Ideally, the poet will temper the iambic pentameter pattern by occasionally substituting for an iamb another type of foot whose stress is different, thus avoiding a metronomic effect. Most sonnets are in iambic pentameter, though Shakespeare's Sonnet 145 and a few sonnets by Thomas Hardy are in tetrameter (four iambs per line), and some of Sir Philip Sidney's sonnets (see Loving in truth.') use hexameter (six iambs). An iamb is an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed one. I Iambic PentameterĪ meter in which there are five iambs (pairs of unstressed and stressed syllables) in each line. This change probably contributed to the development of the sonnet as a dramatic form. This adaptation of the Italian model allowed for the sparser rhymes of the English language and also encouraged a 'summing up' couplet at the end.
Form in which the rhyme scheme is abab,cdcd,efef,gg. Spenser's early sonnets and much of Milton's poetry are in blank verse.Īlso English sonnet or Shakespearean sonnet. For a more general and comprehensive guide to terminology, visit Robert Shubinski's helpful Glossary of Poetry Terms.
