The difference between a Shakespearean and a Petrarchan sonnet is how they divide their fourteen lines: the Petrarchan sonnet has two parts, an eight-line octave and a six-line sestet, while the Shakespearean sonnet has four, three quatrains and a closing couplet.
Both are fourteen-line poems, and in English both are usually written in iambic pentameter. But the way each divides its lines changes how it rhymes, where it turns, and how it ends. The Petrarchan sonnet came first, in thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Italy. The Shakespearean sonnet grew out of it in sixteenth-century England, when poets adapted the Italian form to a language with fewer rhymes.
At a Glance
Here are the key differences between the two forms for quick reference.
The Petrarchan Sonnet
The Petrarchan sonnet is built in two unequal halves, and its shape is designed for a problem and a response.
The sonnet was invented in Sicily in the thirteenth century, and the poet usually credited with creating it is Giacomo da Lentini. It takes its name from the Italian poet Francesco Petrarca, known in English as Petrarch, whose Canzoniere contains 366 poems, 317 of them sonnets, most written for a woman he called Laura. His poems made the form famous across Europe.
The first eight lines, the octave, rhyme ABBAABBA. They set out a situation, a question, or a problem. The last six lines, the sestet, use new rhymes, most often CDECDE or CDCDCD, and they answer, reconsider, or respond to what the octave raised. The shift between the two, at the start of line 9, is called the volta, the Italian word for “turn.”
An Example: “The World Is Too Much With Us”
William Wordsworth’s sonnet, published in 1807, is one of the best-known Petrarchan sonnets in English.
The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not. Great God! I’d rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.
The octave rhymes ABBAABBA on just two sounds, “soon,” “powers,” “ours,” “boon,” and so on, and it states the problem: people have become so absorbed in getting and spending that nature no longer moves them. The sestet rhymes CDCDCD and turns to a response. In line 9, “Great God!” breaks in, and the speaker wishes he could see the world as a pagan did, full of sea gods. Two halves, one turn.
The Shakespearean Sonnet
The Shakespearean sonnet divides the same fourteen lines into four parts, and its shape is designed for an argument that builds step by step.
It has three quatrains of four lines each, rhymed ABAB CDCD EFEF, and a final rhyming couplet, GG. Each quatrain usually develops the idea a stage further, often through a new image, and the couplet sums up, concludes, or overturns what came before. Our guide to what a Shakespearean sonnet is explains each part in detail.
Sonnet 73 shows the pattern clearly. Each quatrain offers a different image of the speaker’s age: autumn, then twilight, then a dying fire. The couplet then turns from the speaker to the listener: “This thou perceiv’st, which makes thy love more strong, / To love that well which thou must leave ere long.”
The Key Differences
The two forms differ in four ways, and each difference follows from how the lines are divided.
Structure
The Petrarchan sonnet has two parts, eight lines and six. The Shakespearean sonnet has four, four lines three times and then two. A Petrarchan sonnet tends to move in one large shift; a Shakespearean sonnet moves in smaller steps.
Rhyme
The Petrarchan octave uses only two rhyme sounds across eight lines, so each sound must be found four times. The whole poem uses four or five sounds. The Shakespearean sonnet uses seven, and never needs any sound more than twice. Our guide to the Shakespearean sonnet rhyme scheme covers the English pattern in full.
The Turn
In a Petrarchan sonnet, the turn comes at line 9, where the octave gives way to the sestet. In a Shakespearean sonnet, it can come at line 9, in the couplet, or in both places. Many of Shakespeare’s sonnets keep the Italian turn at line 9 and add a second, sharper one at line 13.
The Ending
A Petrarchan sonnet ends with the last lines of the sestet, which usually continue the response rather than sum it up, so the ending tends to feel open or reflective. A Shakespearean sonnet ends with a rhyming couplet, set apart by its own new rhyme, so the ending tends to feel decisive, like the last line of an argument or the punch line of a joke.
Why English Poets Changed the Form
The English sonnet exists because English has far fewer rhymes than Italian.
Italian words end in a small number of vowel sounds, so finding four words that rhyme is easy. In English it is much harder, and a Petrarchan octave that needs four rhymes on each of two sounds can force a poet into awkward or predictable word choices.
Sir Thomas Wyatt brought the sonnet into English in the 1520s and 1530s, translating and imitating Petrarch. He kept the Italian octave but often ended with a rhyming couplet. Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, went further in the 1540s, creating the ABAB CDCD EFEF GG pattern, in which no sound needs to be found more than twice. By the time Shakespeare wrote his sonnets in the 1590s and 1600s, Surrey’s pattern was the standard English form, and Shakespeare’s 154 sonnets made it so completely his own that it now carries his name.
Petrarchan Conventions, and How Shakespeare Mocked Them
“Petrarchan” describes not only a structure but a style of love poetry, and Shakespeare borrowed the one while making fun of the other.
Petrarch’s poems to Laura set the pattern for centuries of love sonnets. The beloved is beautiful, distant, and usually unattainable. The lover suffers, burning and freezing at once. And the lady’s beauty is praised part by part in lavish comparisons: eyes like the sun, lips like coral, cheeks like roses, hair like golden wire. By the 1590s, English sonnet sequences were full of these conventions, and they had become clichés.
Shakespeare’s Sonnet 130 takes them apart one by one: “My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun; / Coral is far more red than her lips’ red.” Line after line denies the standard comparisons, until the couplet insists that his love is as rare as any woman “belied with false compare.” The poem is written in the English form and aimed squarely at the Petrarchan style.
More broadly, Shakespeare’s sequence reverses the tradition. Most of his love sonnets are addressed not to an idealized lady but to a young man, and the woman of the later sonnets is dark, sexually available, and unfaithful, the opposite of Laura. Our guide to the Dark Lady sonnets looks at that reversal.
When Shakespeare Uses a Petrarchan Turn
Although he never wrote in the Petrarchan rhyme scheme, Shakespeare often builds his sonnets around the Petrarchan turn at line 9.
In Sonnet 29, the first eight lines describe the speaker’s misery, outcast and envious of everyone around him. Line 9 turns: “Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising, / Haply I think on thee.” From there the poem rises, and the couplet confirms the change. The rhyme scheme is English, but the argument has the two-part shape of an Italian sonnet, with the couplet added as a final seal.
This combination is one reason Shakespeare’s sonnets feel so flexible. He can use the quatrains to build in steps, the line 9 turn to change direction, and the couplet to close, sometimes all in one poem.
How to Tell Them Apart
Three quick checks will identify almost any sonnet.
First, look at the rhymes in the first four lines. If lines 1 and 4 rhyme, and lines 2 and 3 rhyme (ABBA), the sonnet is probably Petrarchan. If lines 1 and 3 rhyme, and lines 2 and 4 rhyme (ABAB), it is probably Shakespearean.
Second, look at the last two lines. If they rhyme with each other and with nothing else, the sonnet ends in a Shakespearean couplet. If they rhyme with lines earlier in the sestet, it is probably Petrarchan.
Third, count the rhyme sounds. Four or five points to Petrarchan; seven points to Shakespearean. A sonnet that looks Shakespearean but carries rhymes over from one quatrain to the next, ABAB BCBC CDCD EE, is a third form, the Spenserian sonnet, named after Edmund Spenser.
Common Questions
The questions readers ask most often about the two forms, answered briefly.
What Is the Main Difference Between a Shakespearean and a Petrarchan Sonnet?
The structure. A Petrarchan sonnet has an eight-line octave and a six-line sestet. A Shakespearean sonnet has three four-line quatrains and a two-line couplet.
Which Came First, the Petrarchan or the Shakespearean Sonnet?
The Petrarchan sonnet, by centuries. It developed in Italy in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and the English form was created in the sixteenth.
Why Is It Called a Petrarchan Sonnet?
After Petrarch, the fourteenth-century Italian poet whose sonnets to Laura made the form famous. He did not invent it; it was first used in Sicily a century earlier.
Did Shakespeare Write Petrarchan Sonnets?
Not in the Petrarchan rhyme scheme. All of his standard sonnets use the English pattern, though many of them turn at line 9, as a Petrarchan sonnet does.
Where Is the Volta in Each Type of Sonnet?
In a Petrarchan sonnet, at line 9, where the sestet begins. In a Shakespearean sonnet, at line 9, at line 13 where the couplet begins, or both.
Related Reading
Three pages that take the comparison further.