Although the famous stanza-form which he invented in his "Faerie Queene"
has found many imitators, his sonnet innovations are practically
unimportant.

The Shakespearean sonnet, on the contrary, must be regarded as a
well-established variant from the stricter Italian form. Though
Shakespeare's name has made it famous, it did not originate with him.
Surrey and Daniel had habitually employed it, and in fact it had come to
be recognized as the accepted English form. Its characteristic feature,
as the following sonnet from Shakespeare will show, was a division into
three distinct quatrains, each with alternating rimes, and closed by a
couplet. The transition of thought at the ninth line is usually
observed:--

"When, in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself, and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possess'd,
Desiring this man's art and that man's scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee--and then my state,
Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate;
For thy sweet love remember'd such wealth brings,
That then I scorn to change my state with kings."

It is Milton's merit that he rescued the sonnet from the snare of verbal