Shakespearean Sonnet
Quick answer: The Shakespearean sonnet uses three quatrains and a closing couplet rhymed ABAB CDCD EFEF GG. Learn how the English sonnet works and how to write one.
A Shakespearean sonnet is a fourteen-line poem in iambic pentameter arranged as three quatrains and a final couplet, rhyming ABAB CDCD EFEF GG. It is also called the English sonnet, since the pattern was developed by Wyatt and Surrey before Shakespeare, whose 154 sonnets made it permanent. Seven different rhyme sounds make it far more forgiving in English than the Italian original.
The form suits poets who think in stages. Each quatrain can take a fresh run at the subject, a new image or a new angle, and the couplet then closes the case in two lines. That final snap is the form's signature pleasure and its most common trap, because a weak couplet can make thirteen good lines sound like a setup for a bad punchline.
The poem
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
William Shakespeare, 'Sonnet 18' (1609)
How It Works
The three quatrains typically develop one idea through variation. Shakespeare's own habit was to give each quatrain its own governing image, so a poem about time might move from seasons to daylight to a candle burning down. The couplet then steps outside the pattern of images and speaks plainly.
An original example of the couplet's job, following an imagined poem about a demolished house: 'The house is gone, but every wall I raise / leans slightly toward the shape of those lost days.' The couplet does not add new scenery; it names what the quatrains meant.
Where You Will See It
Sonnet 18, 'Shall I compare thee to a summer's day', shows the machinery at full power, ending with the couplet quoted on this page. Beyond Shakespeare, the English pattern runs through Michael Drayton's 'Since there's no help', much of Samuel Daniel, and countless later poems, and modern poets still borrow the quatrain-quatrain-quatrain-couplet architecture even when they abandon strict rhyme.
How to Use It in Your Own Poems
Plan the couplet before you polish anything else. If the last two lines merely repeat the poem, cut deeper: the best couplets concede something, sharpen something, or turn the argument on the reader. Give each quatrain one job and check the joins, because the form goes slack when quatrain two just restates quatrain one.
It is also a strong contest form. Judges reading hundreds of free-verse entries notice a clean English sonnet, and on a scorecard like Writory's, where structure and emotion are marked separately, the couplet is your chance to land both at once.
What poets can take from this
- Draft the closing couplet early so the quatrains have a destination.
- Give each quatrain its own image or angle rather than three coats of the same paint.
- Vary where your sentences end; not every quatrain needs to close with a full stop.
- Keep the couplet plain in diction; after twelve lines of imagery, simplicity lands hardest.
- Watch for filler syllables added just to reach ten; every word should survive a prose test.
Try it yourself
Write a Shakespearean sonnet about a promise you made as a child. Use a different setting in each quatrain, then let the couplet say whether the promise was kept.
Questions
Why is it called a Shakespearean sonnet if Shakespeare did not invent it?
Wyatt and Surrey adapted the Italian sonnet into the three-quatrain English shape decades earlier. Shakespeare's sequence became so celebrated that his name attached to the pattern anyway.
Where is the volta in a Shakespearean sonnet?
Often at the couplet, where the poem resolves or reverses. Many examples also turn at line nine, giving the poem two gear changes rather than one.
Do all 154 of Shakespeare's sonnets follow the ABAB CDCD EFEF GG scheme?
Nearly all do. A few deviate, including Sonnet 126, which has twelve lines in couplets, and Sonnet 145, written in tetrameter rather than pentameter.
By the Writory editorial team, reviewed by working poets. Updated July 2026.
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