1. Shakespeare’s
Sonnets
English I Honors
Mrs. Pilgreen

2. Rhyme Scheme
Those hours, that with gentle work did frame A
The lovely gaze where every eye doth dwell, B
Will play the tyrants to the very same A
And that unfair which fairly doth excel; B
For never-resting time leads summer on C
To hideous winter, and confounds him there; D
Sap checked with frost, and lusty leaves quite gone, C
Beauty o'er-snowed and bareness every where: D
Then were not summer's distillation left, E
A liquid prisoner pent in walls of glass,F
Beauty's effect with beauty were bereft, E
Nor it, nor no remembrance what it was: F
But flowers distilled, though they with winter meet, G
Leese but their show; their substance still lives sweet. G

3. Line Structure
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14 total lines
3 quatrains: group of 4 lines
Followed by a couplet: group of 2 lines
Lyric poetry: expresses the thoughts &
emotions of a single speaker, usually love
• Contains a volta at the 3rd stanza: change in
tone or attitude

4. Metrical Patterns
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unstressed syllable: u
Stressed syllable: /
Iamb: u /
Trochee: / u
Anapest: u u /
Dactyl: / u u
Spondee: / /
Pyrrhic: u u
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1 foot: monometer
2 feet: dimeter
3 feet: trimeter
4 feet: tetrameter
5 feet: pentameter
6 feet: hexameter
7 feet: heptameter
8 feet: octameter

5. Metrical Patterns
• Iambic Pentameter: 5 (feet of) iambs
u/u/u/u/u/
Example:
What light through yon-der win-dow breaks?

6. The Sonnets
• Sonnets 1-126 addressed to a “fair youth”
– urging him to marry and have children so that
he can leave behind a duplicate of his beauty
– love & admiration
• Sonnet 127-152 addressed to a “dark
lady,” the speaker’s mistress
– The fair youth has stolen the dark lady from
the speaker
– Object of infatuation & lust