Thomas Wyatt
Wyatt wrote in many forms. These forms include sonnets, songs, lyric poems, and rondeaux. A rondeau is a strict poem with 13 lines and two rhymes. It also involves a repeat of the beginning of the first line. The repeat usually comes at lines 8 and 13. Sonnets are poems with 14 lines. Today we usually divide sonnets into English or Shakespearean sonnets and Italian or Petrarchan sonnets. Petrarchan sonnets are named for the Italian poet Petrarch. Petrarchan sonnets are grouped into an octave (a set of 8 lines) and a sestet (a set of 6 lines). It has the rhyme pattern abba abba cddece. Wyatt translated many of Petrarch's poems into English. Wyatt was the first to use the form we now call the Shakespearean sonnet. It is a poem of 14 lines grouped into three quatrains (a set of four lines) and a couplet (a set of two lines). It has the rhyme pattern abab cdcd efef gg. William Shakespeare came after Wyatt, but he often used the type of sonnet Wyatt invented. In fact, Shakespeare used it so often that the sonnet form was named after Shakespeare instead of Wyatt.