Shakespeare’s Sonnets
PRESENTATION BY NANCY K. KERNS
Shakespeare: The Basics
 Lived from 1564-1616
 Wrote during reigns of
Queen Elizabeth I and
King James I – they
loved him
 Hugely popular
playwright in his day and
now iconic literary figure
 Most famous for plays
like Hamlet and Romeo
and Juliet, but also a
great poet
Facts About Shakespeare’s Sonnets
 Written in the 1590s
when an outbreak of
plague closed down the
theaters
 Published as a set of 154
sonnets in 1609
 Deal largely with love
(common among
Renaissance sonnets) but
also incorporate themes
like time and death
 Breakdown of who
Shakespeare addresses in
his sonnets:
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

Sonnets 1-126 are
addressed to an
unidentified young man
Sonnets 127-154 are
largely addressed to an
unidentified “dark lady”
Sometimes a rival poet or
muse get addressed
Patterns of the Shakespearean Sonnet
 Each is 14 lines
 Each has three quatrains (a
quatrain is a set of four lines)
 Each has a couplet (a set of
two rhyming lines) at the end
 Each is written in iambic
pentameter (defined on the
next slide)
 Rhyme Scheme (each letter
represents a rhyme)




First quatrain: ABAB
Second quatrain: CDCD
Third quatrain: EFEF
Couplet: GG
 Example of an ABAB quatrain
rhyme scheme (note that lines
identified with the same letter
rhyme with each other)
From Sonnet 18
Shall I compare theme to a
summer’s day? (“A” rhyme)
Thou art more lovely and more
temperate (“B” rhyme)
Rough winds do shake the
darling buds of May (“A”
rhyme)
And summer’s lease hath all too
short a date (“B” rhyme)
Iambic Pentameter
 Type of poetic meter found in Shakespeare’s sonnets
 Each line has ten syllables made up of 5 “feet” (a “foot” is two
syllables); the “5 feet” aspect is where the “Pent” of
Pentameter comes from (like a 5-sided star is a “Pentagram”)
 Each “foot” is an “iamb”, which means that each foot has one
unstressed syllable, then one stressed syllable
 Examples of words that are iambs (in other words, they have
an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable) are
forGIVE, beLIEVE, enJOY, reJOICE, inDEED
 Stick those five together and you have a line of iambic
pentameter!
“Indeed forgive, believe, enjoy, rejoice.” = ten syllables made
up of five feet, each an iamb
A example you might know
 Do you know the hymn “How Great Thou Art”?
Check out this line: “Then sings my soul, my Savior
God to Thee” – it’s in iambic pentameter!
 Criteria for iambic pentameter



10 syllables
5 feet
Each “foot” contains an unstressed and then a stressed syllable
 So let’s break it down:
Then sings | my soul | my Sav- | ior God | to Thee
Iambic pentameter it is!
Breaking down a sonnet rhyme scheme
I’ve written out Sonnet 18 here by bolding the stressed syllable, dividing the quatrains and
feet, coloring the end-of-line rhyme and assigning it a letter which I put in the front of the line.
Quatrain 1 (four-line stanza)
A Shall I | compare | thee to | a sum | mer's day?
B Thou art | more love- | ly and | more temp | erate
A Rough winds | do shake | the dar |ling buds | of May
B And sum- | mer's lease | hath all | too short | a date
Quatrain 2 (four-line stanza)
C Sometime | too hot | the eye | of hea- | ven shines
D And of- |ten is | his gold | complex- | ion dimm’d
C And ev- | ery fair | from fair | sometime | declines
D By chance | or na- | ture's chang- | ing course | untrimm’d
Quatrain 3 (four-line stanza)
E But thy | eter- | nal sum- | mer shall | not fade
F Nor lose | posses- | sion of | that fair | thou owest
E Nor shall | Death brag | thou wan- | der'st in | his shade
F When in | eter- | nal lines | to time | thou growest
Couplet (two rhyming lines)
G So long | as men | can breathe | or eyes | can see
G So long | lives this | and this | gives life | to thee
Strategies for analyzing a sonnet
 Read through the whole thing more than once.
 Summarize the poem in your own words.
 Pay special attention to the couplet – usually it’s the “zinger”
that helps get the main point across.
 Split up the quatrains and see how they develop. Each
quatrain takes the idea further, but the third quatrain usually
shakes things up a bit and takes the poem in a new direction.
 Look for an image that’s used throughout, like an extended
metaphor where a woman is compared to a summer’s day.
Think about why the author would want to use that kind of
comparison or metaphor, and what is special about it.
 After analyzing, you should be able to take the main point,
explain why it is the main point, and explain how the words
and images of the sonnet get that point across. If you can do
this, you’ve successfully analyzed a sonnet!
Sources (informally cited)
 Content
 “Shakespeare’s Sonnets.”
http://www.everypoet.com/Archive/Poetry/William_Shakesp
eare/
 Images (in order of appearance)
 Shakespeare Folio. http://www.nndb.com