Sonnet XXII

My glass shall not persuade me I am old,
So long as youth and thou are of one date;
But when in thee time's furrows I behold,
Then look I death my days should expiate.

For all that beauty that doth cover thee,
Is but the seemly raiment of my heart,
Which in thy breast doth live, as thine in me:
How can I then be elder than thou art?

O! therefore love, be of thyself so wary
As I, not for myself, but for thee will;
Bearing thy heart, which I will keep so chary
As tender nurse her babe from faring ill.

Presume not on thy heart when mine is slain,
Thou gav'st me thine not to give back again.

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 damask'd, 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.

Sonnet 130

I

Louing in trueth, and fayne in verse my loue to show,

That she, deare Shee, might take som pleasure of my paine,
Pleasure might cause her reade, reading might make her know,
Knowledge might pittie winne, and pity grace obtaine,

I sought fit wordes to paint the blackest face of woe;
Studying inuentions fine, her wits to entertaine,
Oft turning others leaues, to see if thence would flow
Some fresh and fruitfull showers vpon my sun-burnd brain.

But words came halting forth, wanting Inuentions stay;
Inuention, Natures childe, fledde step-dame Studies blowes;
And others feet still seemde but strangers in my way.
Thus, great with childe to speak, and helplesse in my throwes,

Biting my trewand pen, beating myselfe for spite,
Fool, said my Muse to me, looke in thy heart, and write.

Astrophel and Stella
Sir Philip Sidney

Shakespeare's Sonnets

That time of year thou mayst in me behold

When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.

In me thou seest the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth in the west,
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death's second self, that seals up all in rest.

In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the death-bed whereon it must expire
Consumed with that which it was nourish'd by.

This thou perceivest, which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well which thou must leave ere long.

Sonnet 73
William Shakespeare

Some lovers speak, when they their muses entertain (VI)

Some louers speake, when they their Muses entertaine,
Of hopes begot by feare, of wot not what desires,
Of force of heau'nly beames infusing hellish paine,
Of liuing deaths, dere wounds, faire storms, and freesing fires:

Some one his song in Ioue and Ioues strange tales attires,
Bordred with buls and swans, powdred with golden raine:
Another, humbler wit, to shepherds pipe retires,
Yet hiding royall bloud full oft in rurall vaine.

To some a sweetest plaint a sweetest stile affords:
While teares poure out his inke, and sighes breathe out his words,

His paper pale despaire, and pain his pen doth moue.
I can speake what I feele, and feele as much as they,
But thinke that all the map of my state I display
When trembling voyce brings forth, that I do Stella loue.

-----

Some lovers speak, when they their muses entertain
Of hopes begot by fear, of wot not what desires,
Of force of heav'nly beams infusing hellish pain,
Of living deaths, dear wounds, fair storms, and freezing fires;

Someone his song in Jove and Jove's strange tales attires,
Bordered with bulls and swans, powdered with golden rain;
Another humbler wit to shepherd's pipe retires,
Yet hiding royal blood full oft in rural vein;

To some a sweetest plaint a sweetest style affords,
While tears pour out his ink, and sighs breathe out his words,

His paper pale despair, and pain his pen doth move.
I can speak what I feel, and feel as much as they,
But think that all the map of my state I display
When trembling voice brings forth that I do Stella love.

From Astrophel and Stella (1591)
Sir Philip Sidney (1554-1586)

Shakespeare's Sonnets

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?

Doctor Faustus. Character list

Faustus - The protagonist. Faustus is a brilliant sixteenth-century scholar from Wittenberg, Germany, whose ambition for knowledge, wealth, and worldly might makes him willing to pay the ultimate price—his soul—to Lucifer in exchange for supernatural powers. Faustus’s initial tragic grandeur is diminished by the fact that he never seems completely sure of the decision to forfeit his soul and constantly wavers about whether or not to repent. His ambition is admirable and initially awesome, yet he ultimately lacks a certain inner strength. He is unable to embrace his dark path wholeheartedly but is also unwilling to admit his mistake. Read more...

Mephastophilis - A devil whom Faustus summons with his initial magical experiments. Mephastophilis’s motivations are ambiguous: on the one hand, his oft-expressed goal is to catch Faustus’s soul and carry it off to hell; on the other hand, he actively attempts to dissuade Faustus from making a deal with Lucifer by warning him about the horrors of hell. Mephastophilis is ultimately as tragic a figure as Faustus, with his moving, regretful accounts of what the devils have lost in their eternal separation from God and his repeated reflections on the pain that comes with damnation. Read more...

Chorus - A character who stands outside the story, providing narration and commentary. The Chorus was customary in Greek tragedy.

Old Man - An enigmatic figure who appears in the final scene. The old man urges Faustus to repent and to ask God for mercy. He seems to replace the good and evil angels, who, in the first scene, try to influence Faustus’s behavior.

Good Angel - A spirit that urges Faustus to repent for his pact with Lucifer and return to God. Along with the old man and the bad angel, the good angel represents, in many ways, Faustus’s conscience and divided will between good and evil.

Evil Angel - A spirit that serves as the counterpart to the good angel and provides Faustus with reasons not to repent for sins against God. The evil angel represents the evil half of Faustus’s conscience.

Lucifer - The prince of devils, the ruler of hell, and Mephastophilis’s master.
Wagner - Faustus’s servant. Wagner uses his master’s books to learn how to summon devils and work magic.

Clown - A clown who becomes Wagner’s servant. The clown’s antics provide comic relief; he is a ridiculous character, and his absurd behavior initially contrasts with Faustus’s grandeur. As the play goes on, though, Faustus’s behavior comes to resemble that of the clown.

Robin - An ostler, or innkeeper, who, like the clown, provides a comic contrast to Faustus. Robin and his friend Rafe learn some basic conjuring, demonstrating that even the least scholarly can possess skill in magic. Marlowe includes Robin and Rafe to illustrate Faustus’s degradation as he submits to simple trickery such as theirs.

Rafe - An ostler, and a friend of Robin. Rafe appears as Dick (Robin’s friend and a clown) in B-text editions of Doctor Faustus.

Valdes and Cornelius - Two friends of Faustus, both magicians, who teach him the art of black magic.

Horse-courser - A horse-trader who buys a horse from Faustus, which vanishes after the horse-courser rides it into the water, leading him to seek revenge.

The Scholars - Faustus’s colleagues at the University of Wittenberg. Loyal to Faustus, the scholars appear at the beginning and end of the play to express dismay at the turn Faustus’s studies have taken, to marvel at his achievements, and then to hear his agonized confession of his pact with Lucifer.

The pope - The head of the Roman Catholic Church and a powerful political figure in the Europe of Faustus’s day. The pope serves as both a source of amusement for the play’s Protestant audience and a symbol of the religious faith that Faustus has rejected.

Emperor Charles V - The most powerful monarch in Europe, whose court Faustus visits.

Knight - A German nobleman at the emperor’s court. The knight is skeptical of Faustus’s power, and Faustus makes antlers sprout from his head to teach him a lesson. The knight is further developed and known as Benvolio in B-text versions of Doctor Faustus; Benvolio seeks revenge on Faustus and plans to murder him.

Bruno - A candidate for the papacy, supported by the emperor. Bruno is captured by the pope and freed by Faustus. Bruno appears only in B-text versions of Doctor Faustus.

Duke of Vanholt - A German nobleman whom Faustus visits.

Martino and Frederick - Friends of Benvolio who reluctantly join his attempt to kill Faustus. Martino and Frederick appear only in B-text versions of Doctor Faustus.

The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus

"Dr. Faustus", etching by Rembrandt

"Hell hath no limits, nor is circumscribed,
In one self place, but where we are is hell,
And where hell is there must we ever be.
And to be short, when all the world dissolves,
And every creature shall be purified,
All places shall be hell that is not heaven."
Mephastophilis to Faustus, Act 2, Scene 1

Faustus learns necromancy

As a prologue, the Chorus tells us about the type of play Doctor Faustus is. It is not about war or courtly love, but rather about Faustus, who was born of lower class parents. This can be seen as a departure from the Medieval tradition; Faustus holds a lower status than kings and saints, but his story is still worth being told. It gives an introduction to his wisdom and abilities, most notably in divinity which he excels so tremendously that he is awarded a doctorate. During this opening, we also get our first clue to the source of Faustus' downfall. Faustus is likened to the story of Icarus, who flew too close to the sun with his waxen wings and as a result fell to his death when the sun melted the wax. This does indeed clue us to Faustus's end as well as bringing our attention to the idea of hubris (excessive pride) which is represented in the Icarus story.

Faustus comments that he has reached the end of every subject he has studied, for instance, the skill of argumentative attributed to Logic. He dismisses Logic as being a tool for arguing; Medicine as being unvalued unless it allowed raising the dead and immortality; Law as being petty and below him; Divinity as useless because he feels that all humans commit sin, and thus to have sins punishable by death complicates the logic of Divinity. He dismisses it as "What doctrine call you this? Que Sera Sera (What will be, shall be)".

He calls upon his servant Wagner to bring forth Valdes and Cornelius, two famous magicians. The good angel and the bad angel dispense their own perspective of his interest in Magic. Though Faustus is momentarily dissuaded, proclaiming "How am I glutted with conceit of this?", he is apparently won over by the possibilities Magic offers to him. Valdes declares that if Faustus devotes himself to Magic, he must vow not to study anything else and points out that great things are indeed possible with someone of Faustus' standing.

Faustus' absence is noted by two scholars who are less accomplished than Faustus himself. They request that Wagner reveal Faustus' present location, a request which Wagner haughtily denies. We can see Wagner as a person who thinks very highly of himself. The two scholars worry about Faustus falling deep into the art of Magic and leave to inform the head of the university.

Faustus summons a devil, under the presence of Lucifer and other devils although Faustus is unaware of it. After creating a circle and speaking an incantation, a devil named Mephostophilis appears before him. Faustus is unable to tolerate the hideous looks of the devil and commands it to change its form to that of a Franciscan friar, a shape which suits a demon best, an ironic statement used to mock religion. Faustus, in seeing the obedience of the devil (for changing form), takes pride in his skill. He tries to bind the devil to his service but is unable to because Mephostophilis already serves Lucifer, the prince of devils. Mephostophilis also reveals that it was not Faustus's power that summoned him but rather anyone that abjured the scriptures would result in the devil coming to claim one's soul. Thus, nobody can summon a demon without placing themselves in danger of damnation.

Mephostophilis introduces the history of Lucifer and the other devils while indirectly telling Faustus that hell has no circumference and is more of a state of mind than a physical location. Faustus' inquiries into the nature of hell lead to Mephistopheles saying: "Oh Faustus, leave these frivolous demands, which strikes a terror to my fainting soul." Mephostophilis seems to imply that Faustus's questioning has reminded Mephistopheles of his origins.

The pact with Lucifer

Using Mephistopheles as a messenger, Faustus strikes a deal with Lucifer: he is to be allotted twenty-four years of life on Earth, during which time he will have Mephistopheles as his personal servant. At the end he will give his soul over to Lucifer as payment and spend the rest of time as one damned to hell. This deal is to be sealed in Faustus' own blood. Interestingly, at first his blood congeals, leading to second thoughts by Faustus. After cutting a second time, Faustus finds the congealed blood on his arm has formed a Latin inscription instructing him to run away. Despite the dramatic nature of this obvious divine intervention, Faustus disregards the inscription with the presumption that he is already damned by his actions thus far, therefore left with no place to flee to. Mephistopheles brings coals to break the wound open again, and thus Mephistopheles begins his servitude and Faustus his oath.

Wasting his skills

Faustus begins by learning much about the sciences. He has an interesting debate with Mephistopheles regarding astronomy and the "nine spheres". Two angels, good and bad, appear to Faustus giving him the chance to repent and revoke his oath to Lucifer. This is the largest fault of Faustus throughout the play: he is blind to his own salvation. Though he is told initially by Mephistopheles to "leave these frivolous demands," Faustus remains set on his soul's damnation.

Lucifer brings to Faustus the personification of the seven deadly sins. Faustus recognizes these as detestable, but ignores the echo of his own 'detestable' life.
From this point until the end of the play, Faustus does nothing worthwhile, having begun his pact with the attitude that he would be able to do anything. Faustus appears to scholars and warns them that he is damned and will not be long on the earth. He gives a speech about how he is damned and eventually seems to repent for his deeds. Mephistopheles comes to collect his soul, and Faustus' body is found by his friends and colleagues, dismembered.

Damnation or salvation

The text leaves Faustus' final confrontation with Mephistopheles offstage, and his final fate ambiguous. The scene following begins with Faustus' friends discovering his body parts strewn about the stage: from this they conclude that Faustus was damned. However, his friends decide to give him a due burial, a religious ceremony that hints at salvation. It should be noted that the discovery of the body parts is a scene present only in the later 'B text' of the play; the earlier version of the play, in offering no direct evidence of Faustus' fate, is more ambiguous.

Source: Wikipedia

The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus

http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/doctorfaustus/

About Astrophil and Stella

Sidney, Philip, Sir. The works of the Honourable Sr. Philip Sidney, Kt., in prose and verse : in three volumes : containing, I. The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia.--II. The defense of poesy.---III. Astrophel and Stella.--IV. The remedy of love; sonnets, &c.--V. The Lady of May : a masque.--VI. The life of the author. 3 vols. 14th edition. London : Printed for E. Taylor, A. Bettesworth, E. Curll, W. Mears, and R. Gosling, 1725.
Starred Book Collection

Astrophel and Stella (now called Astrophil and Stella), which includes 108 sonnets and 11 songs, is the first in a long line of Elizabethan sonnet cycles. "Sonnet cycles" were so named because they incorporated linked sonnets that generally described the progressive rise and fall of a love relationship. In other words, through a number of distinct but related poems, it was possible to infer a plot. Most of the sonnets in Astrophel and Stella are influenced by Petrarchan conventions, incorporating traditional methods such as addressing the moon and the world of sleep and dreams, mourning the lady's absence, praising her unique beauty, bemoaning her coldness, and highlighting the lover's frustrated longings. Like Petrarch's poems, Sidney's work displays a variation of emotion from sonnet to sonnet within the trappings of a vague but thematic narrative. Sidney's experiments with rhyme scheme in his sonnets also were deeply significant for English Renaissance poetry, essentially freeing the English sonnet from the inflexible rhyming requirements of the Italian sonnet form.

Though the poems circulated widely in manuscript form, an official edition was not printed until 1591, five years after Sidney's death. This text, however, was considered to be inaccurate, and the most authoritative version came from a 1598 folio of Sidney's Arcadia, which contained an edition of Astrophel and Stella. This folio was supervised directly by Sidney's sister.

Sidney's sonnet sequence also exhibits clear references to Homeric epic, particularly Homer's Penelope. Some scholars have suggested that the 108 sonnets in the sequence represent the 108 suitors of Penelope, who play a game of striving to hit the Penelope stone in order to determine who can court her. The 119 poems are also just one number short of the number of months Ulysses spent trying to return home to Penelope in The Odyssey. The structure of the sonnet sequence, falling one month short of achieving Ulysses's journey home, can be seen as an emphasis on Sidney's failure in his pursuit of his own Penelope.

It is generally accepted that the Stella of the poems is Penelope Devereux, later Lady Rich, and that Astrophel (Astrophil) is Sidney himself. Critics disagree, however, on whether Sidney's love for Penelope is real or merely literary, meant simply to emulate the style of Petrarch's poetic adoration of "Laura." Because neither Elizabethan historians nor Sidney's own early biographers gave any clear account of his relationship with the Stella of the poems, the sonnets themselves are the only key to contextualizing the poetry with his romantic life.

The impossibility of a successful relationship between the two is a key theme of the sequence. The rift between the two is also expressed in the title of the piece. First of all, the title is made up of one name of Greek origin and one name of Latin origin: a clear disjunction. The presence of the grammatical copula "and" suggests that the two are a couple (such as "Tristan and Isolde" or "Romeo and Juliet"), which readers immediately realize is not the case. Even the names themselves, meaning "star-lover" and "star," describes a separation between the two: there will always be distance between the stars and those who love them.

Read more...

Blank Verse

Is a type of poetry, distinguished by having a regular meter, but no rhyme. In English, the meter most commonly used with blank verse has been iambic pentameter (like that which is used in Shakespearean plays) read more...

You stars that reign'd at my nativity,
Whose influence hath allotted death and hell,
Now draw up Faustus like a foggy mist
Into the entrails of yon labouring clouds,
That when they vomit forth into the air,
My limbs may issue from their smoky mouths,
So that my soul may but ascend to Heaven.

Doctor Faustus

Love that doth reign and live within my thought

Love that doth reign and live within my thought
And built his seat within my captive breast,
Clad in arms wherein with me he fought,
Oft in my face he doth his banner rest.

But she that taught me love and suffer pain,
My doubtful hope and eke my hot desire
With shamefaced look to shadow and refrain,
Her smiling grace converteth straight to ire.

And coward Love, then, to the heart apace
Taketh his flight, where he doth lurk and 'plain,
His purpose lost, and dare not show his face.

For my lord's guilt thus faultless bide I pain,
Yet from my lord shall not my foot remove,--
Sweet is the death that taketh end by love.

Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey

Tottel’s Miscellany

The reign of Henry VIII was not, as students of history know, a period of unbroken internal peace. Nevertheless, when the wars of the Roses were over and a feeling of security had been induced by the establishment of a strong dynasty, a social and intellectual life became possible in England which the troubles of the reigns of Henry VIII and his two successors were sufficient to check but not to destroy. More important still, England, having more or less settled her internal troubles by a judicious application of the balancing system, became a power to be reckoned with in European politics. This brought her into touch with the kingdoms of the continent, and so, for the first time in a more than incidental way, submitted her intellectual life to the influences of the renascence. The inspiration of the new poetry, we shall find, was almost entirely foreign. It was upon French, and, especially, upon Italian, models that the courtiers of Henry VIII founded the poems which now began to be written in large numbers. The extent to which the practice of versifying prevailed cannot now be gauged; but modern investigation shows it to have been very wide. To make poems was one of the recognised accomplishments of the knight as conceived in the last phase of chivalry, the days with which we are, for the moment, concerned; and it is not, perhaps, too much to say that every educated man made poems, which, if approved, were copied out by his friends and circulated in manuscript, or included in song-books. It was not, however, till 1557 that some few were, for the first time, put into print by Richard Tottel, in the volume, Songes and Sonettes, written by the ryght honorable Lorde Henry Haward late Earle of Surrey, and other, usually called Tottel's Miscellany, was the first printed anthology of English poetry. It was published by Richard Tottel in 1557, and ran to many editions in the sixteenth century.

It was particularly influential in establishing the sonnet as a short verse form in English. The collection contained many sonnets by Thomas Wyatt and the Earl of Surrey. It became a byword; there is a reference to it in The Merry Wives of Windsor.

Other poets included were Nicholas Grimald, Thomas Norton, Lord Vaux, Sir John Cheke, William Gray, and Sir Anthony St. Leger. Some pieces were anonymous or of indeterminate authorship; Chaucer was represented. C. S. Lewis sees the collection as based on a school active from 1530.

The Miscellany has been reprinted numerous times, including a two-volume set by the Harvard Press in the 1920's.

The Passionate Shepherd to His Love

Come live with me and be my Love,
And we will all the pleasures prove
That hills and valleys, dales and field,
Or woods or steepy mountain yields.

And we will sit upon the rocks 5
And see the shepherds feed their flocks,
By shallow rivers, to whose falls
Melodious birds sing madrigals.

And I will make thee beds of roses
And a thousand fragrant posies, 10
A cap of flowers, and a kirtle
Embroider’d all with leaves of myrtle.

A gown made of the finest wool,
Which from our pretty lambs we pull,
Fair linèd slippers for the cold, 15
With buckles of the purest gold.

A belt of straw and ivy buds
With coral clasps and amber studs:
And if these pleasures may thee move,
Come live with me and be my Love. 20

The silver dishes for thy meat
As precious as the gods do eat,
Shall on an ivory table be
Prepared each day for thee and me.

The shepherd swains shall dance and sing 25
For thy delight each May-morning:
If these delights thy mind may move,
Then live with me and be my Love.

Christopher Marlowe (1564–1593)

English sonnet

Sonnets were introduced by Thomas Wyatt in the early 16th century. His sonnets and those of his contemporary the Earl of Surrey were chiefly translations from the Italian of Petrarch and the French of Ronsard and others. While Wyatt introduced the sonnet into English, it was Surrey who gave them the rhyme scheme, meter, and division into quatrains that now characterizes the English sonnet. Sir Philip Sidney's sequence Astrophil and Stella (1591) started a tremendous vogue for sonnet sequences: the next two decades saw sonnet sequences by William Shakespeare, Edmund Spenser, Michael Drayton, Samuel Daniel, Fulke Greville, William Drummond of Hawthornden, and many others.These sonnets were all essentially inspired by the Petrarchan tradition, and generally treat of the poet's love for some woman; the exception is Shakespeare's sequence. In the 17th century, the sonnet was adapted to other purposes, with John Donne and George Herbert writing religious sonnets, and John Milton using the sonnet as a general meditative poem. Both the Shakespearean and Petrarchan rhyme schemes were popular throughout this period, as well as many variants.

The fashion for the sonnet went out with the Restoration, and hardly any sonnets were written between 1670 and Wordsworth's time. However, sonnets came back strongly with the French Revolution. Wordsworth himself wrote several sonnets, of which the best-known are "The world is too much with us" and the sonnet to Milton; his sonnets were essentially modelled on Milton's. Keats and Shelley also wrote major sonnets; Keats's sonnets used formal and rhetorical patterns inspired partly by Shakespeare, and Shelley innovated radically, creating his own rhyme scheme for the sonnet "Ozymandias". Sonnets were written throughout the 19th century, but, apart from Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Sonnets from the Portuguese and the sonnets of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, there were few very successful traditional sonnets. Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote several major sonnets, often in sprung rhythm, of which the greatest is "The Windhover," and also several sonnet variants such as the 10-1/2 line curtal sonnet "Pied Beauty" and the 24-line caudate sonnet "That Nature is a Heraclitean Fire." By the end of the 19th century, the sonnet had been adapted into a general-purpose form of great flexibility.

This flexibility was extended even further in the 20th century. Among the major poets of the early Modernist period, Robert Frost, Edna St. Vincent Millay and E. E. Cummings all used the sonnet regularly. William Butler Yeats wrote the major sonnet Leda and the Swan, which used half rhymes. Wilfred Owen's sonnet Anthem for Doomed Youth was another sonnet of the early 20th century. W. H. Auden wrote two sonnet sequences and several other sonnets throughout his career, and widened the range of rhyme-schemes used considerably. Auden also wrote one of the first unrhymed sonnets in English, "The Secret Agent" (1928). Half-rhymed, unrhymed, and even unmetrical sonnets have been very popular since 1950; perhaps the best works in the genre are Seamus Heaney's Glanmore Sonnets and Clearances, both of which use half rhymes, and Geoffrey Hill's mid-period sequence 'An Apology for the Revival of Christian Architecture in England'. The 1990s saw something of a formalist revival, however, and several traditional sonnets have been written in the past decade.

Soon after the introduction of the Italian sonnet, English poets began to develop a fully native form. These poets included Sir Philip Sidney, Michael Drayton, Samuel Daniel, the Earl of Surrey's nephew Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford and William Shakespeare. The form is often named after Shakespeare, not because he was the first to write in this form but because he became its most famous practitioner. The form consists of three quatrains and a couplet. The third quatrain generally introduces an unexpected sharp thematic or imagistic "turn" called a volta. The usual rhyme scheme was a-b-a-b, c-d-c-d, e-f-e-f, g-g. In addition, sonnets are usually written in iambic pentameter, meaning that there are 10 or perhaps even 11 or 9 syllables per line, and that every other syllable is naturally accented. (Sonnets almost always have 10 syllable lines, but do not always have the natural accent)The sonnet must be 14 lines long, and the last two lines of the sonnet have rhyming endings (though there may be exceptions). In Shakespeare's sonnets, the couplet usually summarizes the theme of the poem or introduces a fresh new look at the theme.

This is the proper rhyme scheme for an English Sonnet (/ represents a new stanza): a-b-a-b / c-d-c-d / e-f-e-f / g-g

This example, Shakespeare's Sonnet 116, illustrates the form:

Let me not to the marriage of true minds (a)
Admit impediments, love is not love (b)
Which alters when it alteration finds, (a)
Or bends with the remover to remove. (b)

O no, it is an ever fixed mark (c)
That looks on tempests and is never shaken; (d)
It is the star to every wand'ring bark, (c)
Whose worth's unknown although his height be taken. (d)

Love's not time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks (e)
Within his bending sickle's compass come, (f)
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, (e)
But bears it out even to the edge of doom: (f)

If this be error and upon me proved, (g)
I never writ, nor no man ever loved. (g)