Dover Beach

“Dover Beach” is not a traditional sonnet, but the poem is having a conversation with the sonnet form. “The sonnet,” as Paul Fussell explains, “is a fourteen-line poem [typically written] in iambic pentameter: the rhyme scheme and the mode of logical organization implied by it determine the type” (Fussell, Paul. Poetic Meter and Poetic Form. Random House, 1967, p. 119). The first stanza of “Dover Beach” is 14 lines and six of those lines are iambic pentameter.

There are two well-known types of the sonnet: Italian (also known as Petrarchan) and English (also known as Shakespearean). Italian poets invented the sonnet form. In an Italian sonnet, the first eight lines always rhyme abbaabba, then the rhyme-scheme of the remaining six lines can vary slightly, but these lines typically rhyme cdecde. English poets, however, had difficulty using the Italian rhyme-scheme because fewer words rhyme in English than Italian. Writing eight lines using only two end-sounds was significantly trickier for an English poet than an Italian one, thus the progenitors of the English sonnet changed the rhyme scheme to allow in more sounds. An English sonnet rhymes abab cdcd efef gg. In both cases (English and Italian), however, the poem includes a “turn” where the rhyme-scheme shifts. In an Italian sonnet, the turn happens between Lines 8 and 9; in an English sonnet, between Lines 12 and 13.

The first 14-line stanza of “Dover Beach” is followed by a six-line stanza and then an eight-line stanza. Stanza 3 (six lines total) and Stanza 4 (eight lines total) suggest an Italian sonnet inverted, literally turned on its head. The rhymes of the first three stanzas, however, have more in common with an English sonnet than an Italian one. These rhymes seem slapdash—they tend to alternate (as the first 12 lines of an English sonnet do) more than they resemble the rhyme-scheme of an Italian sonnet.

The rhyme-scheme of the final stanza, however, is markedly Italian. The opening eight lines of an Italian sonnet follow the rhyme-scheme abbaabba, and Arnold’s final nine-line stanza is very similar to this pattern: oppoaqqaa. There is only one inconsistency—Italian sonnets don’t end on rhyming couplets, but Arnold’s final stanza ends aa. English sonnets, on the other hand, do end on rhyming couplets; prior to the closing couplet, however, English sonnets rhyme ababcdcdefef. Thus, though the final stanza follows a fixed rhyme-scheme, this scheme is a confused muddle of an Italian sonnet and an English sonnet.

It’s as if Arnold took two types of a sonnet (Italian and English), mashed them together like two balls of dough, and kneaded them until it was impossible to tell where one stopped and the other began. “Dover Beach” is a contradictory mix of Italian and English. Nonetheless, the sonnet form is distinctly present.

Early sonnets of both the Italian and English variety were love poems—Petrarch wrote Italian sonnets of love and devotion to Laura, and William Shakespeare wrote English sonnets of love and devotion to a fair boy and a dark lady. After the Renaissance, however, poets quickly began to use the sonnet to treat other subjects. John Donne wrote “Holy Sonnets” addressed to God, and William Wordsworth wrote a sonnet addressed to John Milton that scolded English people for being crude and morally bankrupt.

Like the sonnet form itself, “Dover Beach” begins as a love poem but quickly turns into a very different type of poem.

Finally, Arnold’s 1867 collection New Poems, where he first published “Dover Beach,” includes a section with 14 traditional sonnets, suggesting that Arnold was thinking about the sonnet form (Arnold, Matthew. New Poems. Google Books).

On its most basic level, a metaphor is a comparison of A to B. According to The Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms, metaphor is

[t]he most important and widespread figure of speech, in which one thing, idea, or action is referred to by a word or expression normally denoting another thing, idea, or action, so as to suggest some common quality shared by the two (“Metaphor.” The Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms, edited by Chris Baldick, 4th ed., Oxford University Press, 2015, p. 221).

A mixed metaphor is a combination of two or more metaphors that don’t really make sense together because they don’t really share any common qualities. In the third stanza of “Dover Beach,” Arnold compares religious faith to both a sea (Lines 21-22, 25) and a girdle (Lines 23, 28). That’s a mixed metaphor, because large bodies of water and girdles don’t really have much in common. Confused though it is, this mixed metaphor fits with the content of the poem, which is all about modern life being mixed up.