Shakespeare's Rhyme Scheme

William Shakespeare’s “Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore” is an English sonnet about the nature of time, in which Shakespeare both follows and deviates from the traditional sonnet form. Reading the poem with this in mind gives the poem an additional dimension, bringing the reader to consider why this has been done, and how it impacts the poem’s meaning. Shakespeare has modeled the external structure of the poem to coincide with this message that time is a destructive force whose wrath is unavoidable, and this is evident upon examination of his use of a consistent rhyme scheme, his employment of occasional trochees and spondees, and his adherence to the structure of three quatrains and a couplet.

This poem follows the traditional rhyme scheme of an English sonnet, which achieves the effect of the continuous passage of time. Shakespeare rhymes the last word of the first and third lines, as well as the last word of the second and fourth lines, using different rhymes in each quatrain and the final couplet. One main idea of this poem is that time is a linear force, consistently moving forward, and Shakespeare’s use of an “ABAB CDCD EFEF GG” rhyme scheme mirrors this concept flawlessly. The rhyme scheme helps the poem to maintain a continuous progression, with each rhyming word “changing places with that which goes before,” exactly like Shakespeare describes the behaviour of minutes (3). Just as Shakespeare feels that nothing can escape the wrath of time, nothing can escape this rhyme scheme; Shakespeare follows it strictly, helping to prove his point.

While Shakespeare’s use of trochees and spondees is not so strict, it also helps to illustrate Shakespeare’s message by mirroring the crashing attac...

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...just as Shakespeare has both followed the traditional form of an English sonnet and deviated from it, he has also both stayed true to and strayed from his original opinion on time. Therefore, the external structure of the poem supports his perspective in both specific instances, as illustrated earlier, and in the big picture. Above all, the reader comes away with the message that sometimes there are things in life that cannot be altered, like certain aspects of the external form of this poem, but other times, seemingly invincible things can be conquered, whether it is time, or the structure of a traditional English sonnet.

Bibliography

Shakespeare, William. “Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore.” Norton Introduction to

Literature. Ed. Alison Booth and Kelly J. Mays. Portable 10th ed. New York: W. W. Norton,

2006. 604. Print.