Francesca Garcia
9 - Saint Claudia

Shakespeare produced most of his known work between 1589 and 1613.^{[6][nb 4]} His early plays were primarily comedies and histories, which are regarded as some of the best work ever produced in these genres. He then wrote mainly tragedies until about 1608, including Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth, considered some of the finest works in the English language.^[2] In his last phase, he wrote tragicomedies, also known as romances, and collaborated with other playwrights.
Ralph Onnie Dela Peña
St. Crispin

The term sonnet is derived from the Italian word sonetto (from Old Provençal sonet a little poem, from son song, from Latin sonus a sound). By the thirteenth century it signified a poem of fourteen lines that follows a strict rhyme scheme and specific structure. Conventions associated with the sonnet have evolved over its history. Writers of sonnets are sometimes called "sonneteers", although the term can be used derisively
St Crispin .
- Ralph Onnie Dela Peña

They were traditionally written as love songs for Italians, although a sonnet is a form that can be experimented with.

Another reason the sonnet is so popular among poets is that it has shown a great ability to adapt to different needs and purposes. Sonnets lend themselves to many subjects and themes, such as love, politics, nature, death -- the possibilities are endless. Even the sonnet’s meter and rhyme, which in some ways define the form, have proven to be fair game for poets who favor innovation and experimentation. For instance, George Starbuck's poem "Sonnet in the Shape of a Potted Christmas Tree," while having more than fourteen lines, roughly follows a sonnet's traditional rhyme scheme. 

1585–1649

In his book collecting as in his poetry, William Drummond was conservative and imitative. As reported in Notes of Ben Jonson's Conversations with William Drummond of Hawthornden (1842), Jonson said that Drummond's verses were good, "Save that they smelled too much of the Schools, and were not after the fancie of the time". His collection therefore serves as a guide to what contemporaries of William Shakespeare and Jonson were reading. It also shows how a man of moderate means living in a relatively isolated part of Britain acquired his books. 

The rhyme scheme of a Shakespearean sonnet is ABAB / CDCD / EFEF /GG
Sonnets are written in iambic pentameter, a poetic meter with 10 beats per line made up of alternating unstressed and stressed syllables.
-Rex Gaano, St. Cluadia

John Milton 1608-1674 

English is often referred to as ‘the language of Shakespeare and Milton.’ Milton’s poetry has been seen as the most perfect poetic expression in the English language for four centuries. 

His most famous poem, the epic Paradise Lost is a high point of English epic poetry. Its story has entered into English and European culture to such an extent that the details of our ideas of heaven and hell and paradise, Adam and Eve, Satan and his legions’ war against God, the arch angel Gabriel and all of those Genesis characters and events, come from Milton’s imagining of them in this poem. 

Although so many of our ideas about that story come from Paradise Lost Milton is not read much these days. He is still studied in universities that wish to give their students a grounding in classic English poetry, however. 

Paradise Lost has all the elements of Greek epic poetry, such as extended metaphors; a hero with cosmic significance (Satan); a setting that encompasses the whole world or, in this case, the universe; battle deeds that go beyond normal acts of warfare; the intervention of supernatural beings in the affairs of humans; and language that is suited to the elevated events and the characters of the epic. Itg is this last characteristic that most distances the modern reader from Milton’s poetry. This extract shows how far distant the poetry is from the modern taste: 

Milton was a man of letters, and a civil servant. He was politically active – a pamphleteer – a republican and supporter of Oliver Cromwell. Although by the time of his death Paradise Lost was already being spoken of as the greatest poem in the English language he died poor, as a result of his republican views and anti-monarchist involvement. 
- Mary Bauzon, Saint Crispin