The Petrarchan or Italian sonnet contains 14 lines with a fixed rhyme scheme and meter. The sonnet can be divided into two parts: the octave (the first 8 lines) and the sestet (the remaining 6 lines). The rhyme scheme is usually the following:
OCTAVE abba abba
SESTET cde cde (or cdcdcd)
Sidney's rhyme scheme is similar to the Italian model. However, he usually breaks up the Sestet into a Quatrain (4 lines) and a Couplet (2 lines) to produce the following scheme:
OCTAVE abba abba
QUATRAIN cdcd
COUPLET ee
Often, the Octave will pose a problem, and the Sestet will suggest a solution. However, the sonnet may be divided in other ways. The Octave could present a generalization, and the Sestet could apply that generalization to a specific occurrence. Or the Octave might make a statement, and the Sestet could contradict that statement.
In Sidney's sonnets, the point where the poem moves in a new direction is not always after the eighth line (after the Octet). Sometimes, the shift will occur at the beginning of the Couplet (in line 13). But the shift could just as easily occur in line 6 or line 11 or anywhere else in the poem.
For most of his sonnets, Sidney uses iambic pentameter for his meter. A line of poetry in iambic pentameter is 10 syllables long. It contains 5 iambs. An iamb is a foot of poetry that is two syllables long. The first syllable is unaccented, and the second syllable is accented. The syllables of an iamb are traditionally labeled in the following way:
IAMB u /
Iambic pentameter, which contains 5 iambs, would thus have the following metrical pattern:
IAMBIC PENTAMETER u / u / u / u / u /
In English, words that are nouns, verbs, adjectives, and some adverbs usually receive an accent. If the word is more than one syllable long, the accent belongs on the root syllable. Prepositions, conjunctions, articles, and helping verbs usually do not receive an accent. Pronouns (including possessive pronouns) often do not receive an accent as well.
The first two lines of Sonnet 7 are fairly typical in showing the iambic pentameter pattern:
u / u / u / u / u /
When Nature made her chief work, Stella's eyes
u / u / u / u / u /
In colour black, why wrapped she beams so bright?
The student should note that nouns (Nature, eyes, colour, and beams) and verbs (made and wrapped) and adjectives (chief, black, and bright) receive accents. The observant student may notice that there is one exception in the example. The noun work should receive an accent as well. Although Renaissance poets did wish to create a steady meter or rhythm in their poetry, they would not sacrifice the meaning of the poem in order to adhere slavishly to the metrical pattern. Breaking a rule in poetry is called poetic license. A poet may also break traditional rules of grammar, spelling, or pronunciation in his or her poetry if he or she feels that, by breaking the rule, the poem will be improved. Good poets will never sacrifice meaning or sense in their poetry. However, when they break the rules that they are following elsewhere, they usually do so purposely as a means to improve their artistic creation.
Meter is important for poetry. It turns ordinary language (prose) into an artistic language, into musical language. Poetry should not be read silently. It should be read aloud. Reading poetry silently is like reading the lyrics to a song. The reader is only experiencing part of the artistic creation.
Sidney uses iambic pentameter in all but six of his sonnets. In those six sonnets, he uses iambic hexameter. Hex, here means six. Thus, a line of iambic hexameter has six iambs:
IAMBIC HEXAMETER u / u / u / u / u / u /
Sonnets 1 and 6 of Astrophil and Stella have iambic hexameter lines.
Although Sidney's sonnet cycle does not have a plot like a short story or novel would have, the sequence does present a loose story when all of the pieces are put together. Largely, the "plot" or story of the cycle presents the stages of a love relationship. More precisely, the sonnets present the complexity of emotions and feelings that the speaker of the poem, Astrophil, experiences throughout the many years that he is longing for Stella.
Most of the sonnets can fit into one of the following categories:
In a sense, Astrophil's emotions are on a seesaw. They go up and down. As noted above, sometimes the positive and negative feelings occur at the same time. Some of these opposite emotions appear in the following chart:
POSITIVE |
|
NEGATIVE |
Hope or Joy |
|
Despair |
Tenderness |
|
Bitterness/Regret |
Exultation |
|
Modesty |
Sometimes Astrophil will be excited to be so much in love. Love is the magic that keeps him alive. At other times (or possibly at the same time) Astrophil will feel that he can never obtain "the lady on the pedestal." She is too far up for him. He is too lowly for her. She is a star, and he is hopelessly earth-bound. Worse, Astrophil often regrets the time he has wasted in loving a woman that will never love him back.