Shakespeare and sonnet form

Abstract

This essay considers some of the uses to which Shakespeare put the literary form of the sonnet along with its component parts – the iambic pentameter line, the quatrain, the sestet, and the rhyming couplet – both in his plays and in independent poems. It offers a fresh appraisal of the sonnets by Shakespeare published by Thomas Thorpe in 1609, with emphasis on those printed in the earlier part of the volume, often referred to as ‘the young man sonnets’. The article also discusses Richard Barnfield's homoerotic verse and position in relation to the sonnet tradition and to Shakespeare's place in it.