Sir Thomas Wyatt and Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey
The oft overlooked godfathers of the English Sonnet.
Thomas Wyatt
1503-1542
A drawn portrait of Thomas Wyatt by Hans Holbein.
Henry Howard
1516-1547
A painted portrait of Henry Howard by an unknown artist.
Thomas Wyatt and Henry Howard were good friends.
The English sonnet came from the Italian sonnet, also known as the Petrarchen sonnet. They adapted Petrarch's sonnet by designating 14 lines of iambic pentameter. In the original Petrarchen sonnets, the rhyme sceme followed an ABBA ABBA CDE CDE scheme rather than a ABAB CDCD EFEF GG scheme. 4 and 5
