Alliteration abounds in Shakespeare’s 154 independent sonnets. The sonnets frequently use strong alliteration in the first, fifth, ninth, thirteenth and fourteenth lines to emphasize the division of Shakespearean sonnets into three quatrains and a final couplet, although it can occur anywhere to emphasize ideas and make lines memorable. For instance, Sonnet 12 begins, “When I do count the clock that tells the time,” introducing “C” and “T” alliteration in a regular staccato beat like the ticking of a clock.
Printed with the sonnets, the 329-line poem “A Lover’s Complaint” falls, aptly enough, into the genre of “complaint poems” popular in the early 17th century. Sitting outside, the narrator observes a female speaker bemoaning her loss of virginity to an old man. The poem uses alliteration to evoke the smooth talk that the woman’s erstwhile lover used to persuade her, particularly with “S” sounds. For example, he concludes his bid for her favors with a plea that she will lend “soft audience to my sweet design, / And credent soul to that strong-bonded oath / That shall prefer and undertake my troth.”
Sonnets and songs occur in many of Shakespeare’s plays, and these poems often involve alliteration. “Romeo and Juliet,” for instance, begins with a sonnet that foreshadows the play’s plot, including these lines with “F” and “L” alliteration: “From forth the fatal loins of these two foes / A pair of star-crossed lovers take their life.” In “As You Like It,” Amiens also uses “F” alliteration in the chorus of his song critiquing relationships: “Most friendship is feigning, most loving, mere folly.” The letter "F" is a fricative sound, so the alliteration in both of these examples gives them a hissing quality that is thematically appropriate to the tragedy of "Romeo and Juliet" and to the ironic revision of "friendship" and "loving" in "As You Like It."
Shakespeare also wrote poetry for specific occasions, or “occasional poems,” such as elegies and epitaphs. The brevity of these pieces makes their use of alliteration even more noticeable, and the poetic device makes the poetry highly memorable. His “Verses upon the Stanley Tomb at Tong,” carved on a gravestone, conclude with strong “S” alliteration: “When all to time’s consumption shall be given, / Stanley for whom this stands shall stand in heaven.” And “Upon the King,” which appeared on the frontispiece for an edition of King James I’s works, begins, “Crowns have their compass; length of days, their date; / Triumphs, their tombs; felicity, her fate.”