What is a Sonnet? Sonnets are poems of 14 lines done in an iambic pentameter style. There are three main styles of sonnet:

Shakespearian
Italian
Spencerian

The style popularized by Shakespeare has this rhyming scheme:

abab cdcd efef gg

The Italian is based on the works of Petrarch, who wrote in the fourteenth century. It uses the following scheme:

abbaabba cdecde (or cdcdcd)

Edmund Spencer popularized the final style of sonnet with this rhyme:

abab bcbc cdcd ee

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