Sonnet 150
# Sonnet 150

Sonnet 150 is one of 154 sonnets written by the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare. It is considered a Dark Lady sonnet, as are all from 127 to 152. Nonetheless 150 is an outlier, and in some ways appears to belong more to the Fair Youth.

## Structure

Sonnet 150 is an English or Shakespearean sonnet. The English sonnet has three quatrains, followed by a final rhyming couplet. It follows the typical rhyme scheme of the form ABAB CDCD EFEF GG and is composed in iambic pentameter, a type of poetic metre based on five pairs of metrically weak/strong syllabic positions. The 12th line exemplifies a regular iambic pentameter:

    / = ictus, a metrically strong syllabic position. × = nonictus.

The 5th line (potentially) begins with a common metrical variant, an initial reversal; and it ends with the rightward movement of the fourth ictus (resulting in a four-position figure, × × / /, sometimes referred to as a minor ionic):

Lines 1, 8, and 11 also potentially have initial reversals, and line 3 has a minor ionic.

The meter demands that line 1's "power" function as one syllable, and "powerful" as two.

