If you are still paying attention, said teacher or essay may tell you that a Shakespearean sonnet may be broken into quatrains, such that each quatrain should progress the poem in a predictable fashion, to wit, the first quatrain establishes the theme, the second quatrain develops the theme, the third resolves the theme, and the concluding couplet, well, concludes.
And you turn valiantly to the formula provided by a textbook, web site, or well-meaning High School English teacher, that a Shakespearean sonnet is fourteen lines of iambic pentameter, rhymed abab cdcd efef gg.
