Sonnet comes from the Italian word “sonetto,” which means little song. Strictly speaking, sonnets have 14 lines and follow a highly structed rhyme scheme and meter. Early Italian or Petrarchan sonnets feature an octave (eight lines with the rhyme scheme ABBAABBA) and a sestet (six lines with the rhyme scheme CDECDE or CDCDCD). In the Renaissance, the English sonnet (also called the Shakespearean sonnet) usually followed the structural form of three quatrains, or three sets of four lines with the rhyme scheme ABABCDCDEFEF, and a concluding couplet, or two lines that rhyme (GG). The major difference is the presence or absence of the concluding couplet, and where the volta, or turn, of the poem occurs.

Spenser uses elements from both Italian and English sonnets. The structure of three quatrains and a concluding couplet found in English sonnets appears in Spenser’s sonnets. However, his rhyme scheme, ABABBCBCCDCDEE, was “a compromise between Italian and English patterns” (Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics 1320). This is a more demanding rhyme scheme than the Shakespearean form because it includes fewer rhyme sounds (more words rhyme in Italian than English).