Question: What meter is most commonly used by poets writing sonnets in English?

Answer: Iambic pentameter

Question: Petrarchan sonnets begin with a(n)____ and end with a(n)____.

Answer: Octave; seset

Question: Shakespearean sonnets begin with _____ and end with a(n) ____.

Answer: Three quatrains; rhyming couplet

Question: The speaker in Sonnet 18 by Petrarch uses negative words and phrases throughout the sonnet to express the fact that ____.

Answer: He cannot capture his beloved’s beauty in verse

Question: The speaker in Sonnet 28 by Petrarch describes his “wild disordered gestures” and “lover looks” to help convey that ____.

Answer: He is in angush over love

Question: In line 13 of Sonnet 28 by Petrarch, the speaker says, “Where’er I wander, love attends me still.” This is meant that the speaker ____.

Answer: Cannot escape from his misery and lovesickness

Question: When the speaker in Sonnet 30 by William Shakespeare says that he can “drown an eye” he means that he ____.

Answer: Can cry

Question: The speaker in Sonnet 73 by William Shakespeare likens himself to a tree in late autumn, a day in twilight, and the glowing embers of a fire to suggest that he is ____.

Answer: Old and close to death

Question: The mood created by the language of the first two quatrains of Sonnet 29 by William Shakespeare can best be described as ____.

Answer: Sad

Question: How do the speaker’s reference to the “soul” and “ideal Grace” in lines 3 and 4 of Sonnet 43 by Elizabeth Barret Browning affect the way readers view the live between the speaker and her beloved?

Answer: They make readers see their live in spiritual terms