Sonnets

A sonnet is a classic poem traditionally written in iambic pentameter

William Shakespeare is known as one of the best playwriters ever but he was also a poet, he wrote 154 sonnets, all incredible.

For example his second most famous is sonnet 18:

  1. Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
  2. Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
  3. Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
  4. And summer’s lease hath all too short a date;
  5. Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
  6. And often is his gold complexion dimm’d;
  7. And every fair from fair sometime declines,
  8. By chance or nature’s changing course untrimm’d;
  9. But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
  10. Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st;
  11. Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
  12. When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st:
  13. So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
  14. So long lives this, and this gives life to thee. 

All of Shakespeare’s poems use 14 lines and have 10 syllables per line. They also include rhyming couplets and a rhyme scheme such as ababababababab and so on

He also uses sonnets in his play such as two characters in his play saying a sonnet line by line. For example, in Romeo and Juliet there is a sonnet shared between the two. such as when they first meet, Shakespeare did this to show how Romeo and Juliet are meant for each other

The sonnet below is the sonnet that Romeo and Juliet recited lines by lines together when they first meet. This sonnet has religious imagery by Romeo calling Juliet a saint and himself a pilgrim to visit her.

Romeo:
If I profane with my unworthiest hand
This holy shrine, the gentle fine is this:
My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand
To smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss.
Juliet:
Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much,
Which mannerly devotion shows in this;
For saints have hands that pilgrims’ hands do touch,
And palm to palm is holy palmers’ kiss.
Romeo:
Have not saints lips, and holy palmers too?
Juliet:
Ay, pilgrim, lips that they must use in prayer.
Romeo:
O, then, dear saint, let lips do what hands do;
They pray, grant thou, lest faith turn to despair.
Juliet:
Saints do not move, though grant for prayers’ sake.
Romeo:
Then move not, while my prayer’s effect I take. (He kisses her.)