The Canzonetta or Canzonet and Canzonetta Prime are variations of the Canzone with a more definitive frame. It is a 16th century Italian secular composition often with pastoral, irreverent, or erotic themes.
The Canzonetta or Canzonet is:
• at least 2 octaves, made up of 2 quatrains of alternating rhyme.
• written with no fixed meter or line length.
• composed with a refrain, repeated in L8 of each octave.
• rhymed, ababcdcD, efefgdgD.
• is called a Canzonetta Prime when the rhyme scheme is ababcbcB dbdbebeB. In this rhyme scheme there is often a repeated rhyme word to strengthen the repetition, but it is not required.
Pasted from http://www.poetrymagnumopus.com/index.php?showtopic=1159
My thanks to Judi Van Gorder for years of work on this fine PMO resource.
My example
You Look a Mess (Canzonetta Prime)
If you should choose to go out shopping
while wearing curlers in your hair
or sporting flip-lops that are flopping
Why should anybody care?
Appearance is not cause for dramas
even in the public square.
Although those look like mom’s pajamas
apparently you do not care.
The curlers surely have a cause;
for whom is it that you prepare?
What if you met you own in-laws
or little children you might scare?
With due concern for other folk,
at least you should don leisure wear.
Your disrepair looks like a joke
apparently you do not care.
© Lawrencealot – November 20, 2012
Visual template
