This document compares the Petrarchan sonnet and the Elizabethan sonnet. It notes that while both are 14 lines long in iambic pentameter, the Petrarchan sonnet is divided into an octave using an ABBA ABBA rhyme scheme and a sestet using a CDCDCD or CDECDE rhyme scheme. The Elizabethan sonnet instead has a 3 quatrain ABAB CDCD EFEF structure followed by a rhyming couplet. The Petrarchan focuses on presenting a problem in the octave and resolving it in the sestet, while the Elizabethan explores different aspects of a theme across its quatrains, resolving the argument in the coup