Introduction to the Sonnet VI: Enjambment

One of the most basic questions in a sonnet - and indeed in any poetry written in verse - is how to end a line. By this I do not mean how to end a line metrically - the meter tells you that - but whether the line break should correspond to a break in the internal rhythm or sense of the poem. If the line break does correspond with such a natural break, the line is referred to as "end-stopped;" if it does not, the line is "enjambed," and the poet is said to be using "enjambment."

To illustrate the difference, let me use two of Shakespeare's sonnets. Sonnet 130 is almost entirely end-stopped; sonnet 116 uses a lot of enjambment. We will look at both, and I will attempt to show how the two different styles affect the poems.

Sonnet 130
My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun.
Coral is far more red than her lips' red.
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hair be wires, black wires grow from her head.
I have seen roses, damasked, red, and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks,
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound;
I grant I never saw a goddess go;
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground.
And yet by heaven I think my love as fair
As any she belied with false compare.

Sonnet 116
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
That alters when it alteration finds
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! It is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out, even to the edge of doom.
If this be error, and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

One thing that's clear from these examples (or at least, from my assertion that these examples have some value as examples) is that end-stopping is common in sonnets; even sonnet 116 has a lot of end-stopped lines. And it is common, especially in English sonnets, and particularly (as we see a lot of in sonnet 116) at the end of the quatrains and even in the middle of them. It is particularly common to see an alternation of end-stopping and enjambment, where the even lines are end-stopped but the odd lines are enjambed.

Looking more specifically at these poems, though, we can see the way end-stopping allows sonnet 130 to build up a series of propositions: all but two of the lines (the lines ending with delight and know) are end-stopped, and each line or pair of lines in the case of enjambment is a separate section of the build-up. This orderly erection of line upon line allows for the swift (enjambed) turn at the end to have its maximum effect; if such a massive edifice had not been provided, the turn would be much less effective. The end-stopping contributes by allowing each line to seem like its own separate entity, emphasizing the sheer number of points; if they were more enjambed, they would flow together more into a single mass and not separate out. Their separation makes them seem larger, as they add up more massively. Obviously there is a lot more going on in this poem, and a lot more that can be done with end-stopping, but that seems to me to be a suggestive start.

Sonnet 116, by contrast, is built up in the opposite manner. The lack of impediments to love is indicated by the flow between lines allowed by the enjambment; even the later lines, where every other line is end-stopped, give a sense of continuity and unity not really present in sonnet 130. I suggest that this effect is due to enjambment; by making the lines run into each other in sense, the line breaks are in some sense eradicated and made to seem more artificial than they otherwise might; this in turn creates a sense in which the poem as a whole, and the meaning of the poem as a whole, become paramount over the meaning of individual lines. That effect in turn contributes to the singularity of the "this" in the final couplet: the first twelve lines are indeed a unity. It is not "these," as might be said about the series of end-stopped propositions in sonnet 130, that must be true or false, but "this:" the single, holistic suggestion of the previous part of the poem. That unity is heightened by the flow permitted by the enjambment. Just as with end-stopping and sonnet 130, there is much more that can be done with this poem and this technique; but again, this should be suggestive of the ground available to work in.

The choice to end-stop or enjamb is of course mixed in with the rhythm of the poem and the diction; certain words and certain sentence structures are easier to enjamb or end-stop, as the case may be. But the overall effect of a series or pattern of end-stopping or enjambment should not be overlooked. Nor should certain conventions; traditionally, the eighth line of an octave in an Italian sonnet, and the twelfth line of an English sonnet are end-stopped, to allow the turn in the succeeding line to start fresh, and often, as noted above, the even lines are end-stopped and the odd lines enjambed. But each of these conventions existed just as much to be violated with a purpose; an enjambed octave-into-sestet or quatrain-into-couplet can be extremely effective, and other rhyme schemes entirely can have different implications in the interplay between rhyme and enjambment. Enjambment is simply another register on which the poetry of a sonnet can play itself out, to join with meter, rhyme, and diction.