Chapter IX: The Sonnet

§ =306. Origin of the English Sonnet.= In early Provençal and French poetry certain lyric poems are found which were called _Son_, sometimes _Sonet_, although they had neither a fixed extent, nor a regulated form. But the Sonnet[197] in its exact structure was introduced into French, Spanish, and English poetry from Italian, and as a rule on the model, or at least under the influence, of Petrarch's sonnets. In English literature, however, the sonnet in part had a more independent development than it had in other countries, and followed its Italian model at first only in the number and nature of the verses used in it. Generally speaking, the Italian and the English sonnet can be defined as a short poem, complete in itself, consisting of fourteen five-foot (or eleven-syllabled) iambic lines, in which a single theme, a thought or series of thoughts, is treated and brought to a conclusion. In the rhyme-arrangement and the structure of the poem, however, the English sonnet, as a rule, deviates greatly from its Italian model, and the examples in which its strict form is followed are comparatively rare.

§ =307.= The Italian Sonnet consists of two parts distinguished from each other by difference of rhymes, each of the parts having its own continuous system of rhymes. The first part is formed of two quatrains (_basi_), i.e. stanzas of four lines; the second of two terzetti (_volte_), stanzas of three lines. The two quatrains have only two, the terzetti two or three rhymes.

The usual rhyme-arrangement in the quatrains is _a b b a a b b a_, more rarely _a b b a b a a b_ (_rima chiusa_). There are, however, also sonnets with alternate rhymes, _a b a b a b a b or a b a b b a b a_ (_rima alternata_); but the combination of the two kinds of rhyme, _a b a b b a a b_ or _a b b a a b a b_ (_rima mista_), was unusual. In the second part, consisting of six lines, the order of rhymes is not so definitely fixed. When only two rhymes are used, which the old metrists, as Quadrio (1695-1756), the Italian critic and historian of literature, regarded as the only legitimate method, the usual sequence is _cdc dcd_ (crossed rhymes, _rima alternata_). This form occurs 112 times in those of Petrarch's[198] sonnets which have only two rhymes in the last part, their number being 124; in the remaining twelve sonnets the rhyme-system is either _c d d c d c_ or _c d d d c c_. In the second part of Petrarch's sonnets three rhymes are commoner than two. In most cases we have the formula _c d e c d e_, which occurs in 123 sonnets, while the scheme _c d e d c e_ is met with only in 78 sonnets. The three chief forms, then, of Petrarch's sonnet may be given with Tomlinson[199] as built on the following models:

_a b b a a b b a c d e c d e_, _a b b a a b b a c d c
d c d_, _a b b a a b b a c d e d c e._

In the seventy-second and seventy-fourth sonnet we have the unusual schemes _c d e e d c_ and _c d e d e c_. The worst form, according to the Italian critics, was that which ended in a rhyming couplet. This kind of ending, as we shall see later on, is one of the chief characteristics of the specifically English form of the sonnet.

The original and oldest form of the sonnet, however, as recent inquiries seem to show, was that with crossed rhymes both in the quatrains and in the terzetti, on the scheme _a b a b a b a b c d c d c d_. But this variety had no direct influence on the true English form, in which a system of crossed rhymes took a different arrangement.

An essential point, then, in the Italian sonnet is the bipartition, the division of it into two chief parts; and this rule is so strictly observed that a carrying on of the sense, or the admission of _enjambement_ between the two main parts, connecting the eighth and ninth verse of the poem by a run-on line, would be looked upon as a gross offence against the true structure and meaning of this poetic form. Nor would a run-on line be allowed between the first and the second stanza; indeed some poets, who follow the strict form of the sonnet, do not even admit _enjambement_ between the first and the second terzetto, although for the second main part of the poem this has never become a fixed rule.

The logical import of the structure of the sonnet, as understood by the earlier theorists, especially Quadrio, is this: The first quatrain makes a statement; the second proves it; the first terzetto has to confirm it, and the second draws the conclusion of the whole.

§ =308.= The structure of this originally Italian poetic form may be illustrated by the following sonnet, equally correct in form and poetical in substance, in which Theodore Watts-Dunton sets forth the essence of this form of poetry itself:

THE SONNET'S VOICE.

A metrical lesson by the sea-shore.

_Yon silvery billows breaking on the beach
Fall back in foam beneath the star-shine clear,
The while my rhymes are murmuring in your ear
A restless lore like that the billows teach;
For on these sonnet-waves my soul would reach
From its own depths, and rest within you, dear,
As, through the billowy voices yearning here,
Great nature strives to find a human speech._

_A sonnet is a wave of melody:
From heaving waters of the impassioned soul
A billow of tidal music one and whole
Flows in the 'octave'; then, returning free,
Its ebbing surges in the 'sestet' roll
Back to the deeps of Life's tumultuous sea._

Although the run-on line between the terzetti is perhaps open to a slight objection, the rhyme-arrangement is absolutely correct, the inadmissible rhyming couplet at the end of the poem being of course avoided. Other sonnets on the sonnet written in English, German, or French, are quoted in _Metrik_, ii, § 534.

§ =309.= The first English sonnet-writers, Wyatt and Surrey, departed considerably from this strict Italian form, although they both translated sonnets written by Petrarch into English. Their chief deviation from this model is that, while retaining the two quatrains, they break up the second chief part of the sonnet, viz. the terzetti, into a third quatrain (with separate rhymes) and a rhyming couplet. Surrey went still further in the alteration of the original sonnet by changing the arrangement and the number of rhymes in the quatrains also, whereas Wyatt, as a rule, in this respect only exceptionally deviated from the structure of the Italian sonnet. The greater part of Wyatt's sonnets (as well as Donne's, cf. _Metrik_, ii, § 541) have therefore the scheme _a b b a a b b a c d d c e e_, whereas other forms, as e.g. _a b b a a b b a c d c d e e_ occur only occasionally (cf. _Metrik_, ii, § 535).

This order of rhymes, on the other hand, was frequently used by Sir Philip Sidney, who on the whole followed the Italian model, and sometimes employed even more accurate Italian forms, avoiding the final rhyming couplet (cf. ib. § 538). He also invented certain extended and curtailed sonnets which are discussed in _Metrik_, ii, §§ 539, 540.

§ =310.= Of greater importance is Surrey's transformation of the Italian sonnet, according to the formula _abab cdcd efefgg_. This variety of the sonnet--which, we may note in passing, Surrey also extended into a special poetic form consisting of several such quatrains together with a final rhyming couplet (cf. _Metrik_, ii, § 537)--was very much in favour in the sixteenth and at the beginning of the seventeenth century. Samuel Daniel, and above all Shakespeare, wrote their sonnets mainly[200] in this form, sometimes combining a series of them in a closely connected cycle. As a specimen of this most important form we quote the eighteenth of Shakespeare's sonnets:

_Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee._

Commonly the concluding couplet contains an independent thought which gives a conclusion to the poem. In certain cases, however, the thought of the previous stanza is carried on in the closing couplet by means of a run-on line, as is the case in Nos. 71, 72, 108, 154, &c. Sometimes, of course, a run-on line connects different portions of the sonnet also, as e.g. Nos. 114, 129, 154, &c. The rhymes, as a rule, are masculine, but not exclusively so.

§ =311.= Meanwhile, another interesting form had been introduced, perhaps by the Scottish poet, Alex. Montgomerie,[201] which was subsequently chiefly used by Spenser. When about seventeen Spenser had translated the sonnets of the French poet, Du Bellay, in blank verse, and thereby created the rhymeless form of the sonnet, which, however, although not unknown in French poetry, was not further cultivated. About twenty years later he re-wrote the same sonnets in the form introduced by Surrey. Some years after he wrote a series of sonnets, called _Amoretti_, in that peculiar and very fine form which, although perhaps invented by Montgomerie, now bears Spenser's name. The three quatrains in this form of the sonnet are connected by _concatenatio_, the final verse of each quatrain rhyming with the first line of the next, while the closing couplet stands separate. The scheme of this form, then, _a b a b b c b c c d c d e e_; it found, however, but few imitators (cf. _Metrik_, ii, §§ 542, 543, 559, note 1).

The various forms of Drummond of Hawthornden's sonnets had also no influence on the further development of this kind of poetry and therefore need not be discussed here. It may suffice to say that he partly imitated the strict Italian form, partly modified it; and that he also used earlier English transformations and invented some new forms (cf. _Metrik_, ii, §§ 547, 548).

§ =312.= A new and important period in the history of sonnet writing, although it was only of short duration, began with Milton. Not a single one of his eighteen English and five Italian sonnets is composed on the model of those by Surrey and Shakespeare or in any other genuine English form. He invariably used the Italian rhyme-arrangement _a b b a a b b a_ in the quatrains, combined with the strict Italian order in the terzetti: _c d c d c d_, _c d d c d c_, _c d e c d e_, _c d c e e d_, _c d e d c e_; only in one English and in three Italian sonnets we find the less correct Italian form with the final rhyming couplet on the schemes _c d d c e e_, _c d c d e e_.

One chief rule, however, of the Italian sonnet, viz. the logical separation of the two main parts by a break in the sense, is observed by Milton only in about half the number of his sonnets; and the above-mentioned relationship of the single parts of the sonnet to each other according to the strict Italian rule (cf. pp. 372-3 and _Metrik_, ii, § 533, pp. 839-40) is hardly ever met with in Milton. He therefore imitated the Italian sonnet only in its form, and paid no regard to the relationship of its single parts or to the distribution of the contents through the quatrains and terzets. In this respect he kept to the monostrophic structure of the specifically English form of the sonnet, consisting, as a rule, of one continuous train of thought.

Milton also introduced into English poetry the playful variety of the so-called tail-sonnet on the Italian model (_Sonetti codati_), a sonnet, extended by six anisometrical verses, with the scheme _a b b a a b b a c d e d e c₅ c₃ f f₅ f₃ g g₅_ (cf. _Metrik_, ii, § 549), which, however, did not attract many imitators (Milton, ii. 481-2).

After Milton sonnet-writing was discontinued for about a century. The poets of the Restoration period and of the first half of the eighteenth century (Cowley, Waller, Dryden, Pope, Gay, Akenside, Young, Thomson, Goldsmith, Johnson, and others) did not write a single sonnet, and seem to have despised this form of poetry (cf. _Metrik_, ii, § 550).

§ =313.= When sonnet-writing was revived in the second half of the eighteenth century by T. Edwards, who composed some fifty sonnets, by Gray, by Benjamin Stillingfleet, T. Warton, and others of less importance, as well as by Charlotte Smith, Helen M. Williams, Anna Seward, the male poets preferred the strict Italian form, while the poetesses, with the exception of Miss Seward, adopted that of Surrey and Shakespeare (cf. _Metrik_, ii, § 551).

Not long afterwards another very popular and prolific sonnet-writer, William Lisle Bowles, followed in some of his sonnets the strict Italian model (cf. _Metrik_, ii, § 552), but also wrote sonnets (towards the end of the eighteenth century) on a scheme that had previously been used by Drummond, viz. _a b b a c d d c e f f e g g_, this formula representing a transition form from the Italian to Surrey's sonnet, with enclosing rhymes in the quatrains instead of crossed rhymes (cf. _Metrik_, ii, § 546, p. 860).

Bowles's example induced S. T. Coleridge to write his sonnets, which in part combined in the quatrains enclosing and crossed rhyme (_a b b a [] c d c d e f e f g g_ or _a b a b c d d c e f f e f e_; cf. _Metrik_, ii, § 553).

Similar, even more arbitrary forms and rhyme-arrangements, the terzetti being sometimes placed at the beginning (e.g. No. 13, _a a b c c b d e d e f e f e_) of the poem, occur in Southey's sonnets, which, fine as they sometimes are in thought, have in their form hardly any resemblance to the original Italian model except that they contain fourteen lines. They had, however, like those of Drummond, no further influence, and therefore need not be discussed here (cf. _Metrik_, ii, § 554).

§ =314.= A powerful impulse was given to sonnet-writing by Wordsworth, who wrote about 500 sonnets, and who, not least on account of his copiousness, has been called the English Petrarch. He, indeed, followed his Italian model more closely than his predecessors with regard to the form and the relationship of the different parts to each other.

The usual scheme of his quatrains is _a b b a, a b b a_, but there is also a form with a third rhyme _a b b a, a c c a_, which frequently occurs. The rhyme-arrangement of the terzetti is exceedingly various, and there are also a great many sub-species with regard to the structure of the first part. Very often the first quatrain has enclosing rhymes and the second crossed rhymes, or vice versa; these being either formed by two or three rhymes. As the main types of the Wordsworth sonnet the following, which, however, admit of many variations in the terzetti, may be mentioned: _a b b a b a b a c d e c e d_ (ii. 303), _a b b a [] a b a b c d e e d c_ (viii. 57), _a b a b b a a b c d c [] d c d_ (vi. 113), _a b a b a b b a c d d c d c_ (viii. 29), _a b b a a c a c d e e d e d_ (vii. 82), _a b b a c a c a d e d e e d_ (viii. 109) or _a b b a c a c a d e d e f f_ (viii. 77), &c., _a b a b b c c b d e f e f d_ (vii. 29). There are of this type also forms in which the terzetti have the structure _d d f e e f_ (vii. 334), or _d e f d e f_ (viii. 68), &c., and _a b a b a c a c d e d e d e_ (viii. 28). Cf. _Metrik_, ii, § 555.

Very often Wordsworth's sonnets differ from those of the Italian poets and agree with the Miltonic type in that the two chief parts are not separated from each other by a pause[202]; and even if there is no run-on line the train of thought is continuous. For this reason his sonnets give us rather the impression of a picture or of a description than of a reflective poem following the Italian requirements, according to which the sonnet should consist of: assertion (quatrain i), proof (quatrain ii), confirmation (terzet i), conclusion (terzet ii) (cf. p. 373). The following sonnet by Wordsworth, strictly on the Italian model in its rhyme-arrangement, may serve as an example:

_With Ships the sea was sprinkled far and nigh,
Like stars in heaven, and joyously it showed;
Some lying fast at anchor in the road,
Some veering up and down, one knew not why.
A goodly Vessel did I then espy
Come like a giant from a haven broad;
And lustily along the bay she strode,
Her tackling rich, and of apparel high.
This Ship was nought to me, nor I to her,
Yet I pursued her with a Lover's look;
This ship to all the rest did I prefer:
When will she turn, and whither? She will brook
No tarrying; where She comes the winds must stir:
On went She, and due north her journey took._

Sonnets, however, like the following, entitled _A Parsonage in Oxfordshire_ (vi. 292), give to a still greater extent the impression of monostrophic poems on account of the want of distinct separation between the component parts:

_Where holy ground begins, unhallowed ends,
Is marked by no distinguishable line;
The turf unites, the pathways intertwine;
And, wheresoe'er the stealing footstep tends,
Garden, and that Domain where kindreds, friends,
And neighbours rest together, here confound
Their several features, mingled like the sound
Of many waters, or as evening blends
With shady night. Soft airs, from shrub and flower,
Waft fragrant greetings to each silent grave;
And while those lofty poplars gently wave
Their tops, between them comes and goes a sky
Bright as the glimpses of eternity,
To saints accorded in their mortal hour._

The strophic character of many sonnets is still more visible both in Wordsworth and some earlier poets (as e.g. Sidney or Shakespeare) when several consecutive sonnets on the same subject are so closely connected as to begin with the words _But_ or _Nor_, as e.g. in Wordsworth's _Ecclesiastical Sonnets_ (XI, XV, XVIII, XXIII); or when sonnets (cf. the same collection, No. XXXII) end like the Spenserian stanza in an Alexandrine. This peculiarity, which, of course, does not conform to the strict and harmonious structure of the sonnet, and is found as early as in a sonnet by Burns (p. 119), sometimes occurs in later poets also.[203]

Wordsworth has had an undoubtedly great influence on the further development of sonnet-writing, which is still extensively practised both in England and America.

§ =315.= None of the numerous sonnet-writers of the nineteenth century, however, brought about a new epoch in this kind of poetry. They, as a rule, confined themselves to either one or other of the four chief forms noted above, viz.:

1. The specifically English form of Surrey and Shakespeare, used e.g. by Keats, S. T. Coleridge, Mrs. Hemans, C. Tennyson Turner, Mrs. Browning, M. Arnold (pp. 37, 38) (cf. _Metrik_, ii, § 566).

2. The Wordsworth sonnet, approaching to the Italian sonnet in its form or rather variety of forms; it occurs in S. T. Coleridge, Hartley Coleridge, Sara Coleridge, Byron, Mrs. Hemans, Lamb, Tennyson, D. G. Rossetti, M. Arnold (pp. 1-8) (cf. ib. §§ 561-2).

3. The Miltonic form, correct in its rhymes but not in the relationship of its different parts to one another, used by Keats, Byron, Aubrey de Vere, Lord Houghton, Mrs. Browning, Rossetti, Swinburne, and others (cf. ib. § 563).

4. The strict Italian form, as we find it in Keats, Byron, Leigh Hunt, Aubrey de Vere, Tennyson, Browning, Mrs. Browning, Austin Dobson, Rossetti, Swinburne, M. Arnold (pp. 179-85), and most poets of the modern school (cf. ib. §§ 564-5).

NOTES:

[188] Stanzas of six and twelve lines formed on the same principle
(_a a a b b b_ and _a a b b c c d d e e f f_) are very rare.
For specimens see _Metrik_, ii, § 363.

[189] Cf. O. Wilda, _Über die örtliche Verbreitung der zwölfzeiligen
Schweifreimstrophe in England_, Breslau Dissertation, Breslau,
1887.

[190] This is a stanza of four iambic lines alternately of four and
three feet with masculine endings, usually rhyming _a b a b_.

[191] _Chaucerian and other Pieces, &c._, ed. Skeat, Oxford, 1897,
p. 347.

[192] This form of stanza is of great importance in the anisometrical
'lays', which cannot be discussed in this place (cf. _Metrik_,
i, § 168). In these poems the strophic arrangement is not
strictly followed throughout, but only in certain parts; a
general conformity only is observed in these cases.

[193] As to this form cf. _Huchown's Pistel of Swete Susan_,
herausgeg. von Dr. H. Köster, Strassburg, 1895 (_Quellen und
Forschungen_, 76), pp. 15-36.

[194] Cf. R. Brotanek, _Alexander Montgomerie_, Vienna, 1896.

[195] It is worth noticing that there are also tripartite stanzas in
Middle English, either allied to the bob-wheel stanza or
belonging to it, both in lyric and dramatic poetry; e.g. the
ten-lined stanza of a poem in Wright's _Songs and Carols_ (Percy
Soc., 1847), p. 15, on the scheme _A B A B C C C₄ d₁ D D₄_
(quoted in _Metrik_, i, p. 406); one of eleven lines according
to the formula _A A A₄ B₃ C C C₄ B₃ d₁ B D₃_ in the
_Towneley Mysteries_, p. 224 (quoted in _Metrik_, i, p. 407),
and one of thirteen lines, used in a dialogue, corresponding to
the scheme _A B A B A A B A A B₃ c₁ B₃ C₂_, ibid., pp. 135-9
(quoted in _Metrik_, i, p. 408).

[196] Cf. Karl Bartsch, 'Der Strophenbau in der deutschen Lyrik'
(_Germania_, ii, p. 290).

[197] For titles of books and essays on the sonnet see _Englische
Metrik_, ii, pp. 836-7 note; cf. also L. Bladene, 'Morfologia
del Sonetto nei secoli XIII e XIV' (_Studi di Filologia
Romanza_, fasc. 10).

[198] Cf. _Étude sur Joachim du Bellay et son rôle dans la réforme de
Ronsard_, par G. Plötz. Berlin, Herbig, 1874, p. 24.

[199] _The Sonnet: Its Origin, Structure and Place in Poetry_, London,
1874, 8º, p. 4.

[200] For certain other varieties occasionally used by these poets see
_Metrik_, §§ 536 and 544-5.

[201] Cf. _Studien über A. M._, von Oscar Hoffmann (Breslau
Dissertation), Altenburg, 1894, p. 32; _Engl. Studien_, xx. 49
ff.; and Rud. Brotanek, _Wiener Beiträge_, vol. iii, pp. 122-3.

[202] Cf. Wordsworth, _Prose Works_, ed. Grosart, 1876, vol. iii, p.
323, where he praises Milton for this peculiarity, showing
thereby that he was influenced in his sonnet-writing by Milton.

[203] On Wordsworth's Sonnets see the Note on the Wordsworthian Sonnet
by Mr. T. Hutchinson, in his edition of _Poems in two volumes by
William Wordsworth_ (1807), London, 1897, vol. i, p. 208.