Sonnet 1

Sidney uses some of the elements of traditional English and Italian sonnets but changes others in “Sonnet 1.” It has 14 lines, maintaining the formal aspect of length seen in sonnets by Henry Howard and Thomas Wyatt earlier in the 1500s. However, Sidney doesn’t use iambic pentameter like his English predecessors; his lines have 12 syllables, instead of 10 syllables. His 12-syllable line, with six iambic feet, can be called an alexandrine. After Sidney’s death, Edmund Spenser famously used the alexandrine in some—but not all—of the lines in his Spenserian stanzas that structure The Faerie Queene (See: Further Reading & Resources). The two men shared a love of formal poetry that uses this metrical structure, such as French poetry. Sidney even includes a pun in “Sonnet 1” about how the poem changes the traditional meter: “[O]thers’ feet still seemed but strangers in my way” (Line 11). The feet he is referring to are the five iambic feet of what became the most popular meter in English—iambic pentameter—used by Wyatt and Howard before him. Sidney finds this formal element “strange” and restrictive, so he breaks with tradition.

Sidney and Spenser also used excessive rhymes in their sonnets.