A Shakespearean sonnet is divided into __ quatrains followed by a couplet.

Sonnet:
A lyric poem of fourteen iambic pentameter lines.
It is of three types:
1. Petrarchan
2. Shakespearean and
3. Spenserian.

- The first eight lines of a Petrarchan Sonnet are called octave and the last six lines of it are called the sestet.
- A Shakespearean Sonnet is divided into three quatrains followed by a couplet. The concluding couplet is often used as a comment on the preceding lines.
- The Spenserian sonnet is named after Edmund Spenser who developed a different rhyme scheme for his sonnet. Like a Shakespearean sonnet, it consists of three quatrains followed by a couplet but the rhyme scheme differs from that of Shakespearean.

Source: An ABC of English Literature - Dr M Mofizar Rahman