Question

What are the three characteristics of shakespearean sonnets?

Answer 1

The sonnet form originated in Italy and was popularised by Italian masters like Petrarch, Dante and Michelangelo. The vogue of composing sonnets swept across England during the English Renaissance with the publication of Wyatt and Surrey’s poetry anthology Tottel’s Miscellany. The volume consists of the translations of Petrarch as well as new English experiments with the form. The English sonnet was termed as the Shakespearean sonnet after the name of the most famous practioner of the form. The main characteristics of Shakespearean sonnets are:

It consists of three quatrains and a couplet unlike the Italian division of an octave and a sestet.The meter is predominantly Iambic pentameter with each sonnet line consisting of ten syllables. The syllables are divided into five pairs called iambs or iambic feet. An iamb is a metrical unit made up of one unstressed syllable followed by one stressed syllable.The rhyme scheme of the three quatrains is abab cdcd efef and the couplet has the rhyme scheme gg.Often, the beginning of the third quatrain marks the volta ("turn"), or the line in which the mood of the poem shifts, and the poet expresses a revelation or epiphany. The closing couplet seems to summarize the entire poem.Originally used as a medium to express love, Shakespeare’s sonnets (as well as the later English sonnets) went on to explore different themes like friendship, passage of time, beauty and mortality.