Sonnet 1

Sidney’s “Sonnet 1” plays with the conventions of the sonnet form. The word “sonnet” comes from the Italian sonetto, or “little song,” and scholars argue that it was invented by Giacomo de Lentini. Italian poets, like Teofilo Folengo, used the sonnet form to flatter upper-class women. However, Francesco Petrarch was the poet who popularized the Italian sonnet form in the mid-1300s. His form includes 14 rhymed lines broken into a group of eight lines (octave) and a group of six lines (sestet) with a turn, or volta, in between. Petrarch’s work was translated into English by poets such as Thomas Wyatt in Tottel’s Miscellany, which was published in 1557.

Sidney’s sonnet collection was published before other famous English sonnet sequences, such as Edmund Spenser’s Amoretti, which was published in 1595, and William Shakespeare’s sonnets, which were published in 1609. Sidney is often credited with the sonnet’s revival in English after it had fallen out of fashion in Italy. Sonnets in English also include 14 lines, but the rhyme scheme and structure differ from the Italian version. Sidney’s divergences from the classic form of the sonnet, such as using a different meter than other English sonneteers (like Shakespeare, who famously used iambic pentameter), helped pave the way for modern sonnet experiments.

Romantic poets revived the sonnet form again in the late 1700s and early 1800s. Percy Bysshe Shelley’s sonnet “Ozymandias” generally has pentameter lines but uses a different rhyme scheme than Shakespearean and other English sonnets. In the Victorian era, Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s “Sonnets From the Portuguese” kept the sonnet in fashion in 1850. A Victorian sonnet sequence that breaks the traditional form is George Meredith’s 1862 collection Modern Love, in which Meredith presents sonnets that contain 16 lines instead of 14 lines.

In the 20th century, sonnets remained popular. W. B. Yeats published some famous sonnets, such as “Leda and the Swan,” in the 1920s, and Bernadette Mayer published a collection of experimental sonnets in 1989. In the 21st century, Harryette Mullen included experimental sonnets in her collection Sleeping With the Dictionary, Terrance Hayes published a collection of sonnets about the 2016 election, and Dorothy Chan published triple sonnets about pop-culture figures like Naomi Malone. In the 2020s, several poets, such as John Okrent, wrote sonnets about the pandemic, and famous actor Sir Patrick Stewart read classic sonnets online (Alexandra, Rae. “Sir Patrick Stewart Reading Sonnets Is a Soothing Balm in 2020’s Hellscape.” KQED, 9 Sept. 2020).