The Shakespearian Sonnet - characteristics

- 14 lines...broken into 3 quatrains (4 lines) and one couplet (2 lines) - iambic pentameter (5 unstressed/stressed syllables per line) - rhyme scheme is abab cdcd efef gg - sonnets are generally about the same topics: love, lost love etc and sometimes build in intensity towards the final couplet or are comprised of three similar quatrains leading towards the final thought in the couplet - the sonnet usually is concerned with a specific problem and at times asks a question regarding the nature of love the most famous? sonnet 18: Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate: Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, And summer's lease hath all too short a date: Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines, And often is his gold complexion dimm'd; And every fair from fair sometime declines, By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd; But thy eternal summer shall not fade Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest; Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade, When in eternal lines to time thou growest: So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.