What Are the Different Types of Sonnets? A Guide to Famous 14-Line Forms
The sonnet, translated from Italian as “little song,” packs a rhythmic punch and can tell a powerful story in just fourteen lines of poetry. This written form was especially popular throughout European history and developed into several distinct and recurring structures that shape the narrative and flow of these poems.
Three of the most influential types of sonnets are the Shakespearean, Petrarchan, and Spenserian sonnets, respectively named after William Shakespeare, Petrarch, and Edmund Spenser. Each one has a distinct rhyme scheme, theme, and narrative structure.
The Shakespearean sonnet
The Shakespearean sonnet, also called the English sonnet, follows a rhyme scheme of ABAB CDCD EFEF GG, in which each letter represents a line-ending sound that repeats in a set pattern. It unfolds across three quatrains, or four-line stanzas, and a final rhyming couplet, a pair of lines that share the same end rhyme. Each quatrain advances an idea or complication, while the closing couplet delivers a turn or resolution. This structure lends itself to wit, contrast, and memorable, punchy endings, which appear frequently in Shakespeare’s love poetry.
In “Sonnet 18” below, Shakespeare shows that although youth fades, poetry immortalizes the memory of a loved one.
Example: William Shakespeare’s “Sonnet 18”
(1st quatrain – ABAB)
Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? (A)
Thou art more lovely and more temperate: (B)
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, (A)
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date: (B)
(2nd quatrain – CDCD)
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines, (C)
And often is his gold complexion dimm’d; (D)
And every fair from fair sometime declines, (C)
By chance or nature’s changing course untrimm’d; (D)
(3rd quatrain – EFEF)
But thy eternal summer shall not fade (E)
Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest; (F)
Nor shall Death brag thou wander’st in his shade, (E)
When in eternal lines to time thou growest: (F)
(couplet – GG)
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, (G)
So long lives this and this gives life to thee. (G)
The Petrarchan sonnet
The Petrarchan sonnet, or Italian sonnet, divides into an octave, an eight-line opening section, and a sestet, a six-line concluding section, usually rhymed ABBAABBA followed by a variable pattern such as CDECDE or CDCDCD. (Poets sometimes experiment with the sestet.) The octave introduces a problem, tension, or emotional state, while the sestet responds with reflection or reversal. This hinge between sections, often called the volta — an Italian word meaning “turn” — gives the form its characteristic shift in thought or feeling. Originating with the Italian poet Petrarch in the 14th century, it became a model for Renaissance poets across Europe.
Like Shakespeare’s “Sonnet 18,” Petrarch’s “Sonnet 90” below also focuses on themes of youth, love, beauty, and the passage of time. However, Petrarch’s takes a more wistful tone and focuses on how the pain of unrequited love continues even as time marches on.
Example: Petrarch’s “Sonnet 90” (translated by Morris Bishop)
(octave – ABBAABBA)
She used to let her golden hair fly free (A)
For the wind to toy and tangle and molest; (B)
Her eyes were brighter than the radiant west. (B)
(Seldom they shine so now.) I used to see (A)
Pity look out of those deep eyes on me. (A)
(“It was false pity,” you would now protest.) (B)
I had love’s tinder heaped within my breast; (B)
What wonder that the flame burned furiously? (A)
(sestet – variable, here roughly CDEDCE)
She did not walk in any mortal way, (C)
But with angelic progress; when she spoke, (D)
Unearthly voices sang in unison. (E)
She seemed divine among the dreary folk (D)
Of earth. You say she is not so today? (C)
Well, though the bow’s unbent, the wound bleeds on. (E)
The Spenserian sonnet
The Spenserian sonnet blends elements of both Shakespearean and Petrarchan traditions. Its rhyme scheme, ABAB BCBC CDCD EE, links each quatrain, or four-line stanza, to the next through interlocking rhymes, in which the ending sound of one stanza carries into the next. This tactic creates a sense of continuity and forward motion, as each stanza leans into the next.
Edmund Spenser used this structure in some of his Amoretti sequence, a series of connected love poems, where the form supports a sustained narrative of courtship and devotion. Spenser’s first sonnet in Amoretti describes the turmoil he feels over his unreciprocated love.
Example: Edmund Spenser, “Sonnet 1” (Amoretti)
(1st quatrain – ABAB)
Happy ye leaves when as those lily hands, (A)
Which hold my life in their dead doing might, (B)
Shall handle you and hold in loves soft bands, (A)
Lyke captives trembling at the victors sight; (B)
(2nd quatrain – BCBC)
And happy lines, on which with starry light, (B)
Those lamping eyes will deigne sometimes to look, (C)
And reade the sorrowes of my dying spright, (B)
Written with teares in harts close bleeding book; (C)
(3rd quatrain – CDCD)
And happy rymes bath’d in the sacred brooke, (C)
Of Helicon whence she derived is, (D)
When ye behold that Angels blessed looke, (C)
My soules long lacked foode, my heavens blis; (D)
(couplet – EE)
Leaves, lines, and rymes, seeke her to please alone, (E)
Whom if ye please, I care for other none. (E)
Several variations extend or adapt these patterns. The Miltonic sonnet, named after Paradise Lost author John Milton, builds on the Petrarchan structure but reduces the separation between octave and sestet, allowing the argument to flow more continuously across all fourteen lines. Later poets, including William Wordsworth and John Keats, experimented with further modifications, treating the sonnet as a flexible storytelling and lyrical framework.
Across these forms, the sonnet has endured because it enables poets to assemble a short narrative, rhetorical precision, and deep emotional resonance in a small and memorable package. Its variations show how poets shape existing storytelling structures to match their voice, whether through the balance of quatrains, the pivot of a volta, or the tightening force of a final couplet.
