Sonnets Step-By-Step (Page 2 of 4) in pdf

3. Unde rsta nd iambi c penta meter.

Iambic pentameter (five-measure) is a

line of five iambic feet. The line has a total of ten syllables repeating the pattern of

“unstressed, stressed” five times. Identify the iambic pentameter below using / for stressed

and u for unstressed, then write and mark two lines below.

a. The child who wants shall cry when not in need.

b. Often, a pet’s soft whine outcries the son’s

c. ______________________________________________________________________

d. _____________________________________________________________________

4. Understand rhyme sche mes and stru ctu re

. A sonnet has 14 lines.

The last six are the sestet. The sestet holds the last two lines, which are a couplet; the last

word in each of the couplet’s lines rhyme with each other. There is a rhyme scheme through

the entire poem. See Shakespeare’s Sonnet #18 for example:

1. Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?

2. Thou art more lovely and more temperate:

3. Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,

4. And summer's lease hath all too short a date:

5. Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,

6. And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;

7. And every fair from fair sometime declines,

8. By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd;

9. But thy eternal summer shall not fade

10. Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;

11. Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,

12. When in eternal lines to time thou growest:

13. So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,

14. So long lives this and this gives life to thee.

In the octet of the sonnet above, Shakespeare begins comparing his subject to a summer day,

an event associated with positive connotations. However, the remaining images in the sestet

reveal how a summer’s day is not always beautiful; it may be windy, it’s dated and will end

eventually, it may be too hot, and it's not stable because nature may take away fair skies.

In the sestet, lines 9 through 14, returns the focus of the poem’s subject: their loveliness will

always be ready, not even diminished as they grow old. The couplet bluntly states that the

speaker gets life, enjoyment, from the subject’s loveliness.

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