Petrarchan sonnet Petrarchan sonnet The Petrarchan sonnet is a sonnet form not developed by Petrarch himself, but rather by a string of Renaissance poets. Because of the structure of Italian, the rhyme scheme of the Petrarchan sonnet is more easily fulfilled in that language than in English. The original Italian sonnet form divides the poem's 14 lines into two parts, the first part being an octave and the second being a sestet. The rhyme scheme for the octave is typically ABBAABBA. The sestet is more flexible. Petrarch typically used CDECDE or CDCDCD for the sestet. Some other possibilities for the sestet include
Sonnet 1 the sonnets "may not be in an order which is absolutely correct but no one can deny that they are related and that they do show some development some 'story' even if incomplete and unsatisfactory". Sonnet 1 has the traditional characteristics of a Shakespearean sonnet—three quatrains and a couplet written in iambic pentameter with an ABAB CDCD EFEF GG rhyme scheme. Many of Shakespeare's sonnets also reflect the two-part structure of the Italian Petrarchan Sonnet. In this type of sonnet (though not in Sonnet 1) "the first eight lines are logically or metaphorically set against the last six [and] an