How to Make the Most of a Sonnet, Shakespeare-Style Even though Shakespeare didn't invent this type of sonnet, he was so good at it that the form is now named after him. Shakespeare wasn't the first to use this type of sonnet when the Bard took his turn with the form, the aristocratic poet Sir Philip Sidney had already made it famous with his sequence Astrophil and Stella. The first three sections are known as quatrains 1-3, and the last section is known as the couplet. His brand of sonnet falls into four major sections, rhyming ABAB CDCD EFEF GG. William Shakespeare wrote a type of sonnet with a different rhyme scheme. Check out John Donne's 'Holy Sonnet 7', William Wordsworth's 'London, 1802', and John Milton's sonnet 'On his blindness' for some top-notch explorations of this type of sonnet.

Many poems featured on Shmoop showcase the popular Italian or Petrarchan variety of sonnet, which falls into two main halves rhyming ABBAABBA CDCDCD, with rhyming wiggle room in the second half. Because all sonnets have 14 lines (aside from some super-rare varieties), these different forms are defined by their different rhyme schemes. These patterns usually correspond to a particular form of the sonnet. In response to these challenges, poets over the centuries have developed some traditional ways of organizing the thought-patterns within sonnets. 14 lines doesn't give the poet much room to talk about a vast range of topics, but it is long enough to talk about one or two ideas in a fair amount of detail. When you think about it, this is a pretty interesting length for a poem. The most basic thing you need to know about the sonnet form is that it refers to a poem in 14 lines of iambic pentameter (usually). Shakespeare's Sonnet 60 is… a Shakespearean sonnet.

Shakespeare sonnet iambic pentameter