Sonnet 41 three sonnets (40, 41, 42) that dwell on this betrayal of the speaker. This sonnet is also notable for the textual references made to Shakespeare's other works. The sonnet is written in the typical Shakespearean sonnet form, containing 14 lines of iambic pentameter and ending in a rhymed couplet. Shakespeare's sonnets conform to the English or Shakespearean sonnet form. The form consists of fourteen lines structured as three quatrains and a couplet, rhyming "abab cdcd efef gg" and written in iambic pentameter, a type of poetic metre based on five pairs of metrically weak/strong syllabic positions. While Shakespeare's versification maintains
Sonnet 146 regular lines, and a characteristically Shakespearean use of metrical expectations to emphasize pronouns, suggest that readings with only an initial reversal or a regular meter may be the most appropriate. The sonnet is notable for its uncharacteristically religious tone and call for moral richness, whereas most sonnets treasure earthly qualities of beauty and love. In its vocabulary and vocative address to the soul the sonnet invites comparison with Psalm 146. Although Michael West has persuasively argued that this sonnet is indebted to the medieval genre of poetic dialogues between soul and body, the extent to which sonnet actually presents conventional