Sonnet

A sonnet is a fourteen-line poem, usually in iambic pentameter, with a set rhyme scheme and a turn partway through where the argument or feeling changes direction.

"Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? / Thou art more lovely and more temperate." Shakespeare's Sonnet 18 shows the form at its most familiar: ten syllables to a line, an alternating rhyme, and an argument that develops over fourteen lines.

The two main types

• Petrarchan. An octave rhyming ABBAABBA sets up a problem or a question. A sestet, often rhyming CDECDE or CDCDCD, answers it. The change between them is the volta.
• Shakespearean. Three quatrains develop an idea, each rhyming ABAB, CDCD and EFEF. A closing couplet rhyming GG states the conclusion or overturns what came before.

Both are normally written in iambic pentameter. The name comes from the Italian word for "little song".

How the form works

A sonnet is a small argument. It poses something, complicates it and resolves it, all in a space too short to waste. The fixed shape is a pressure: because the poet cannot run on, each line has to earn its place, and the rhyme forces choices that often produce surprising ideas.

Why it matters to a writer or editor

The sonnet teaches control. A writer who can make an idea turn on line nine and land on line fourteen understands structure at the smallest scale. For editors, the useful check is the turn. If a sonnet reads as fourteen lines on one note, it has the shape without the engine, and the fix is usually to sharpen where the poem changes its mind.

Watch for forced rhyme. A word chosen only because it rhymes, such as "o'er" dropped in to fill a line, is the classic sign of a poem serving the form instead of the other way round.

Read an example

Read an example: "Ozymandias" by Percy Bysshe Shelley (1818), a public domain poem on Bossfeed, a loosely rhymed sonnet. For an Elizabethan one, read Sonnet 30 by Edmund Spenser.

Frequently asked questions

How many lines are in a sonnet?

Fourteen. The Shakespearean sonnet has three four-line quatrains and a closing couplet. The Petrarchan sonnet has an eight-line octave and a six-line sestet.

What is the rhyme scheme of a Shakespearean sonnet?

ABAB CDCD EFEF GG. Each quatrain rhymes on its own pair of sounds, and the final two lines rhyme with each other.

Do modern sonnets have to rhyme?

Not always. Many modern poets keep the fourteen lines and the turn but loosen or drop the rhyme, and they still call the result a sonnet.