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 14 quatrains, and a resolution in the final couplet. This sonnet suggests this pattern, but its rhetorical structure is more closely modeled upon the older Petrarchan sonnet which arranges the octave (the first eight lines) in contrast to the sestet (the final six lines). Line 3 exemplifies a regular iambic pentameter: Some critics argue that the Fair Youth sequence follows a story-line told by Shakespeare. Evidence that corroborates this is that the sonnets show a constant change of attitude that would seem to follow a day-by-day private journal entry. Furthermore, there is an argument that the Fair Youth sequence was written