There are three parts to this final section of the poetry project:

1. Learn about the structure and rhythm of sonnets, explicate Sonnet 29, and take a sonnet quiz.
2. Create your own sonnet.
3. Perform/recite a sonnet.

 

a, Learn about the structure and rhythm of sonnets, explicate Sonnet 29, and take a sonnet quiz.

• Shakespeare’s Sonnets
• Allusions Website
• Did Shakespeare Want To Suppress His Sonnets?

• How to Analyze Shakespeare’s Sonnets
• An Outline of the Contents of Shakespeare’s Sonnets

Build and explicate a Sonnet: 

Some tips about sonnets:

• Each line has 10 syllables…be careful, though; it might look as though some of these lines don’t have this number of syllables, but they do!

 

• In this kind of sonnet, the lines rhyme in an abab cdcd efef gg pattern:
  • Lines 1 and 3 rhyme
  • 2 and 4
  • 5 and 7
  • 6 and 8
  • 9 and 11
  • 10 and 12
  • 13 and 14  (known as a rhyming couplet)
    

• There is generally a full-stop (semicolon, period, an exclamation point, or a question mark) at the end of Line 8 and at the end of line 14.  
  

Now see if you can put together the lines of Sonnet 29 by following the tips and these clues:

• Line 1 ends with a part of the body.
  Line 2 uses words that mean being by oneself.
  Line 4 begins with a conjunction and ends with a comma.
  Line 6 uses repetition.
  Line 10 contains alliteration.
  Line 11 contains a simile.
• The last line uses a word meaning “royalty.”

Explicate the Sonnet Quiz

Part B 

Create your own sonnet.

Building a Sonnet

Follow the sonnet requirements:

• 14 lines,
• abab cdcd efef gg rhyme scheme,
• 10 syllables per line,
• poetic techniques such as imagery, personification, alliteration, metaphor, simile, etc.).

In this sonnet, you can be serious, comical,  and/or reflective. But, most of all, be creative and follow the sonnet requirements.

Part C 

Recite a sonnet.  

Memorize either a Shakespearean sonnet or the one you created and perform it to the class. You may recite this live or in a video shown in class.