Reading a Shakespearean Sonnet

A Shakespearean sonnet has fourteen lines in iambic pentameter, rhymed ABAB CDCD EFEF GG. Watch for the 'volta' — the turn — often at line 9 or the closing couplet. It's the moment the argument shifts. In Sonnet 130 ('My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun'), Shakespeare spends twelve lines cataloguing his lover's imperfections. The couplet turns: she is nonetheless as rare as any woman falsely compared.