Sonnet 23 and then his collection of poems to a play. Sonnet 23 is considered an English or Shakespearean Sonnet. It contains 14 iambic pentameter lines. The rhyme scheme is "abab cdcd efef gg". The form consists of three quatrains and a couplet. All of the lines, including the fifth line are examples of iambic pentameter: After the octave (the first two quatrains) there is often a change referred to as a volta. In Sonnet 23 the volta is line nine's suggestion. "For fear of trust" has drawn different, though not necessarily contradictory, glosses. Nicolaus Delius has it "from want of self-confidence,"
Sonnet 71 him to mourn. This is particularly ironic considering that there are lines in other sonnets (e.g., Sonnet 18, Sonnet 55, Sonnet 65 and Sonnet 81) that speak of immortality through poetic verse, thus negating the possibility that one can be forgotten. These examples give credence to Peguiney's argument of a calculated attempt to invoke the youth's mourning, as he writes in his essay Sonnets 71-74, "The 'if' clauses at lines 5 and 9 are cunning invitations to future readings of the verse, and how impossible it would be for 'you [to] read this [handwritten] line' and 'remember not / The