I have chosen to look at Shakespeares sonnets Nos. 18 and 130.

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Sonnets

 

THE TERM ‘SONNET’ DERIVES FROM LATIN AND MEANS ‘SMALL SONG’. SONNETS WERE FIRST WRIRTTEN IN ITALY IN A 14 LINE VERSE FORM USUALLY HAVING ONE OR MORE CONVENTIONAL RHYME SCHEMES.

 

Sonnets are as the dictionary confirms poems with set rhythmic patterns and Shakespeare’s’ were no exception.  NEARLY ALL SHAKESPEARE’S SONNETS ARE WRITTEN IN THE SAME FORM AND HAVE THE SAME RHYME SCHEME

 

All his sonnets were 14 lines long and these 14 lines were then broken down to three quatrains (four line verse) and one Couplet (two line verse).  Within each verse there was a set rhythm and the rhythm that Shakespeare used was known as an iambic pentameter.  EACH LINE is HAS 10 syllables. EACH line and divided into 5 ‘feet’ EACH ONE OF TWO SYLLABLES.  Each foot is known as an ‘iamb’.  I have chosen to look at Shakespeare’s sonnets Nos. 18 and 130.

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In the first quatrain in sonnet 18 Shakespeare compares his love to a summer’s day.  He is saying that the one he loves is “more lovely and more temperate…”.  Shakespeare goes on to say that beauty sometimes declines due to chance or “nature’s course untrimmed” and that beautiful things do lose beauty.  However in the third quatrain he claims that his love will never lose the beauty by saying “But thy eternal summer shall not fade…”. The poem is concluded by “…So long lives this, and this gives life to thee” which means that as long as the poem ...

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