Who created the english sonnet form?

The sonnet is a popular classical form that has compelled poets for centuries. Traditionally, the sonnet is a fourteen-line poem written in iambic pentameter, employing one of several rhyme schemes, and adhering to a tightly structured thematic organization.

The name is taken from the Italian sonetto, which means “a little sound or song.”

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Types of Sonnets

Two sonnet forms provide the models from which all other sonnets are formed: the Petrarchan and the Shakespearean.

Petrarchan Sonnet

The first and most common sonnet is the Petrarchan, or Italian. Named after one of its greatest practitioners, the Italian poet Petrarch, the Petrarchan sonnet is divided into two stanzas, the octave (the first eight lines) followed by the answering sestet (the final six lines). The tightly woven rhyme scheme, abba, abba, cdecde, or cdcdcd, is suited for the rhyme-rich Italian language, though there are many fine examples in English. Since the Petrarchan presents an argument, observation, question, or some other answerable charge in the octave, a turn, or volta, occurs between the eighth and ninth lines. This turn marks a shift in the direction of the foregoing argument or narrative, turning the sestet into the vehicle for the counterargument, clarification, or whatever answer the octave demands.

Sir Thomas Wyatt introduced the Petrarchan sonnet to England in the early sixteenth century. His famed translations of Petrarch’s sonnets, as well as his own sonnets, drew fast attention to the form. Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, a contemporary of Wyatt’s, whose own translations of Petrarch are considered more faithful to the original though less fine to the ear, modified the Petrarchan, thus establishing the structure that became known as the Shakespearean sonnet. This structure has been noted to lend itself much better to the comparatively rhyme-poor English language.

Shakespearean Sonnet

The second major type of sonnet, the Shakespearean, or English sonnet, follows a different set of rules. Here, three quatrains and a couplet follow this rhyme scheme: abab, cdcd, efef, gg. The couplet plays a pivotal role, usually arriving in the form of a conclusion, amplification, or even refutation of the previous three stanzas, often creating an epiphanic quality to the end. In Sonnet 130 of William Shakespeare’s epic sonnet cycle, the first twelve lines compare the speaker’s mistress unfavorably with nature’s beauties, but the concluding couplet swerves in a surprising direction.
 

Variations on the Sonnet Form

John Milton’s Italian-patterned sonnets (later known as “Miltonic” sonnets) added several important refinements to the form. Milton freed the sonnet from its typical incarnation in a sequence of sonnets, writing the occasional sonnet that often expressed interior, self-directed concerns. He also took liberties with the turn, allowing the octave to run into the sestet as needed. Both of these qualities can be seen in “When I Consider How My Light is Spent.”

The Spenserian sonnet, invented by sixteenth-century English poet Edmund Spenser, cribs its structure from the Shakespearean—three quatrains and a couplet—but employs a series of “couplet links” between quatrains, as revealed in the rhyme scheme: abab, bcbc, cdcd, ee. The Spenserian sonnet, through the interweaving of the quatrains, implicitly reorganized the Shakespearean sonnet into couplets, reminiscent of the Petrarchan. One reason was to reduce the often excessive final couplet of the Shakespearean sonnet, putting less pressure on it to resolve the foregoing argument, observation, or question.

The variation of the sonnet form that Shakespeare used—comprised of three quatrains and a concluding couplet, rhyming abab cdcd efef gg—is called the English or Shakespearean sonnet form, although others had used it before him. This different sonnet structure allows for more space to be devoted to the buildup of a subject or problem than the Italian/Petrarchan form, and is followed by just two lines to conclude or resolve the poem in a rhyming couplet. Learn more about sonnet forms here.

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A short history of the sonnet form, with some fun facts about its development

Writing an introduction to the sonnet throws out a number of questions, so in this post we will ask what might be considered the essential questions about the sonnet form, and provide some answers. Who invented the sonnet? What form does the sonnet take? These sorts of questions. They actually throw out some surprising answers…

Who invented the sonnet?

H. L. Mencken famously proclaimed, ‘Martinis are the only American invention as perfect as the sonnet.’ The martini was the supreme American invention, just as the Italian invention par excellence was the poetic form known as the sonnet. But who invented the sonnet form?

The credit usually goes to Giacomo Da Lentini (also known as Jacopo Da Lentini), a thirteenth-century Sicilian poet. The word ‘sonnet’ comes from the Latin for ‘little sound’. However, it would another medieval Italian poet, Petrarch, who would make the sonnet form more popular when he used it as the vehicle for his masterpieces of courtly love.

The Italian sonnet is divided into

Who invented the English sonnet?

Although William Shakespeare is credited with pioneering a new form of sonnet – the ‘English’ or Shakespearean sonnet – he wasn’t the first poet to write sonnets in English. Thomas Wyatt (who wrote poetry about his love for Anne Boleyn) and the Earl of Surrey both pioneered the sonnet in the English language in the mid-sixteenth century at the court of Henry VIII, some 200 years after Petrarch had first popularised the sonnet in medieval Europe.

But it was an author named William Baldwin who wrote the first sonnet to be published in English (as he was a publisher as well as a writer, it might be said that he had an advantage here).

Who invented the Shakespearean sonnet?

Nor Shakespeare. The ‘English sonnet’, also known as the Shakespearean sonnet, is different from the Italian or Petrarchan sonnet. Although it comprises 14 lines the same as the Petrarchan form, the Shakespearean sonnet has a different internal structure, comprising three quatrains (four-line sections) all rounded off by one final couplet.

The rhymes are also more various, with the sonnet rhyming abab cdcd efef gg. The ‘turn’ in Shakespearean sonnets usually occurs at the start of this final couplet. But Shakespeare didn’t come up with this rhyme scheme: Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey was the first to write sonnets like this. Shakespeare didn’t invent the Shakespearean sonnet.

How long is a sonnet?

Although the traditional answer is ’14 lines’, this is not always the case. George Meredith, who married the daughter of novelist Thomas Love Peacock, described the subsequent break-up of their marriage in his sonnet sequence Modern Love (1862), where each of the sonnets comprises 16, rather than 14, lines. (For more on Meredith’s fascinating life, see our post on him here.)

More recently, Tony Harrison (1937- ) has also written a sequence of 16-line sonnets. In the late nineteenth century, Gerard Manley Hopkins invented the ‘curtal sonnet’, comprising just 11 lines. (If you’re intrigued by this unusual sonnet form, we have more on Hopkins and the sonnet in our interesting facts about Gerard Manley Hopkins.)

What other forms of sonnet are there?

There is also the Occitan sonnet and, more recently, the Urdu sonnet. Only one example of the Occitan sonnet is known to survive, preserved in manuscript and written in the 1280s. The Urdu sonnet was largely an invention in the Indian subcontinent in the early twentieth century; many Urdu sonnets adopt the same rhyme scheme as the Shakespearean sonnet.

One of actor Richard Burton’s favourite party tricks was to recite Shakespeare sonnets backwards.

Enjoy these sonnet facts? Check out our pick of ten classic English sonnets and our analysis of Shakespeare’s sonnets. For more literary trivia, we recommend our book crammed full of 3,000 years of interesting bookish facts,  The Secret Library: A Book-Lovers’ Journey Through Curiosities of History, available now from Michael O’Mara Books.

For more poetry, see our short introduction to English poetry, told through 8 short poems. And discover more classic poetry courtesy of Gerard Manley Hopkins, master of the sonnet form, here. For a Romantic sonnet, see Shelley’s ‘Ozymandias’. For a great war sonnet, discover our analysis of Wilfred Owen’s ‘Anthem for Doomed Youth’. For a fine contemporary sonnet, see our analysis of Carol Ann Duffy’s sonnet ‘Anne Hathaway’.

Image: Title-page of Shake-speare’s Sonnets, 1609; Wikimedia Commons; public domain.