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A sonnet is a poem of 14 lines that follows a strict rhyming pattern.

Shakespeare didn’t invent the form, but he did help popularise it.

Shakespearean sonnets are written in iambic pentameter. This is a name for a certain pattern of beats called ‘f����’.

Pentameter means that each line is divided up into five feet.

In each foot there is one stressed syllable.

In iambic pentameter the rhythm goes ‘unstressed, stressed’. Sometimes this pattern changes, which can tell you something about the importance of the line.

Sonnet 130 follows the rhyme scheme ABABCDCDEFEFGG.

The first twelve lines rhyme in alternating pairs. They are devoted to the main idea of the poem, with the poet talking of his mistress in less than complimentary terms.

These lines list the different things that you can praise about somebody.

My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun; A

Coral is far more red than her lips' red; B

If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun; A

If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head. B

I have seen roses damasked, red and white, C

But no such roses see I in her cheeks; D

And in some perfumes is there more delight C

Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks. D

I love to hear her speak, yet well I know E

That music hath a far more pleasing sound; F

I grant I never saw a goddess go; E

My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground. F

A rhyming couplet finishes the sonnet. This final rhyming couplet creates a sense of conclusion, which emphasises the speaker’s affection for his mistress despite all the previous undermining of her beauty.

And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare G

As any she belied with false compare. G

This final rhyming couplet contains a volta. In poetry, the volta is a rhetorical shift or dramatic change in thought and/or emotion. You could describe it as a ‘twist’.

So far the speaker has been criticising his mistress, but the final two lines show that he still thinks she is beautiful.