SONNET

Definition of A Sonnet
The word sonnet comes from the Italian word “sonetto” which means “little song”.

A sonnet has come to be known generally as a poem containing fourteen lines of iambic
pentameter.

Traditionally, sonnets have been classified into groups based on the ryhme scheme. William
Shakespeare wrote his sonnets to rhyme: abab cdcd efef gg. Sonnets which follow this rhyme
scheme are called Shakespearean Sonnets. There are also Petrarchan and Spenserian Sonnets
which are based on rhyme schemes used by Edmund Spenser and Francesco Petrarca respectively.

Sonnets also generally contain a volta, or turn. This is a subtle device used to distract the reader
from the monotonous beat of the iambic pentameter. When you turn from a set direction while
driving, you may only veer a little to the left or right. You may turn 90 degrees right or left. Or,
you may do a 180 degree u-turn. Likewise, the volta may be a subtle shift or a complete reversal
of direction. Writers have used various devices to indicate the turn as well as placing the turn in
different places. The Shakespearean Sonnet generally places the volta after the eighth line.

Sonnet Types

The Petrarchan or Italian sonnet is named for the 14th century Italian poet Francesco Petrarch
who popularized the sonnet form.

The petrarchan sonnet has a set rhyme scheme. The first eight lines, or octet, rhyme as follows:

abba abba

The last six lines, or sestet, can have various rhyme schemes.

The beginning of the sestet marks the volta, or turn in the sonnet. The sestet is often viewed as the
solution to a problem posed in the octet.

A Shakespearean sonnet is written in iambic pentameter, which means that each line is 10
syllables long. The rhythm of each line should be like this:

soft-LOUD-soft-LOUD-soft-LOUD-soft-LOUD-sHoft-LOUD

Last, most sonnets have a volta, or a turning point. In a Shakespearean sonnet the volta usually
begins at line 9.

An easy example of a turning point would be, lines 1-8 ask a question or series of questions and
lines 9-14 answer the question or questions.
The Modern Sonnet

Although the traditional sonnet follows a strict form consisting of fourteen lines of iambic
pentameter, many writers from the 20th century to the present day have sought to expand the
sonnet form by “loosening” some of the requirements of the traditional sonnet.

These “modern sonnets” are typically still short, lyric poems in the spirit of the traditional
sonnet. So, the name sonnet, which means “little song” can still be said to apply to them.
However, not all short, lyric poems are sonnets, modern or traditional.

How then, do we identify the modern sonnet?

Generally, modern sonnet writers attempt to keep some of the traditional sonnet forms while
abandoning others. The most common modern sonnet is a fourteen lined lyric poem that does not
employ iambic pentameter or a set rhyme scheme.

Other modern sonnets might use ten or twelve lines of iambic pentameter instead of fourteen.
Often these “shortened” sonnets will still follow a set rhyme scheme or contain a distinct volta.

Blank verse sonnets might also be considered modern. A blank verse sonnet employs iambic
pentameter, but does not rhyme.

I find it useful to think of a sonnet as a house. Traditionally a house has windows, doors, a roof
and walls. But, what if a house of the future found it could do without doors or windows? What
if the roof or walls could be replaced by some sort of energy field? Would it still be recognizable
as a house? It might seem strange at first, but after living in it for a while, you would probably
come to think of it as a house just the same.

Try “living” in a modern sonnet for a while. If it starts to feel like a sonnet to you, then it
probably is one. At least you should be able to make a good argument for it in your poetry class!

One way I like to “live” in a sonnet is to give it the “out loud test.” Sonnets, being lyrical in
nature, were meant to be read out loud. A sonnet that doesn’t sound good out loud to me is
probably not really worthy of the title of sonnet. Of course this is a very subjective test, but
subjectivity is a big part of interpreting poetry.
Doctor Faustus by Christopher Marlowe Summary

In Doctor Faustus, Christopher Marlowe supplies a nearly diagrammatic study of damnation—of

the decline and fall of a human soul—growing out of excessive pride and overreaching ambition.
The well-schooled Faustus, with his unbridled curiosity, skepticism, and knowledge, stands as the
epitome of the Renaissance “new man.” On his graduation from the German university at
Wittenberg, Faustus casts about for a suitable profession. He rejects, in turn, philosophy, medicine,
law, and theology, finding that all these fields fall short of what amounts to his supra-human
desires. For example, medicine (“physic”) promises the possibility of temporary healing but not
of bestowing everlasting life or of raising the dead. Accordingly, Faustus at last lights upon
necromancy—magic and the black arts—as providing the sole means whereby he can achieve
“omnipotence” and become a “mighty god.”

In the company of his like-minded friends Valdes and Cornelius, Faustus summons up the demon
Mephistophilis and informs him that, in exchange for twenty-four years of earthly pleasure,
wealth, and honor, he is ready to abandon his soul to Lucifer, the evil one himself. Immediately,
Good Angel and Bad Angel appear to Faustus, the former urgently pleading for the scholar’s
repentance, and the latter airily dismissing the efficacy of prayer. Willfully determined, Faustus
stabs his arm and writes out his agreement with the devil in his own resisting blood.

Almost immediately, however, it becomes clear that there are limits to demonic power: For
example, Faustus asks for a wife only to learn that holy matrimony, a sacrament of the Church, is
not open to him now. In place of a wife, Mephistophilis promises Faustus a succession of
prostitutes, an adjustment that the lascivious Faustus finds congenial. The demon then converses
with Faustus about astronomy and cosmology. Throughout this long discourse, Faustus is tempted
to repent from time to time; but Mephistophilis, Belzebub, and Lucifer are each time able to
distract him with entertaining (if insubstantial) “shows”—for example, with a diverting parade
of the personified Seven Deadly Sins—so that the enthralled scholar forgets any misgivings and
hews to his bargain.

In a subsequent series of relatively brief and decidedly farcical vignettes—first at the Vatican at
Rome, then at the imperial German court, and finally in the swindling of a lowly horse seller —
Faustus, aided by the devils who accompany him, demonstrates the arguably paltry powers he has
attained at the cost of his soul. In Rome, for example, he assumes invisibility in order to strike the
pope about the head, set free the pontiff’s enemy Bruno, and befuddle a host of Ecclesiastes. At
the royal court, he beguiles Emperor Charles by evoking the forms of such historical figures as
Alexander the Great and Darius—all the while reminding the monarch that these apparently
tangible manifestations are in fact “but shadows, not substantial.” Finally, he provides out-of-
season grapes for the duchess of Inhaled and, in the role of court jester, amuses himself and the
ducal assembly by cruelly hoodwinking some rustic yokels.

At last, however, as the end of Faustus’s life draws near, the mood of the play inevitably lurches
from the farcical to the terrifying and demonic. Back in the magician’s study, a pious Old Man,
representing God’s infinite mercy, warns Faustus of the eternal agonies of hell and entreats him,
even at this late hour, to repent. Shaken, Faustus nonetheless gives way to the sin of despair and
begs Mephistophilis to summon up the distracting image of Helen of Troy, a mythic figure
metaphorically associated with fire—in this case, the fires of hell. Kissing Faustus, her “lips suck
forth [his] soul.” By willfully embracing this demonic figure, Faustus permanently seals his fate,
and even as he cries out pitifully for more time, the unholy trinity of Lucifer, Belzebub, and
Mephistophilis lead the magician offstage to the unending torment that awaits his spirit. Two
scholars later discover his earthly body, horribly torn and dismembered.
***
Marlowe’s play Doctor Faustus is generally considered his greatest. The play shares certain
elements with its ancestor, the medieval morality play: the opposing admonishments of good and
bad angels; the characters of Lucifer and Mephostophilis; and the appearance of the Seven Deadly
Sins. Yet it breaks with tradition in two important respects: in the sympathy evoked for the
straying hero, and in the questions raised against the cosmic order of conventional Christian
doctrine.

Faustus pursues his grand aspirations in what Marlowe portrays as a repressive climate of
Christian orthodoxy, which, in designating certain knowledge as forbidden, blocks fulfillment of
his desires and effectively becomes his antagonist. The play opens with Faustus in his study. He
has plumbed the depths of all disciplines and found them unfulfilling. He will settle for no less
than a dominion that “Stretcheth as far as doth the mind of man”—a world of physical beauty,
sensual delight, and power over life and objects. He decides his best hope is necromancy, an art
forbidden by Christian doctrine.

Thus, the scene is set for Faustus’s tragic decline. Planted in the text, even from the beginning,
are warnings of the terrible fate awaiting Faustus. A master of dramatic irony, Marlowe has these
warnings go unheeded by his hero while they build an uneasy tension in the audience’s
awareness. An example is Faustus’s remark on his own great powers in conjuring up
Mephostophilis. Only a few lines later, it is revealed that Mephostophilis has come more out of his
own and Lucifer’s self-interest than in deference to Faustus’s wishes. Similarly, when
Mephostophilis tells Faustus that Lucifer was thrown from Heaven for aspiring pride and
insolence, the audience recognizes that Faustus exhibits the same faults and may meet the same
fate. There is ambivalence, too, in Faustus’s repeated exhortation to himself to be resolute in his
damnable course of action. The word, used more often in connection with Christian virtue, gains
an ironic weight, rendering Doctor Faustus a negative version of John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s
Progress (1678, 1684).

Counterbalanced against this carefully crafted tragic inevitability is the hope that Faustus will
repent and save himself. Marlowe keeps the conflict in Faustus’s soul active until the end. In the
moving soliloquies, Faustus’s initial confidence in his pact with Lucifer alternates with regret
and determination to turn back to God. Despair however, prevails. In his second soliloquy, Faustus
is turned back from repentance by his sense of God’s indifference to him and his own
indifference to God: Faustus serves only his own appetite. In one profoundly moving scene,
Faustus announces, “I do repent” only to have Mephostophilis threaten him with having his
flesh torn into pieces for disobedience to Lucifer. Faustus effects a hasty turnabout of meaning in
an ironic echo of his previous phrase: “I do repent I e’er offended him.”

Yet just as God failed Faustus in his aspirations, so does Lucifer. Disillusionment follows rapidly
on his pact. Faustus asks for a wife; but marriage is a sacrament, so Mephostophilis cannot
provide one. When Faustus questions him about astronomy, Mephostophilis tells him nothing the
scholar Wagner could not have told him. Although the Chorus reveals that Faustus attains fame for
his learning, his achievements are superficial and empty in comparison with his grandiose
intentions at the outset. He humiliates the pope (a typically Marlovian scenario), avenges some
petty wrongs done to him by Benvolio by attaching antlers to his head, and entertains the duke and
duchess of Vanholt with insubstantial illusions. At the play’s start, no area of knowledge is large
enough for Faustus’s overweening sense of self; toward the end, fear and despair have so
diminished him that he wants only dissolution and oblivion: “O soul, be chang’d into little
water drops,/ And fall into the ocean, ne’er be found.”

In spite of the intellectual nature of the play’s premise, it contains scenes of a striking visual
immediacy. The first entrance of Mephostophilis, too ugly for Faustus’s taste, and the
appearance of Helen of Troy are examples. Often, scenes of horror are not directly represented on
stage but chillingly evoked in words. Faustus’s blood congeals as he attempts to sign his soul
away to the Devil; a Latin inscription meaning “Fly, O man!” appears on his arm. That the
audience is told this by Faustus rather than seeing it for itself lets it experience the terror through
his awareness. Similarly, a chill of fear is produced by Faustus’s words to the Scholars: “Ay,
pray for me, pray for me; and, what noise soever ye hear, come not unto me, for nothing can
rescue me.” The image is as powerful in its understatement as the explicit horror of the final
scene, where devils drag Faustus off to Hell.

Marlowe’s verse reached its full emotional power in Doctor Faustus. Faustus’s soliloquy
beginning “Ah, Faustus,/ Now hast thou but one bare hour to live” is an example of the
emotional intensity of which Marlowe was capable. Faustus’s request that the spheres of Heaven
cease their motion to give him time to repent is heartrending because of its very impossibility.
Desperation is conveyed in the rapid and diminishing series of time extensions that he demands.
His violent reversals of mood—from calling on God to anguish at being dragged downward by
devils, from the vision of Christ’s blood streaming in the firmament to the pain of Lucifer’s
tortures—move the audience with him from despair to hope. His spiritual agony is summarized in
the evocative and poignant line, “O lente lente currite noctis equi” (“Slowly run, O horses of
night”).

The traditional morality play affirmed Christian virtue and faith and condemned the vices of those
who strayed from the path. Doctor Faustus offers no such comfortable framework. It does not
offer a reassuring affirmation of Christian faith or a straightforward condemnation of Faustus.
Instead, it presents a disturbing challenge to the cosmic order as defined by Christian orthodoxy.
Listeners are invited “Only to wonder at unlawful things,/ whose deepness doth entice such
forward wits/ To practise more than heavenly power permits.”

The question with which the play ends is whether the tragedy of Faustus is individual, the tragedy
of one man’s fall from grace, or universal, the tragedy of Everyman in a system of belief that
offers no place or path for the growth of the illimitable human spirit.