as a rimed poem in iambic pentameter,
containing fourteen lines, divided into the octave of eight lines and
the sextet of six.

The sonnet originated in southern Europe, and reached its highest stage
of development in the hands of the great Italian poet Petrarch, who
lived some two centuries before Shakespeare. As written by him it was
characterized by a complicated rime scheme,[5] {65} which gave each one
of these short poems an atmosphere of unusual elegance and polish.

Sonnets were often written in groups on a single theme. These were
called sonnet sequences. Each separate poem was like a single facet of
a diamond, illuminating the subject from a new point of view.

In the hands of Petrarch and other great writers of his own and later
times, the sonnet became one of the most popular forms of verse in
Europe. Such popularity for any particular type of literature never
arises without a reason. The aim of the sonnet is to embody one single
idea or emotion, one deep thought or wave of strong feeling, to
concentrate the reader's whole mind on this one central idea, and to
clinch it at the end by some epigrammatic phrase which will fasten it
firmly in the reader's memory. For instance, in Milton's sonnet _On
his Blindness_, the central idea is the glory of patience; and the last
line drives this main idea home in words so pithily adapted that they
have become almost proverbial.

During the sixteenth century, rich young Englishmen were in the habit
of traveling in Italy for education and general culture. They brought
home with them a great deal that they saw in this brilliant and highly
educated country; and among other things they imported into England the
Italian habit of writing sonnets. The first men who composed sonnets
in English after the Italian models were two young noblemen, Sir Thomas
Wyatt and the Earl of Surrey, who wrote just before Shakespeare was
born. Their work called out a crowd of imitators; and in a few years
the writing of sonnets became the fashion.

{66}

As a young man, Shakespeare found himself among a crowd of authors,
with whom sonnetteering was a literary craze; and it is not surprising
that he should follow the fashion. Most of these were probably
composed about 1594, when the poet was thirty years old; but in regard
to this there is some uncertainty. A few were certainly later. They
were not printed in a complete volume until 1609;[6] and then they were
issued by a piratic