This poetic form, called “blank verse,” has the advantage of freeing poets from the burden of rephrasing thoughts so that they rhyme and was held by some to be the purest approximation of natural human speech. In some sonnets, this turn comes in the final couplet, such as in William Shakespeare’s Sonnet 130, “My Mistress’ Eyes Are Nothing Like the Sun.” Elizabethan sonnets also appear in the drama of the time, such as at the beginning of “Romeo and Juliet.” Blank VerseĪlthough iambic pentameter had been used in English poetry since the Middle Ages, the Earl of Surrey used it in a new way in his translation of Virgil’s “Aeneid”: He left the lines unrhymed. The first eight lines are called the “octet” and the final six lines are the “sestet.” Elizabethan sonnets often feature a turn, or “volta,” between the octet and sestet, where the material introduced in the octet is seen from a different perspective in the sestet. The lines rhyme using a scheme: abab cdcd efef gg. Elizabethan sonnets are written in iambic pentameter and consist of 14 lines, often divided into three quatrains and a couplet. Thomas Wyatt, a court poet for Henry VIII, introduced the Italian sonnet to England, but Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, reworked it into its typical English form. Perhaps the best-known innovation of Elizabethan poetry is the Elizabethan, or English, sonnet.