To Begin at the Beginning
- ddimitrannist
- 16 Οκτ 2015
- διαβάστηκε 2 λεπτά
It all started with a sonnet. A sonnet is a poem of fourteen lines, following a specific rhyme scheme. Since we are an english class, we started by reading an example of, what we call, the English or Shakespearean sonnet, which consists of three quatrains and a couplet. Sometimes, an unexpected turn is introduced in the third quatrain, the volta. In Shakespeare's case the volta usually appears in the couplet. The rhyme scheme is abab cdcd efef gg and the meter is iambic pentameter. William Shakespeare wrote 154 sonnets! They were published in 1609.
SONNET 18
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 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.
Did you know that an iambic pentameter is a metric line that consists of five feet, each foot being a group of two syllables? The iamb in English is a foot of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed one. Shakespeare used iambic pentameter in his sonnets as well as in his plays!
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