How to Write a Sonnet

It is said that Lord Byron, famous poet and ladies’ man, would, when wooing a young woman, pretend to be suddenly inspired by her beauty and begin furiously writing a poem that, in fact, he had already written—not in a fit of passion, but with the meticulous labor of a consummate craftsman. Needless to say, Byron was wildly successful with the opposite sex. Of course, he was also astonishingly handsome. And while you cannot learn to be good-looking, you can learn to write in that most romantic of poetic forms: the sonnet.

A personalized sonnet, written by you, is a perfect gift for a sweetheart on Valentine’s Day or an anniversary. It is also a well-tested and pithy way of expressing emotion, romantic or otherwise. Whether you want to praise the Lord like John Donne did, or, like Elizabeth Barrett Browning, praise your beau; whether you want to follow in Milton’s footsteps and address a political issue, or, like the Bard of Stratford-upon-Avon, admonish a friend, the sonnet may be the form for you.

Brief Overview of the Sonnet and Its History

A sonnet is a fourteen-line poem following certain conventions of rhyme and meter. It originated in Italy in the fourteenth century, where it was used by such literary giants as Dante Alighieri and Guido Cavalcanti, but was made famous by Francesco Petrarch, who established the conventions of the Italian sonnet—often called the Petrarchan sonnet—in form and content, rhapsodizing about the vicissitudes of romantic love. The Petrarchan sonnet is divided into two parts, the octave (the first eight lines), and the sestet (the final six lines). A change in tone occurs after the octave, often with the first part of the sonnet setting up a problem that the second part resolves.

The first sonnets written in English appeared in the sixteenth century and were heavily influenced by Petrarch. Indeed, among the earliest sonnets in English, written by Sir Thomas Wyatt and Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, were translations of Petrarch. Sonnets continued to be written in England throughout the sixteenth century, notably by Sir Philip Sidney and Edmund Spenser, and, in the early seventeenth century, Shakespeare’s sonnets, the most influential in English, were published. The type of sonnet made famous by Shakespeare—now known as the Shakespearian sonnet—differs somewhat from the Petrarchan sonnet. The Shakespearian sonnet consists of three quatrains (stanzas of four lines each) followed by a couplet (two rhymed lines), and is usually written in iambic pentameter. The change of tone after the first eight lines is not as strictly adhered to as it is in the Italian sonnet, but is still sometimes employed. And with Shakespeare, the content of the sonnet is no longer restricted to the bitter delights of loving a beautiful woman, but is expanded to include even such topics as are directly contrary to Petrarchan conventions, i.e., a realistic appraisal of the beloved, with her flaws in full view.

Poets writing in English have continued to write sonnets, both in the Italian and the Shakespearian forms, ever since Wyatt and Surrey first made it known to Britons, and, seven centuries after its inception, the sonnet appears to be in no danger of falling into disuse.

Rhyme in the Sonnet

The octave in an Italian sonnet follows the rhyme scheme, ABBA, ABBA, where each A, representing the final word in a line, rhymes with every other A, and each B rhymes with every other B, and so on. The rhyme scheme of the sestet in an Italian sonnet varies; a common one is CDE, CDE. A Shakespearian sonnet uses the following rhyme scheme: ABAB, CDCD, EFEF, GG. The Shakespearian sonnet, with its distinctive rhyme scheme, is perhaps more suitable for poets writing in English, where there are far fewer rhymes than there are in Italian. There are many variations on these two rhyme schemes, but these are the most common and provide a point of reference.

Meter

Sonnets in English are usually written in iambic pentameter. "Iambic" refers to the type of foot, or rhythmic unit, used (in this case, the iamb), and "pentameter" refers to the number of feet in each line (in this case, five). An iamb is simply an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable, and iambic pentameter is simply a line five iambs long. The word "confirm," for example, is an iamb. And just as we stress a particular syllable within a word, we also stress certain words within a sentence. Consider this line of iambic pentameter by Sidney: "And this I swear by blackest brook of hell." Listen to yourself saying it out loud and try to hear where the accents fall.

Not every line in a sonnet has to be perfectly iambic. In fact, it’s a good idea to vary the meter a little so that it doesn’t sound sing-songy or monotonous. A good way to do this is to switch the syllables around, so that the stressed syllable comes before the unstressed syllable. This type of foot is called a trochee. It is common to find trochees in sonnets, especially at the beginning of lines. This line of Surrey’s, for example, begins with a trochee: "Love, that doth reign and live within my thought." You can also add an unstressed syllable here and there to change things up, but, generally, there should always be five stressed syllables per line.

A caesura, or pause in a line, and enjambment, or not pausing syntactically at the end of a line, are other ways to vary the rhythm of the poem. A caesura can slow down the rhythm of a poem, and enjambment can be used to speed it up.

Putting It All Together

You’re almost ready to write your own sonnet. But before you do, it’s always a good idea, in any field, to take a look at what others have done before, especially those who did it really well. In the sonnet below, written by Shakespeare, look for all the elements that you’ve learned about: the rhyme scheme, the meter, the number of lines, the subject matter, the shift in tone. Notice how Shakespeare has masterfully put it all together into a moving meditation on the impermanence of youth and the inevitability of death. The rhythm never seems mechanical, and the rhymes never feel forced. The sestet, and especially the final couplet, gives the reader a sense of conclusion—the treatment of the theme feels complete. The finished sonnet, as its author claims, is immortal indeed:

"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 dimmed; / And every fair from fair sometimes declines, / By chance or nature’s changing course untrimmed; / But thy eternal summer shall not fade, / Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st; / Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade, / When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st: / So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see, / So long lives this, and this gives life to thee."

Now you’re ready to write your own sonnet. It can be difficult at first, but don’t be discouraged—even Shakespeare had to work at it! With a lot of practice and a little pluck, you’ll be serenading your lover or lambasting the powers that be in no time, and in a poetic form that will almost certainly endure for centuries to come.