NAME: _________________________________________
One common form of a sonnet is the Shakespearean, also called the English sonnet. It is a fourteen-line poem in two parts: An octave
(eight lines) and a sestet (six lines). The octave presents a question, problem, or situation, and the sestet answers it with a solution,
answer, or comment to the problem. The sestet is further divided into a four-line stanza and a couplet. The couplet sums up the
poem’s conclusion. In between the octave and the sestet, there is often a shift, turn, or change in the poem’s direction. The Shakespearean/English sonnet has this rhyme scheme: ABAB CDCD EFEF GG. The meter or pattern of its rhythm is iambic pentameter.
In other words, each line uses five iambs: five metrical feet. Each foot is an iamb. An iamb is a made up of two syllables: an unstressed followed by a stressed. Examples: jaVON, maRIE, comPARE, deGREE.
Questions:
1.
In the octave (lines 1-8), who is the speaker describing? ____________________________________________
2.
What body parts does he describe? _____________________________________________________________
3.
What point is the speaker attempting to make about the physical nature of his lover? _____________________
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4. Paraphrase lines nine through twelve:
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/
= 1 iamb
5 iamb’s = a line with five iambic feet...or…
as it is properly called: iambic pentameter
William Shakespeare
“My Mistress’ Eyes are Nothing Like the Sun”
Sonnet 130
My mistress' e yes are nothing like the sun ,
Coral is far more red, than her lips red,
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun:
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head:
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I have seen roses damasked, red and white,
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But no such roses see I in her cheeks,
5.
In these lines, what point is the speaker attempting to make now?
And in some perfumes is there more delight,
6.
How is his point here different than the message in the first eight lines?
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
7. The resolution to the poem’s problem is communicated in the final two lines, a couplet. The speaker thinks that his
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know ,
love is rare and valuable “As any she belied with false compare”—that is, any love in which false comparisons were used
That music hath a far more pleasing sound:
to describe the loved one’s beauty. The object of his beauty does not need false comparisons to roses, snow, or coral in
order to be seen as beautiful. Rate how effectively the speaker made his point in the poem. (How well did the speaker get
his point across? _________________________________________________________________________________
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I grant I never saw a goddess go,
My mistress when she walks treads on the ground.
And yet b y heaven I think m y love as rare,
As any she belied with false compare.
Write the
rhyme
scheme in
these
boxes. Underline the
rhyming
words.