do sonnets have to be in iambic pentameter

This provides a tighter connection between the different stanzas. The English poet Edmund Spenser, who lived and wrote during the Elizabethan age, used a slightly different rhyme scheme in his sonnets: ABAB BCBC CDCD EE. While the volta sometimes occurs in the third quatrain, which is to say the ninth line and therefore in the same place as in Italian sonnets, Shakespeare usually saved his change of tone and conclusion just for the couplet. There is also a different breaking of the stanzas-English sonnets are comprised of three quatrains and a couplet. The main different between Italian and English sonnets is the rhyme scheme, which, in Shakespearean sonnets is ABAB CDCD EFEF GG. William Shakespeare was not the first to write sonnets in English, but he became perhaps the most famous sonneteer, and therefore the English form is also sometimes called Shakespearean. The English sonnet is sometimes also known as Elizabethan because they came into popularity in the English language during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, i.e., in the mid- to late-1500s. English, Elizabethan, or Shakespearean Sonnet

There are a few other accepted rhyme schemes for the sestets in Italian sonnets, such as CDD CDE or CDC DCD. The rhyme scheme he used was generally ABBA ABBA for the octave and either CDC CDC or CDE CDE for the sestet. Italian sonnets are known as Petrarchan because the Italian writer Petrarch was one of the main proponents of the form.

The ninth line of this sonnet, i.e., the first line of the sestet marks a turn in mood or stance whether or not there is a satisfactory conclusion. The octave proposes a problem or question, and the sestet generally proposes the solution, or leads toward a conclusion. The Italian sonnet, which was created first, is the combination of an octave (eight lines broken into two quatrains) and a sestet (six lines broken into two tercets).

All sonnets, whether Italian or English, generally are written in iambic pentameter. Though the definition of sonnet states that the poem must have fourteen lines, there are a few variations with this form.

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Do sonnets have to be in iambic pentameter