Petrarchan sonnet Italian sonnet form in the poems of his that were not translation and adaptation work. As a result, he is often credited for integrating the Petrarchan sonnet into English vernacular tradition. The form also gave rise to an "anti-Petrarchan" convention which may have revealed the mistress to be ugly and unworthy. The convention was also mocked, or adopted for alternative persuasive means by many of the Inns of Court writers during the Renaissance. The sonnet is split in two groups: the "octave" (of 8 lines) and the "sestet" (of 6 lines), for a total of 14 lines. The octave (the
Sonnet 99 appears as one syllable (in lines 7, 10, and 15). Line 13's "eate" equals modern past tense "ate". As to its fifteen lines, sonnet structure has never been absolutely fixed, and Sidney Lee adduces many examples of fifteen line sonnets. An extra line is particularly common in linked sonnets, and this sonnet is linked to 98; Malone ended 98 with a colon to demonstrate the connection. However, other scholars have remarked on the clumsiness of the first line and suggested that the quarto text represents an unrevised draft that found its way into print. Edward Massey and others asserted that