Forms

The Shakespearean Sonnet

Also Known As English Sonnet · Elizabethan Sonnet

Citation Formats

General Reference

Literature Atlas. "The Shakespearean Sonnet." Accessed August 30, 2026. https://literature.interactiveatlas.org/forms/shakespearean-sonnet.

APA Style

Literature Atlas. (n.d.). The Shakespearean Sonnet. Retrieved August 30, 2026, from https://literature.interactiveatlas.org/forms/shakespearean-sonnet

BibTeX

@misc{literatureatlas-the-shakespearean-sonnet,
  author = {Literature Atlas},
  title = {The Shakespearean Sonnet},
  year = {2026},
  url = {https://literature.interactiveatlas.org/forms/shakespearean-sonnet},
  note = {Accessed August 30, 2026}
}

The Shakespearean, or English, sonnet restructures the fourteen lines into three quatrains and a closing couplet, rhyming ABAB CDCD EFEF GG, trading the Petrarchan octave's tightly repeated rhymes for a scheme better suited to English, a language poorer in rhyme than Italian. Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, developed this structure from Sir Thomas Wyatt's earlier English adaptations of Petrarch, and William Shakespeare, though not its originator, used it so extensively and so influentially across his 154 sonnets that the form carries his name. Rather than the Petrarchan volta at the octave-sestet break, the English form typically saves its turn for the final couplet, giving the poem three quatrains to build a subject before two lines resolve it.

Cross-Tradition Connections

Associated With

Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey

Surrey devised the three-quatrain-and-couplet structure, later used so extensively by Shakespeare that the form now carries his name rather than Surrey's.

Source The Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics

William Shakespeare

Source Poetry Foundation

Held Differently

The Sonnet

A structural variant adapting the Petrarchan original to English's comparative scarcity of rhyme, not a rejection of the sonnet form; developed by Surrey from Wyatt's earlier translations before Shakespeare's own use made the name stick.

Source Poetry Foundation