Sonnet in the Elizabethan Age

A sonnet is a type of poem that contains fourteen lines, is composed in iambic pentameter, and is formatted to a specific rhyme scheme, which varies for each type of sonnet... Iambic pentameter is a style of verse writing in which each line contains ten syllables, divided into five metrical feet. In iambic pentameter, each metrical foot contains an unaccented syllable followed by an accented syllable.

Introduction:

• Like many other literary genres, the sonnet in England was imported from abroad.
• It most probably originated in Italy with Dante, who wrote a number of sonnets to his beloved named Beatrice.
• But the flowering of the sonnet came with Petrarch (1304-74), a generation later. 
• It was Wyatt who introduced the sonnet in England.
• The Sonnet was brought to England by Sir Thomas Wyatt and Surrey.
• In 1557 they jointly published their anthology of sonnets Tottel’s Miscellany.
• Soon the sonnet writing became a favorite among the Elizabethan poets.
•  The Elizabethan sonneteers followed the structure and theme of the patriarchal sonnets.
•  A Petrarchan sonnet was divided into two parts: octave and sestet. 
• The first eight lines were grouped as octave and the rest six lines as sestet. 
• The function of an octave is to introduce a subject and the function of the sestet is to develop draw it to a satisfactory end. 

The theme of a Petrarchan sonnet

• The theme of a Petrarchan sonnet was usually courtly love.
• The Elizabethan poets, at first, also used the sonnets for the courtly love poems. 
• In courtly love poems, the lover is dutiful, anxious, adoring, full of wanhope, and of praises of his mistress couched in a series of conventionalized images.The mistress is proud, unreceptive, but, if the lover is to be believed, very desirable.
• Throughout the Elizabethan age, poets imitated these Petrarchan moods of love and used sonnets to express them. 
• Sir Philip Sidney, another remarkable sonneteer of the age, jested at the fashion in his ‘Astrophel and Stella and yet half succumbed to it.
• Some of his sonnets however plead for realism. 

Changes in Sonnet

• The notable changes in sonnet writing mainly come through Shakespeare.
• Both in style and theme, he was different from the previous sonnet writers. 
• His sonnet, which was also of 14 lines, was, however, divided into four parts: 
• Three quatrains and a concluding couplet. 
• The rhyme scheme of a Shakespearean sonnet is abab, cdcd, efef, gg which is different from the previous sonnet rhyme. 
• This rhyme was very suitable for English sonneteers as it allowed seven different rhymes.

Themes of Shakespearean Sonnet

• The themes of the Shakespearean sonnet are very different. 
• Some of his sonnets are addressed not to a woman but to a young man, and they are in the terms of warmest affection. 
• I write others not with adoration but with an air of disillusioned passion to a dark lady. 
• Shakespeare’s sonnets have led to a greater volume of controversy than any volume of verse in English literature. But they can be enjoyed without the tantalizing attempt to identify the personages or to explain the dedication and circumstances of the actual publication.

Who Were the Chief Practitioners?

• The main practitioners of the Elizabethan sonnet sequence were 
• William Shakespeare, 
• Edmund Spenser, and 
• Sir Philip Sidney.