Editing Shakespeare's sonnets (section)

===Form and structure of the sonnets===
[[File:William Shakespeare - Sonnet XXX - Rapenburg 30, Leiden.JPG|thumb|[[Sonnet 30]] as a [[Wall poems in Leiden|wall poem in Leiden]] ]]
The sonnets are almost all constructed using three [[quatrains]] (four-line [[stanzas]]) followed by a final [[couplet]]. The sonnets are composed in [[iambic pentameter]], the [[poetic meter|metre]] used in Shakespeare's plays.

The [[rhyme]] scheme is ABAB CDCD EFEF GG. Sonnets using this scheme are known as Shakespearean sonnets, or English sonnets, or Elizabethan sonnets. Often, at the end of the third quatrain occurs the ''volta'' ("turn"), where the mood of the poem shifts, and the poet expresses a turn of thought.<ref>{{cite web|title=Glossary of Poetic Terms|url=https://www.poetryfoundation.org/learn/glossary-terms/volta|website=Poetry Foundation|access-date=12 February 2018}}</ref>

The exceptions are sonnets [[Sonnet 99|99]], [[Sonnet 126|126]], and [[Sonnet 145|145]]. Number 99 has fifteen lines. Number 126 consists of six couplets, and two blank lines marked with italic brackets; 145 is in [[iambic tetrameter]]s, not pentameters. In one other variation on the standard structure, found for example in [[sonnet 29]], the rhyme scheme is changed by repeating the second (B) rhyme of quatrain one as the second (F) rhyme of quatrain three.

Apart from rhyme, and considering only the arrangement of ideas, and the placement of the volta, a number of sonnets maintain the two-part organization of the Italian sonnet. In that case the term "octave" and "sestet" are commonly used to refer to the sonnet's first eight lines followed by the remaining six lines. There are other line-groupings as well, as Shakespeare finds inventive ways with the content of the fourteen-line poems.<ref>Vendler, Helen. ''The Art of Shakespeare's Sonnets''.  Harvard University Press, 1999. {{ISBN|978-0674637122}} p. 50</ref>