What Is the Difference Between a Shakespearean and a Petrarchan Sonnet?
Quick answer: Shakespearean vs Petrarchan sonnet: both are 14 lines, but they split differently. Quatrains and a couplet versus octave and sestet, with the turn moved.
Both sonnets have fourteen lines; the difference is how they divide them. A Shakespearean (English) sonnet uses three four-line quatrains and a final couplet, rhyming ABAB CDCD EFEF GG, with its turn arriving late, often in the couplet itself. A Petrarchan (Italian) sonnet splits into an eight-line octave rhyming ABBAABBA and a six-line sestet, commonly CDECDE or CDCDCD, with the turn at line nine.
That structural split is not bookkeeping; it changes how each form thinks. The Petrarchan sonnet is built for problem and response, eight lines of situation answered by six of resolution. The Shakespearean form develops an idea in three movements and then snaps it shut with two rhymed lines, which is why its endings so often sound like verdicts.
Side by side
The quick comparison, for revision notes and exam margins.
Why English needed its own version
The Petrarchan scheme asks for four words rhyming on one sound and four on another in the octave alone, easy in Italian, where words agree in their endings, punishing in rhyme-poor English. Wyatt and Surrey, importing the form under Henry VIII, loosened the scheme into alternating rhymes and a couplet, and Shakespeare made that adaptation famous. So the two forms are one idea passed between languages, each reshaped by what its language can comfortably do.
How the turn placement changes the poem
The volta is the sonnet's hinge, and moving it moves the poem's centre of gravity. With the turn at line nine, the Petrarchan form gives almost half the poem to the answer: room for a real change of heart, which suits meditation and prayer; Milton and Wordsworth loved it. The Shakespearean turn arrives with two lines left, so the resolution must be swift and epigrammatic, closer to a punchline or a twist of the knife. Sonnet 130 spends twelve lines teasing the beloved's ordinariness, then reverses everything in the couplet. Writing both forms teaches you, faster than any exercise, how structure shapes argument, which is exactly the quality contest judges are scoring when they read for a poem's architecture.
Which should you write?
Choose by the shape of your material. If your poem is a problem with a considered answer, the Petrarchan split fits. If it builds evidence toward a final verdict, go Shakespearean; the couplet is also more forgiving for beginners, since English offers rhymes in pairs far more readily than in quadruples. Many poets draft in one form and discover the poem wanted the other, which is itself a useful diagnosis.
What poets can take from this
- Memorise the skeletons: 4-4-4-2 with a late turn versus 8-6 with the turn at line nine.
- Draft the argument in prose first and see where it naturally pivots.
- Start with the Shakespearean form; paired rhymes are kinder in English.
- Read one of each aloud back to back, Sonnet 130 against Milton, and feel the hinge move.
- Never force the sestet's rhyme scheme; the Petrarchan tail is legitimately flexible.
Try it yourself
Take one complaint you have been nursing this month and write it twice: as eight lines of problem with six of response, then as twelve lines of evidence with a two-line verdict.
Questions
Where is the volta in each sonnet form?
Petrarchan sonnets turn at line nine, where the octave hands over to the sestet. Shakespearean sonnets can turn at line nine too, but the decisive shift usually lands in the final couplet.
What is a Spenserian sonnet?
A third variant from Edmund Spenser: fourteen lines rhymed ABAB BCBC CDCD EE, interlocking the quatrains so each hands a rhyme to the next. It reads as a chain where the Shakespearean form reads as three steps and a landing.
Do modern sonnets follow either scheme?
Often loosely or not at all; many contemporary sonnets keep fourteen lines and a turn while dropping strict rhyme and metre. Knowing the classic schemes is still worthwhile, since the loose versions get their power from the shapes they bend.
By the Writory editorial team, reviewed by working poets. Updated July 2026.
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