Verse Example: Quartet

A quatrain is a stanza made up of four verses. It has the same structure as the serventesio, but the quatrain It consists of verses of minor art, generally octasyllables. Like the serventesio, the rhyme also has the ABAB scheme.

The quatrain began to be used during the 16th century, the time of the Spanish Golden Age and the Baroque period for dialogues in plays. Lope de Vega recommended its use especially for love dialogues.

In the quatrain properly said, the verses are consonants. The quatrain assonance or quatrain tirana is the quatrain formed with assonance verses.

It should not be confused with the redondilla, which has the same metric, but with an embraced rhyme (abba). Nor should it be confused with the quartet, which is made up of hendecasyllable verses.

Example of a quatrain stanza:

Burning my eyelashes
Looking for a strange verse
Words, spin, spiders,
Wow! How expensive effort.

But well there is already
To understand the concept
Of the quatrain that you will find
On the example page.

Hendecasyllable quartet,

Quartet of eight syllables,
The one, great verse, long,
The other, short and sung.

Redondilla is his sister,
Very twin in verse and stanza,
More sounds in embraced rhyme,
And not alternate like the other.

In the eyes of a maja
My whole soul surrendered
More with my bed of straw,
What fortune was I offering?