The Masked Poet is a man on a mission to reveal to you poetry's most closely guarded secrets.  He wears the mask to conceal his face, because if his fellow poets were to find out his true identity, he would almost certainly be asked to leave the poetic circle, called names, slapped about a bit and extroardinarily renditioned to Guantanamo bay for polite and reasonable questioning of the type that you just can't do in the civilised world.  Last month he revealed to you the secrets of scansion and stresses.  What's he banging on about this time...?

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Bill Griffiths once declared, or so I have been informed, that the sonnet was the worst thing that ever happened to the English Language.  I happen to agree with this, to some extent, because I think that Anglo-Saxon and Old-English verse has greater versatility than iambic-pentameter and employes a combination of stresses to create sounds that are more charming to the ear.  However, British poets have, unquestionably, composed wonderful poems in the sonnet form, and it is a form worth getting to grips with.

            I’m going to give a brief history of the sonnet as we know it in Britain, but for God’s sake don’t quote this in an academic essay.  My advice on scansion is sound as a pound, but everything else is from memory, which has been somewhat clouded by the excesses of city living.  Anyway, an Italian fellow named Francesco Petrarca (1304 -1374) created a sonnet form that was fourteen lines long and had the rhyme scheme: abbaabba cdecde; or abbaabba cdccdc.  This has become known as the Petrarchan sonnet.  During the Renaissance it became fashionable for English gentlemen to do the grand-tour of Europe.  Among these gentlemen tourists were Henry Howard the Earl of Surrey (1517 - 1547) and Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503 - 1542), who translated Patrarca’s sonnets into English.  This is how the form became popular in Britain.  Poor old Henry Howard found it difficult to stick to the original rhyme scheme, there are fewer rhymes in the English language than in Italian, and so devised a new rhyme scheme: ababcdcdefefgg.  This is now known as the Shakespearian sonnet, Henry Howard must be livid.

            We are going to look at two sonnets, but before we do, let’s consider some myths about the sonnet that tend to cause no end of trouble for anyone attempting to learn scansion.  First of all, forget that dum de dum de dum ... nonsense you were taught at A-level.

  

 

Myths

 

  

Each line of a sonnet is composed in iambic pentameter.

 

Every line contains ten syllables.

 

 

Truths

 

 

 

Poets vary the rhythm from iambic-pentameter to convey feeling or reinforce meaning.

 

Lines are often longer or shorter than ten syllables.  If it is longer it is hypercatalectic, if it is shorter it is catalectic. 

 

  

            You now have hypercatalectic and catalectic in your scansionist’s toolbox, I think we should add the names of some metrical feet to them.  Now, remember that “x” is an unstressed syllable and that “/” is a stressed syllable:

 

            iamb             |x/|

 

            trochee         |/x|

 

            spondee        |//|

 

            pyrrhic          |xx|

 

            dactyl            |/xx|

 

            anapaest        |xx/|

 

            amphibrach   |x/x|

 

 

There are other metrical feet, and you will find these listed in the glossary.   I suspect we are now ready to look at the sonnets.  We will begin with Shakespeare’s famous one:

 

 

            Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?                                          a

            Thou art more lovely and more temperate.                                       b

            Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,                              a

            And summer's lease hath all too short a date.                                   b

            Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,                                     c

            And often is his gold complexion dimmed;                                      d

            And every fair from fair sometime declines,                                     c

            By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd;                           d

           

            But thy eternal summer shall not fade                                               e

            Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st;                                       f

            Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,                             e

            When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st:                                       f

           

            So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,                                     g

            So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.                                    g

 

Exercises

 

1. Annotate the stresses in the sonnet and see if you can identify the metrical feet used.

2.  Draw a table with fourteen rows and five columns.  Place one metrical foot into each box of the table (i.e. two or three syllables per box) such that each row gives a line of a poem.

  If you can get it to rhyme according the rhyme scheme mentioned above (by changing the last word of in each row if necessary), then what you have there is a very restrictively defined form of English Sonnet known as a Shakespearean sonnet.

 

SOLUTIONS

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?                                          a

            [    x   / ][   x      /  ][x   /  ][   x      /  ][x  /  ]

            Thou art more lovely and more temperate.                                       b

            [  x          /   ][  x     /    ][ x    /][ x      /   ][x     /]

            Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,                              a

            [x      /][     x      /     ][ x     / ][ x      / ][x   / ]

            And summer's lease hath all too short a date.                                   b

            [ /       x   ][  x    /][  x   /  ][x    /][  x      /    ]

            Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,                                     c

            [  x    /][x   /][x     /   ][ x      / ][x     /          ]

            And often is his gold complexion dimmed;                                      d

            [x      /][x     / ][ x      /   ][/       x    ][ x   /    ]

            And every fair from fair sometime declines,                                     c

            [x      /     ][x    /][ x        /   ][x      /      ][x    /        ]

            By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd;                           d

            [x      / ][x /][x    / ][   x      /  ][ x    /   ]

            But thy eternal summer shall not fade                                               e

            [ x     /  ][  x   /][  x    / ][  x    / ][   x   /      ]

            Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st;                                       f

            [ x       / ][   /          / ][   x      /   ][ x    /][ x      /   ]

            Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,                             e

            [     x   /][ x /][x   /    ][ x  /    ][  x       /      ]

            When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st:                                       f

            [x    /   ][x     /  ][ x       /     ][x  /     ][ x    /  ]

            So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,                                     g

            [x    /    ][x        / ] [x       / ][x       /   ][x    /  ]

            So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.                                    g

 

GLOSSARY

 

 

accentual rhythm: rhythm that is created by using stress.  English, German, and Northern          European languages are stressed.  Southern European languages are not quite so stressed and so rely on the length of each syllable to create rhythm -- this is known as quantitative-rhythm.  

 

catalectic: when a line of poetry has fewer syllables than expected.

 

 

feminine-end: when a line ends with an unstressed syllable.

 

 

hypercatalectic: when a line has more syllables than expected.

 

 

iambic pentameter: a line composed with five iambs.

 

 

masculine-end: a line that concludes with a stressed syllable.

 

octave or octet: the first eight lines of a sonnet that is divided by a volta.

 

Petrarchan sonnet: this has fourteen lines with the rhyme scheme: abbba abbba cde cde or      abbba abba cdc cdc.

 

quatrain: four lines linked by a rhyme scheme.

 

Shakespearian sonnet: fourteen lines with the rhyme scheme:ababcdcdefefgg

 

sestet: the six lines of a sonnet that occur after the volta.

 

stanza: people are a bit anal about the use of this term and prefer to reserve it for rhyme groups or sections of blank and free-verse that are actually separated by line breaks.   However, a quatrain is a stanza, and a tercet is also a stanza.  So stuff them.

 

tercet: three lines linked by a rhyme scheme.

 

volta: the moment at which the argument or tone of a sonnet changes. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

METRICAL FEET

 

Iamb                          X/                                X= unstressed and  / =  stressed syllables

 

Trochee                     /X

 

Spondee                      //

 

Pyrrhic                      XX

 

Anapaest                   XX/

 

Dactyl                       /XX

 

Amphibrach             X/X

 

Amphimacer             /X/

 

Bacchius                    X//

 

Antibacchius            //X

 

Molossus                   ///

 

Tribrach                   XXX

 

Tetrabrach               XXXX

 

Dispondee                 ////

 

Diamb                       X/X/

 

Ditrochee                  /X/X

 

Ionic minor               XX//

 

Ionic major               //XX

 

Antispast                   X//X

 

Choriamb                 /XX/

 

First Paeon               /XXX

 

Second Paeon          X/XX

 

Third Paeon            XX/X

 

Fourth Paeon          XXX/

 

First epitrite           X///

 

Second epitrite       /X//

 

Third epitrite         //X/

 

Fourth epitrite       ///X