form:
- How soon hath Time, the subtle thief of youth, (a)
- Stolen on his wing my three and twentieth year! (b)
- My hasting days fly on with full career, (b)
- But my late spring no bud or blossom shew'th. (a)
- Perhaps my semblance might deceive the truth, (a)
- That I to manhood am arrived so near, (b)
- And inward ripeness doth much less appear, (b)
- That some more timely-happy spirits indu'th. (a)
- Yet be it less or more, or soon or slow, (c)
- It shall be still in strictest measure even (d)
- To that same lot, however mean or high, (e)
- Toward which Time leads me, and the will of Heaven. (d)
- All is, if I have grace to use it so, (c)
- As ever in my great Task-master's eye. (e)
The English Sonnet
Soon after the introduction of the Italian sonnet, English poets began to develop the native form. These poets included Sir Philip Sidney, Michael Drayton, Samuel Daniel and William Shakespeare. The form is often named after Shakespeare, not because he was the first to write in this form but because he became its most famous practioner.
The form consists of three quatrains of four lines and a couplet of two lines. The couplet generally introduced an unexpected sharp thematic or imagistic "turn". Usual rhyme schemes were a-b-a-b. c-d-c-d, e-f-e-f. g-g and a-b-a-b, b-c-b-c, c-d-c-d, e-e.
This example, Shakespeare's Sonnet 116, illustrates the form:
- Let me not to the marriage of true minds
- Admit impediments. Love is not love
- Which alters when it alteration finds,
- Or bends with the remover to remove.
- O no, it is an ever fixed mark
- That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
- It is the star to every wand'ring barque,
- Whose worth's unknown although his height be taken.
- Love's not time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
- Within his bending sickle's compass come;
- Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
- But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
- If this be error and upon me proved,
- I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
A variant on this form is the Spenserian sonnet, named after