The word “sonnet” comes from the Occitan word sonet and the Italian word sonetto, both meaning “little song” or “little sound.” William Shakespeare wrote 154 sonnets, not including those that appear in his plays, like the two households and holy palmer’s sonnets from Romeo and Juliet.
A Shakespearean sonnet consists of 14 lines. Each line has ten syllables written in iambic pentameter:
da DUM da DUM da DUM da DUM da DUM
two HOUSE holds BOTH a LIKE in DIG ni TY
The rhyme scheme in a Shakespearean sonnet is a-b-a-b, c-d-c-d, e-f-e-f, g-g; the last two lines are a rhyming couplet.
Here is the text to the two households prologue of Romeo and Juliet, written in sonnet form:
Two households, both alike in dignity
(In fair Verona, where we lay our scene),
From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,
Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.
From forth the fatal loins of these two foes
A pair of star-crossed lovers take their life;
Whose misadventured piteous overthrows
Doth with their death bury their parents’strife.
The fearful passage of their death-marked love
And the continuance of their parents’ rage,
Which, but their children’s end, naught could remove,
Is now the two hours’ traffic of our stage;
The which, if you with patient ears attend,
What here shall miss, our toil shall strive to mend.
You can read more Shakespeare sonnets here.