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The Sonnet Form: Stella Sequence by Sir Philip Sydney Stands As One of The Most Important Sonnet

The document discusses the sonnet form, including its origins in Italy during the Renaissance and its spread to England. It describes the two main types of sonnets - the Petrarchan sonnet divided into an octave and sestet, and the Shakespearean sonnet divided into three quatrains and a couplet. It provides an example of each type and discusses how Shakespeare innovated within the form in his famous sonnet sequence.

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81 views4 pages

The Sonnet Form: Stella Sequence by Sir Philip Sydney Stands As One of The Most Important Sonnet

The document discusses the sonnet form, including its origins in Italy during the Renaissance and its spread to England. It describes the two main types of sonnets - the Petrarchan sonnet divided into an octave and sestet, and the Shakespearean sonnet divided into three quatrains and a couplet. It provides an example of each type and discusses how Shakespeare innovated within the form in his famous sonnet sequence.

Uploaded by

David Liu
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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The Sonnet Form

A sonnet is a fourteen-line lyric poem, traditionally written in iambic pentameter—


that is, in lines ten syllables long, with accents falling on every second syllable, as in:
“Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” The sonnet form first became popular
during the Italian Renaissance, when the poet Petrarch published a sequence of love
sonnets addressed to an idealized woman named Laura. Taking firm hold among
Italian poets, the sonnet spread throughout Europe to England, where, after its initial
Renaissance, “Petrarchan” incarnation faded, the form enjoyed a number of revivals
and periods of renewed interest. In Elizabethan England—the era during which
Shakespeare’s sonnets were written—the sonnet was the form of choice for lyric
poets, particularly lyric poets seeking to engage with traditional themes of love and
romance. (In addition to Shakespeare’s monumental sequence, the Astrophel and
Stella sequence by Sir Philip Sydney stands as one of the most important sonnet
sequences of this period.) Sonnets were also written during the height of classical
English verse, by Dryden and Pope, among others, and written again during the
heyday of English Romanticism, when Wordsworth, Shelley, and particularly John
Keats created wonderful sonnets. Today, the sonnet remains the most influential and
important verse form in the history of English poetry.

Two kinds of sonnets have been most common in English poetry, and they take their
names from the greatest poets to utilize them: the Petrarchan sonnet and the
Shakespearean sonnet. The Petrarchan sonnet is divided into two main parts, called
the octave and the sestet. The octave is eight lines long, and typically follows a rhyme
scheme of ABBAABBA, or ABBACDDC. The sestet occupies the remaining six lines
of the poem, and typically follows a rhyme scheme of CDCDCD, or CDECDE. The
octave and the sestet are usually contrasted in some key way: for example, the octave
may ask a question to which the sestet offers an answer. In the following Petrarchan
sonnet, John Keats’s “On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer,” the octave describes
past events—the speaker’s previous, unsatisfying examinations of the “realms of
gold,” Homer’s poems—while the sestet describes the present—the speaker’s sense of
discovery upon finding Chapman’s translations:

Much have I travell’d in the realms of gold,


And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;
Round many western islands have I been
Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.
Oft of one wide expanse have I been told
That deep-brow’d Homer ruled as his demesne;
Yet did I never breathe its pure serene
Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:
Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken;
Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes
He star’d at the Pacific—and all his men
Look’d at each other with a wild surmise—
Silent, upon a peak in Darien.

The Shakespearean sonnet, the form of sonnet utilized throughout Shakespeare’s


sequence, is divided into four parts. The first three parts are each four lines long, and
are known as quatrains, rhymed ABAB; the fourth part is called the couplet, and is
rhymed CC. The Shakespearean sonnet is often used to develop a sequence of
metaphors or ideas, one in each quatrain, while the couplet offers either a summary or
a new take on the preceding images or ideas. In Shakespeare’s Sonnet 147, for
instance, the speaker’s love is compared to a disease. In the first quatrain, the speaker
characterizes the disease; in the second, he describes the relationship of his love-
disease to its “physician,” his reason; in the third, he describes the consequences of his
abandonment of reason; and in the couplet, he explains the source of his mad,
diseased love—his lover’s betrayal of his faith:

My love is as a fever, longing still


For that which longer nurseth the disease,
Feeding on that which doth preserve the ill,
The uncertain sickly appetite to please.
My reason, the physician to my love,
Angry that his prescriptions are not kept,
Hath left me, and I desp’rate now approve
Desire is death, which physic did except.
Past cure am I, now reason is past care,
And frantic mad with evermore unrest,
My thoughts and my discourse as madmen’s are,
At random from the truth vainly expressed;
For I have sworn thee fair and thought thee bright,
Who art as black as hell, as dark as night.

In many ways, Shakespeare’s use of the sonnet form is richer and more complex than
this relatively simple division into parts might imply. Not only is his sequence largely
occupied with subverting the traditional themes of love sonnets—the traditional love
poems in praise of beauty and worth, for instance, are written to a man, while the love
poems to a woman are almost all as bitter and negative as Sonnet 147—he also
combines formal patterns with daring and innovation. Many of his sonnets in the
sequence, for instance, impose the thematic pattern of a Petrarchan sonnet onto the
formal pattern of a Shakespearean sonnet, so that while there are still three quatrains
and a couplet, the first two quatrains might ask a single question, which the third
quatrain and the couplet will answer. As you read through Shakespeare’s sequence,
think about the ways Shakespeare’s themes are affected by and tailored to the sonnet
form. Be especially alert to complexities such as the juxtaposition of Petrarchan and
Shakespearean patterns. How might such a juxtaposition combination deepen and
enrich Shakespeare’s use of a traditional form?
My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the
sun (Sonnet 130)
William Shakespeare, 1564 - 1616
My mistress’ eyes 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.

I have seen roses damasked, red and white,

But no such roses see I in her cheeks;

And in some perfumes is there more delight

Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.

I love to hear her speak, yet well I know

That music hath a far more pleasing sound;

I grant I never saw a goddess go;

My mistress when she walks treads on the ground.

And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare

As any she belied with false compare.

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