Romeo and Juliet: The Sonnet

Romeo and Juliet: The Sonnet

There is a very good reason Shakespeare is considered one of the best writers in English and perhaps any other language as well. He had a brilliant and beautiful way of putting words together that expressed complex and profound ideas in memorable and engaging ways, leaving the world many of its most famous quotes and well-known characters. Shakespeare is most famous for his plays, but he also wrote many poems. His most famous poems are his collection of sonnets to the Dark Lady and a Young Man. An example of the true genius of Shakespeare, though, is when he included poems in his plays. Most of the plays were written in iambic pentameter verse, meaning that there were ten syllables to every line arranged in pairs that went "unstressed-stressed," and the lines often rhymed. This makes the plays poetic, but it doesn't make them poems necessarily. In Romeo and Juliet, however, one of Shakespeare's most famous plays, there is actually a poem -- a sonnet, to be more specific -- actually contained within the lines of the dialogue.

Act Five, scene one of the play is the first time Romeo and Juliet see each other and meet. Romeo first sees Juliet from afar, and is immediately enraptured by her beauty. He continues staring at her until the way is clear, and when he finally speaks to her he begins with an impromptu poem that comes out as naturally as the rest of the dialogue of the play and the scene. Juliet continues the poem, keeping up the appearance of natural dialogue that Shakespeare has crafted into this scene. The poem continues with the two teenagers sharing lines until they finally kiss. The fact that Shakespeare has Romeo and Juliet speaking in a sonnet at their meeting and deciding whether or not to kiss is very significant. It is much more than simply having them share lines or even rhyme with each other, which Shakespeare has other characters do in other plays and in other scenes. By sharing a very strict type of form poetry, Romeo and Juliet are even more closely bound together than if they were simply sharing language or rhyming with each other's lines. This is bind is stronger even than it would have been if they shared a different type of poem because a sonnet's form and typical use add layers of meaning to the words of the poem.

There are two main types of sonnets, each with its own set of rules, though there are also many variations within these types. The first type of sonnet is the Italian sonnet, also named the Petrarchan sonnet after one of the most well-known Italian poets who wrote this type of sonnet. These sonnets were arranged in a set of eight lines, which is called an octet, followed by a chunk of six lines, called the sestet. These poems rhyme, with the octet having a rhyme scheme that usually goes abba or sometimes abab and the sestet having options between cde or cdc. In a very traditional Italian sonnet, the octet poses some sort of problem or question, and the sestet answering or solving that. The ninth line, which is the first line of the sestet, usually signals very clearly that the new section of the poem is beginning. This signal or turn in the poem is called the volta.

The other type of sonnet is called the English sonnet. Many sonnets were written in the English language in the Italian style, which can seem confusing. For this reason, the English sonnet is also called the Shakespearian sonnet, as Shakespeare is the most famous writer to have used this form. The poems are in iambic pentameter, just like English-language Italian sonnets, and have fourteen lines, rhyme structure, and even a sort of volta, but that is where the similarity between the English ad Italian sonnets ends. The Shakespearian sonnet is arranged in three quatrains, each four lines long, and a closing couplet. The rhyme scheme usually stays consistent for each quatrain, but the rhymes themselves change, and the final two lines of the poem rhyme with each other which is known as an heroic couplet, resulting in a rhyme scheme that looks like this: abab cdcd efef gg. There is also a volta sometimes at the start of the third quatrain or in the first line of the couplet (the thirteenth or second-to-last line of the poem), which often flips the rest of the sonnet upside-down, figuratively speaking.