The student should also note some of the key poetic features of the Sonnets. (1) The most often used kinds of figurative language are metaphors and similes. Shakespeare's metaphors are often quite complex. (2) Structurally, many of the sonnets can be divided between the first three quatrains and the couplet. The couplet then forms the conclusion to the poem. (3) The sonnets may also be structurally divided between the octet and sestet. In such cases, the first eight lines may set up a situation, but the final six lines move in an opposite direction. (4) The rhythm is consistently iambic pentameter. And (5) the rhyme scheme is usually ABAB CDCD EFEF GG.
With the first sonnet the editors have added an important footnote. In many early critical studies on the Sonnets, critics and historians have attempted to identify the true identities of the young man and the dark lady. However, no genuine evidence has really proven the identities of these characters. Although Shakespeare probably did base these characters on real-life models that he personally knew, the characters themselves may be largely or predominantly fictional. The situations that Shakespeare describes in these poems would also then be fictional occurrences.