Sonnet (Shakespearean / English)
Rules quoted from the poets.org glossary; examples only from public-domain poems.
The rules, quoted
Traditionally, the sonnet is a fourteen-line poem written in iambic pentameter
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
Our explanation written by Tale of the Muse
A Shakespearean sonnet keeps the fourteen lines of iambic pentameter but groups them as three quatrains and a closing couplet, rhyming abab cdcd efef gg. The couplet carries the weight: the glossary describes it as a conclusion, an amplification or even a refutation of the three quatrains before it.
Our plain-language restatement of the glossary rules above. It adds no facts of its own.
A public-domain example
Public domain in the US: the ebook's front matter prints 1902, before 1931, as the front matter quoted below shows. The full poem is shown. The example illustrates the form; the rules above come from the glossary, not from the poem.
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 dimm'd:
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature's changing course, untrimm'd.
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest;
Nor shall Death brag thou wanderest in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou growest:—
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
Project Gutenberg ebook #32373 · our check found this text on October 31, 2026
FRANCIS T. PALGRAVE LATE PROFESSOR OF POETRY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD REVISED AND ENLARGED London MACMILLAN AND CO., Limited NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1902