Richard Barnfield appended 20 sonnets to his Cynthia (1595).Zepheria, a collection of 40 sonnets by an unknown poet (1594).Giles Fletcher's Licia (1593, 52 sonnets).Barnabe Barnes's Partenophil and Parthenophe (1593, 104 sonnets).The Tears of Fancie (1593, 60 sonnets formerly attributed to Thomas Watson.William Percy's Sonnets to the fairest Coelia (1593).Thomas Lodge (1593, 40 sonnets to Phillis).Thomas Watson's ΕΚΑΤΟΜΠΑΟΙΑ or Passionate Centurie of Love (1582, 100 semi-sonnets, most of which are of eighteen lines each, but still emulate the general idea of Petrarch, whom Watson had translated into Latin).Anne Lok's (or Lock or Locke) Meditation of a Penitent Sinner (1560, 26 sonnets of a devotional nature based on Psalm 51, the first known sonnet sequence in English).The only notable sonnet sequence during the English Renaissance to be written by a woman) Lady Mary Wroth's Pamphilia to Amphilanthus (1621, 48 sonnets, included in Urania.1609, 154 sonnets to a variety of unnamed people, both male and female) Fulke Greville's Caelica (1633, 109 sonnets).1594, 64 sonnets to Phoebe), later reworkded as Idea (1619, 73 sonnets) Michael Drayton's Idea's Mirror (pubd.This particular sonnet muses on the age-old idea that there is nothing new under the sun. Samuel Daniel's Delia (1592, 50 sonnets) The fourth Shakespearean sonnet on our list also comes from what is known as the Fair Youth Sequence of 1609a sequence of 154 sonnets that chronicles the poet’s expressions of love towards a young man.1594, 88 sonnets and an Epithalamion to Elizabeth Boyle) The first true sonnet sequence in English, written between 15) 1591, 108 sonnets and 11 songs to Penelope Rich. Sir Philip Sidney's Astrophel and Stella (pubd.Thus one could regard the emotions evoked to be as artificial as the conventions with which they are presented.ĭuring the late 16th century and early 17th century a large number of sonnet sequences were written in England. An exception is Edmund Spenser's Amoretti, where the wooing is successful, and the sequence ends with an Epithalamion, a marriage song.Īlthough many sonnet sequences at least pretend to be autobiographical, the genre became a very stylised one, and most sonnet sequences are better approached as attempts to create an erotic persona in which wit and originality plays with the artificiality of the genre. The subject is usually the speaker's unhappy love for a distant beloved, following the courtly love tradition of the troubadours, from whom the genre ultimately derived.

Sonnet sequences are typically closely based on Petrarch, either closely emulating his example or working against it. For the form of individual sonnets, see Sonnet. This article is about sonnet sequences as integrated wholes. The sonnet sequence was a very popular genre during the Renaissance, following the pattern of Petrarch. A sonnet sequence is a group of sonnets thematically unified to create a long work, although generally, unlike the stanza, each sonnet so connected can also be read as a meaningful separate unit.

Famous sonnet sequences