ShmoopTube

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Sonnets, a la Shmoop. Hope you like your poems with a little structure.

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Free verse poetry is a popular form nowadays, as it allows a poet to write without strict

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guidelines of rhyme or meter. [scroll writes on chalk board and then on wall]

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On the opposite end of the spectrum is the “sonnet”…

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…which doesn’t really believe in… writing outside of the box. [sonnet bashes scroll over the head with a ruler]

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That’s not to say that there isn’t room for creativity in a sonnet…

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…but you’d better be creative using imagery, rather than fiddling with the format.

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Okay, so who are these authoritarian poems who don’t believe in rule-breaking?

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Sonnets are 14-line poems… yes, 14 lines exactly…

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…and they follow a very rigid rhyme scheme.

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There are actually a few different types of sonnets…

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…but the most famous is the Shakespearean, or English, sonnet. [Shakespeare walks down red carpet with paparazzi]

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Bill Shakespeare wrote over 150 of these bad boys, which is why they’re named after him.

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He also had over 150 unpaid itemized statements, which is why those are today called “Bills.”

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In a Shakespearean sonnet, the rhyming pattern is a-b-a-b-c-d-c-d-e-f-e-f-g-g.

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Or, to express that in terms that aren’t a hodge-podge of letters…

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…the lines that rhyme with one another in a typical English sonnet are:

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…the first and third, the second and fourth…

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…the fifth and seventh, the sixth and eighth…

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…the ninth and eleventh, the tenth and twelfth…

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…and finally, the last two.

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Any deviation from that structure, and you no longer have a sonnet.

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That’s a lot of pressure on a poor little poem. [sonnet hold up a rock over it's head]

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And yet… there’s more.

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Most… but not all… English sonnets use iambic pentameter…

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…which relates to the words or syllables that are stressed in each line of the poem.

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Although… with so many rules in place, it’s a wonder the entire poem isn’t stressed [sonnet lounges on pool deck chair]

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If we take a look at the first couple lines of our sample sonnet…

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…you can see that every other syllable gets a bit of emphasis.

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It’s almost like the rhythmic beating of a drummer.

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But with fewer groupies. So yeah, a sonneteer is bound by quite a few

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stringent rules.

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But that structure doesn’t prevent sonnets from hitting us on a gut level. [small man kicks sonnet in the stomach]

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In fact, it almost turns them into little songs…

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…which is what the word actually means…

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…and that smooth, cadenced pattern draws us in rather than closes us off. [sonnet sprouts wings and flies off]

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Read all 150-plus of Shakespeare’s sonnets and see if you agree.

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Good luck not speaking in iambic pentameter for the rest of the week.

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