Shakespeare's Non-Shakespearean Sonnets

Abstract

M Y TITLE IS AMBIGUOUS, PERHAPS EVEN MISLEADING, since what I am about to discuss has nothing to do with questions of authorship. Instead I shall be considering how rhyme schemes function within sonnets that I am willing to believe William Shakespeare wrote. ambiguity of my title is not accidental, however. To the extent that it leads anyone to think that what follows will be a discussion of authorship, it illustrates the hold upon us of the deeply embedded consensus that declares that every by Shakespeare rhymes abab cdcd efef gg, thereby conforming to the rhyme scheme of an sonnet. One measure of the power of that consensus is that it permeates the terminology that precedes and shapes our acts of analysis and thus to a large extent determines their outcomes. We routinely use the terms English sonnet and Shakespearean sonnet interchangeably-as in the following excerpt from the foreword to the sonnets provided in one of the most widely used editions of works: The sonnets are written throughout in the 'Shakespearean' or form, abab cdcd efef gg.1 A terminology that uses English sonnet and Shakespearean sonnet as virtual synonyms makes it difficult to pose the question of whether a by Shakespeare has a rhyme scheme that is not Shakespearean, that is not abab cdcd efef gg. A second measure of the power exerted by the consensus is that commentators whose acuity is justifiably much admired embrace and thus reinforce the idea of a uniform rhyme scheme for all of sonnets. Edward Hubler, for example, says of Shakespeare's form: Its fourteen lines were divided into three quatrains and a concluding couplet. . . . There are seven rimes: abab cdcd efef gg.2 C. L. Barber observes that Shakespeare never varies from three quatrains followed by a couplet, abab, cdcd, efef, gg. . ..3 Note Barber's use of never, which Stephen Booth tempers only slightly when he points out, in his acclaimed edition of Sonnets: All but three of the 154 poems in Q[uarto] consist of fourteen pentameter lines-three quatrains and a couplet-and rhymed abab, cdcd, efef, gg. .. .4 three exceptions that Booth gives are 99 (fifteen lines), 126 (six couplets), and 145