ABSTRACT
Variations of the form come into existence through a desire to explore legitimate possibilities and to provide genuine extensions of its capabilities. Variations of this kind seem to work best in sequences where they can be made to express some point, or break up the progression of regular sonnets. Of structural variants, the most radical have been condensed and expanded sonnets. The expanded sonnet can more easily retain the functional parts of its original. English sonnets with closed rhyme in the quatrains are common enough, and such schemes as George Barker’s abcdabcdefgefg will be found to work well enough to have been imitated. More irregular rhyme-schemes are only relevant where they have some meaning or point. A sonnet could be written in Latin hexameters but that kind of rhythm is crippling. The flexibilities of the iambic pentameter tradition are more than adequate, given the sonnet’s prosodic structure.
