Sonnets
Writing a sonnet is a little tricky because it has to follow several rules:
- It must consist of 14 lines.
- It must be written in iambic pentameter (duh-DUH-duh-DUH-duh-DUH-duh-DUH-duh-DUH).
- It must be written in one of various standard rhyme schemes.
- First quatrain: Explaining the big idea and main metaphor.
- Second quatrain: More of the theme and metaphor; often, some imaginative example is given.
- Third quatrain: Peripeteia/volta (a twist or conflict), often introduced by a "but" (very often leading off the ninth line).
- Couplet: Summarizes and leaves the reader with a new, concluding image.
If you're writing the most familiar kind of sonnet, the Shakespearean, the rhyme scheme is this:
A B A B C D C D E F E F G G |
One of Shakespeare's best-known sonnets, Sonnet 18, follows this pattern:
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 owest, Nor shall death brag thou wanderest in his shade, When in eternal lines to time thou growest. So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, So long lives this, and this gives life to thee. |
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