THE SONNETS BY William Shakespeare

Shakespeare's sonnets are very different from Shakespeare's plays, but they do contain dramatic elements and an overall sense of story. Each of the poems deals with a highly personal theme, and each can be taken on its own or in relation to the poems around it. The sonnets have the feel of autobiographical poems, but we don't know whether they deal with real events or not, because no one knows enough about Shakespeare's life to say whether or not they deal with real events and feelings, so we tend to refer to the voice of the sonnets as. “the speaker" as though he were a dramatic creation like Hamlet or King Lear.

There are certainly a number of intriguing continuities throughout the poems. The first 126 of the sonnets seem to be addressed to an unnamed young nobleman, whom the speaker loves very much; the rest of the poems (except for the last two, which seem generally unconnected to the rest of the sequence) seem to be addressed to a mysterious woman, whom the speaker loves, hates, and lusts for simultaneously. The two addressees of the sonnets are usually referred to as the "young man" and the "dark lady". Within the two mini-sequences, there are a number of other discernible elements of "plot": the speaker urges the young man to have children; he is forced to endure a separation from him; he competes with a rival poet for the young man's patronage and affection. At two points in the sequence, it seems that the young man and the dark lady are actually lovers themselves--a state of affairs with which the speaker is none too happy.

Themes

Shakespeare's dominant theme is the power of Time. Time is depicted as the great destroyer. "Devouring time" is the theme used by Ovid. Shakespeare personifies time and his attitude to time is one of hatred. All things in this world, including youth and beauty are subject to the destructive power of time. But Shakespeare believes that his sonnets are more powerful than Time as the sonnets would preserve his friend's youth and beauty.

Lyricism

Shakespeare's sonnets are an amalgam of the lyrical and the dramatic. Music is one of the indispensable qualities of a lyric. The use of rhyme in the quatrains and in the final couplet contributes to the musical effect of these sonnets. To add to the lyrical effect is the appropriateness of words and phrases employed by Shakespeare.

The intensity of the emotion lends a lyrical charm to the sonnet. The eloquence and the metaphorical use of language adds to the lyrical quality of the sonnet. In sonnet 18 Shakespeare glorifies and idealizes the beauty of his friend. The poet believes that the eternal verse will make his friend eternal. In this sonnet the imagery, the emotion, the music, the melancholy and the personal element, all combine to make of it one of Shakespeare's most exquisite lyrics. The mingling of lyricism and the general truths of human existence is one of the most marvelous achievements. The subjectivity enhances the lyrical character of sonnets that deals with the dark lady. Shakespeare grows most lyrical in the last two sonnets of the sequence.        ,

Imagery

The abundance of imagery is one of the most conspicuous features of Shakespeare's sonnets. The principal features of Shakespeare's imagery are variety, vividness, realism and brevity. The imagery is relevant to the theme and are closely interwoven with the theme. There is an enormous variety in Shakespeare's imagery. Sonnet 7 opens with lines containing a picture of sunrise; and it is one of the finest pictures in the sonnets of a natural phenomenon. Sonnet 19 presents vivid pictures. Time is regarded as a lion equipped with paws and having the power to devour everything on earth and fanciful picture of the mythical bird called "phoenix" burning itself at the end of its long life of five hundred years. All the images have been clothed in metaphorical language. The aesthetic value of the words used also contributes to the beauty of the imagery. A series of vivid and forceful pictures can be seen in Sonnet 65 and 66. The pictures in Sonnet 144 are abstract and suggestive rather than concrete and vivid.

Symbolism

A substantial use of symbolism can be seen in Shakespeare's sonnets. According to G. Wilson Knight the use of symbols by Shakespeare in his sonnets makes the sonnet throb and vibrate with a greater vitality, and imparts to them greater vigour and appeal. Rose as a symbol is used in Sonnet 109, 67 and 95. In Sonnet 109 the rose symbolizes truth and the true rose of the beauty of Shakespeare's friend is contrasted with the false beautifications of society (Sonnet 67). The beauty of Shakespeare's friend encloses his sins as the rose may hide a canker (Sonnet 95). Another dominant symbol is that of kingship. In Sonnet 26 Shakespeare addressed his friend as "lord of my love." In several sonnets, Shakespeare implies that his love having been accepted by his friend, he himself has become royal too. Gems and pearls are used as symbols. In Sonnet 131 dark lady is "the fairest and the most precious jewel." Sonnet 27 describes the image of Shakespeare's friend as a jewel that hangs before Shakespeare's soul at might. In sonnets of Shakespeare we find a substantial use of symbolism. The use of a symbol is an indirect method of conveying an idea which can literally also be expressed or stated.

Historical Mysteries

Of all the questions surrounding Shakespeare's life, the sonnets are perhaps the most intriguing. At the time of their publication in 1609 (after having been written most likely in the 1590's and shown only to a small circle of literary admirers), they were dedicated to a "Mr. W.H," who is described as the "onlie begetter" of the poems. Like those of the young man and the dark lady, the identity of this Mr. W.H. remains an alluring mystery. Because he is described as "begetting" the sonnets, and because the young man seems to be the speaker's financial patron, some people have speculated that the young man is Mr. W.H. If his initials were reversed, he might even be Henry Wriothesley, the Earl of Southampton, who has often been linked to Shakespeare in theories of his history. But all of this is simply speculation: ultimately, the circumstances surrounding the sonnets, their cast of characters and their relations to Shakespeare himself, are destined to remain a mystery.

                                           

                                            SONNET 1

From fairest creatures we desire increase, That thereby beauty's rose might never die, But as the riper should by time decease, His tender heir might bear his memory: But thou, contracted to thine own bright eyes, Feed'st thy light'st flame with self-substantial fuel, Making a famine where abundance lies, Thyself thy foe, to thy sweet self too cruel. Thou that art now the world's fresh ornament And only herald to the gaudy spring, Within thine own bud buriest thy content And, tender churl, makest waste in niggarding. Pity the world, or else this glutton be, To eat the world's due, by the grave and thee.

The first sonnet takes it as a given that "From fairest creatures we desire increase"-that is, that we desire beautiful creatures to multiply, in order to preserve their "beauty's rose" for the world. That way, when the parent dies ("as the riper should by time decease"), the child might continue its beauty ("His tender heir might bear his memory"). In the second quatrain, the speaker chides the young man fie loves for being too self-absorbed to think of procreation: he is "contracted" to his own "bright eyes," and feeds his light with the fuel of his own loveliness. The speaker says that this makes the young man his own unwitting enemy, for it makes "a famine where abundance lies," and hoards all the young man's beauty for himself. In the third quatrain, he argues that the young man may now be beautiful-he is "the world's fresh ornament / and only herald to the gaudy spring"-but that, in time, his beauty will fade, and he will bury his "content" within his flower's own bud (that is, he will not pass his beauty on; it will wither with him). In the couplet, the speaker asks the young man to "pity the world" and reproduce, or else be a glutton -who   like the grave, eats the beauty he owes to the Whole Word.

The first sonnet introduces many of the themes that will define the sequence- passage of human life in time. Change his ways and obey the moral premise, because otherwise his beauty will wither and disappear; and the couplet summarizes the argument with a new exhortation to "pity the world" and father a child. Some of the metaphors and images in the poem, however, are quite complex. The image of the young man contracted to his own bright eyes, feeding his "light's flame" with "self-substantial fuel," for instance, is an extremely intricate image of self-absorption.

SONNET 14

Not from the stars do I my judgment pluck; And yet me thinks I have astronomy, But not to tell of good or evil luck, Of plagues, of dearths, or seasons' quality; Nor can I fortune to brief minutes tell, Pointing to each his thunder, rain and wind, Or say with princes if it shall go well, By oft predict that I in heaven find: But from thine eyes my knowledge I derive, And, constant stars, in them I read such art As truth and beauty shall together thrive, If from thyself to store thou wouldst convert; Or else of thee this I prognosticate: Thy end is truth's and beauty's doom and date.

In Sonnet 14 the poet first reveals that it is not through science (astronomy), or his own judgment, or personal experience that he obtains his knowledge about life and love - all that he knows comes simply and only from his lover. ("But from thin eyes my knowledge I derive"). And the primary lesson the poet learns from his lover's eyes is that, if his lover refuses to focus on creating a child to carry on his (or her) lineage, all the ideals embodied by his lover will cease to exist. This is yet another variation on Shakespeare's theme of the necessity of procreation that dominates the early sonnets. 

SONNET 18

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate: Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, And summer's lease hath all too short a date: Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines, And often is his gold complexion dimm'd; And every fair from fair sometime declines, By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd; But thy eternal summer shall not fade Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest; Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade, When in eternal lines to time thou growest: So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

The speaker opens the poem with a question addressed to the beloved: "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?" The next eleven lines are devoted to such a comparison. In line 2, the speaker stipulates what mainly differentiates the young man from the summer's day: he is "lovelier and more temperate." Summer's days tend toward extremes: they are shaken by "rough winds"; in them, the sun ("the eye of heaven") often shines "too hot," or too dim. And summer is fleeting: its date is too short, and it leads to the withering of autumn, as "every fair from fair sometime declines." The final quatrain of the sonnet tells how the beloved differs from the summer in that respect: his beauty will last forever ("Thy eternal summer shall not fade...") and never die. In the couplet, the speaker explains how the beloved's beauty will accomplish this feat, and not perish because it is preserved in the poem, which will last forever; it will live "as long as men can breathe or eyes can see."

This sonnet is certainly the most famous in the sequence of Shakespeare's sonnets; it may be the most famous lyric poem in English.

On the surface, the poem is simply a statement of praise about the beauty of the beloved; summer tends to unpleasant extremes of windiness and heat, but the beloved is always mild and temperate. Summer is incidentally personified as the "eye of heaven" with its "gold complexion"; the imagery throughout is simple and unaffected, with the "darling buds of May" giving way to the "eternal summer", which the speaker promises the beloved. The language, too, is comparatively unadorned for the sonnets; it is not heavy with alliteration or assonance, and nearly every line is its own self-contained clause-almost every line ends with some punctuation, which effects a pause.

An important theme of the sonnet (as it is an important theme throughout much of the sequence) is the power of the speaker's poem to defy time and last forever, carrying the beauty of the beloved down to future generations. The beloved's "eternal summer" shall not fade precisely because it is embodied in the sonnet: "So long as men can breathe or eyes can see," the speaker writes in the couplet, "So long lives this, and this gives life to thee."

SONNET 19

Devouring Time, blunt thou the lion's paws, And make the earth devour her own sweet brood; Pluck the keen teeth from the fierce tiger's jaws, And burn the long-lived phoenix in her blood; Make glad and sorry seasons as thou fleets, And do whate'er thou wilt, swift-footed Time, To the wide world and all her fading sweets; But I forbid thee one most heinous crime: 0, carve not with thy hours my love's fair brow, Nor draw no lines there with thine antique pen; Him in thy course untainted do allow For beauty's pattern to succeeding men. Yet, do thy worst, old Time: despite thy wrong, My love shall in my verse ever live young.

The theme, as with so many of the early sonnets, is the ravages of Time. Shakespeare expresses his intense fear of Time primarily in the sonnets that involve his male lover, and his worries seem to disappear in the later sonnets that are dedicated to his 'dark lady'. Specifically, the poet is mortified by the thought of his lover showing physical signs of aging. There is no doubt that his relationship with his male lover is one built upon lust - more so than his relationship with his mistress, which is based on love and mutual understanding.

SONNET 29

When, in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes, I all alone beweep my outcast state And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries And look upon myself and curse my fate, Wishing me like to one more rich in hope, Featured like him, like him with friends possess'd, Desiring this man's art and that man's scope, With what I most enjoy contented least; Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising, Haply I think on thee, and then my state, Like to the lark at break of day arising From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate; For thy sweet love remember'd such wealth brings That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

Sonnet 29 shows us the poet at his most insecure and troubled. He feels himself unlucky, disgraced, and jealous of those around him. What is causing the poet's anguish one can only guess, but an examination of the circumstances surrounding his life at the time he wrote sonnet 29 could help us to understand his depression. In 1592, the London theaters closed due to a severe outbreak of the plague. Although it is possible that Shakespeare toured the outlying areas of London with acting companies like Pembroke's Men or Lord Strange's Men, it seems more likely that he left the theater entirely during this time, possibly to work on his non-dramatic poetry. The closing of the playhouses made it hard for Shakespeare and other actors of the day to earn a living. With plague and poverty threatening his life, it is only natural that he felt "in disgrace with fortune". Moreover, in 1592 there came a scathing attack on Shakespeare by dramatist Robert Greene, who wrote in a deathbed diary: "There is an upstart crow, beautified with our feathers, that with his Tygers heart wrapt in a Players hide supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blank verse as the best of you; and, being an absolute Johannes Factotum, is in his own conceit the only Shake-scene in a country." Shakespeare was deeply disturbed by this assault, feeling disgraced in "men's eyes" as well as fortune's.

The poet is so forlorn that even the passion for his profession as an actor seems to have died. But the sonnet ends with a positive affirmation that all is not lost - that the poet's dear friend can compensate for the grief he feels.                          

                                                      SONNET 30

When to the sessions of sweet silent thought I summon up remembrance of things past, I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought, And with old woes new wail my dear time's waste: Then can I drown an eye, unused to flow, For precious friends hid in death's dateless night, And weep afresh love's long since cancell'd woe, And moan the expense of many a vanish'd sight: Then can I grieve at grievances foregone, And heavily from woe to woe tell o'er The sad account of fore-bemoaned moan, Which I new pay as if not paid before. But if the while I think on thee, dear friend, All losses are restored and sorrows end.

Sonnet 30 is a tribute to the poet's friend -- and likely his lover -- whom many believe to be the Eairl of Southampton. Sonnet 29 proclaims that the young man is the poet's redeemer and this theme continues in the above sonnet. The poet's sorrowful recollections of dead friends are sparked by the lover's absence and can be quelled only by thoughts of his lover, illustrating the poet's dependence on his dear friend for spiritual and emotional support. This sonnet is based on the metaphor of court sessions. In this sonnet the poet summons his memories of past. Words like 'dates,' 'accounts,' 'cancel,' 'pay,' 'losses,' 'restored'-clearly suits the court sessions. The poet thinks about his dear dead friends and fee\s very sad, miserable and moans for them again. Long forgotten sorrow wells up again and he shed tears and is almost at: the point of dejection. Suddenly in his sad heart flashed the thought of his dear friend 'W. H.' and his grief disappears and is restored to peace. According to G. Wilson Knight "the whole sonnet is given to the poet's summoning up of remembrance of his past." According to critics it is not an inspired sonnet. It is a labored one.

MILTON'S LYCIDAS

Lycidas is one of the greatest pastoral elegies in the English language. It follows the glorious tradition of Greek elegiac pastoral poetry. Later it became a model for Shelley's 'Adonais' and Matthew Arnold's Thyrsis. European elegiac pastoral poetry begins with the works of the Sicilian poet, Theocritus His 'Elegy on Daphms' describes the beauty, the constancy in love and the ultimate death of a shepherd. Following his model Byron wrote 'Lament for Adonis' and Moschus his 'Elegy on Bion.' The pastoral elegy of these Greek poets was later taken up by Roman poets like Virgil, French poets like Marot and English poets like Spenser. Milton in writing the elegy on the death of his friend Edward King closely followed the conventions set up by the early practitioners. In fact 'Lycidas' embodies more than any other pastoral poem all the multifarious elements of pastoralism.

The invocation of the laurel and muses with which the poem opens fixes it immediately in the pastoral tradition. As pastoralism means shepherd life, the poet imagines himself to be a shepherd and he is mourning for another shepherd. (he poet explains the occasion for writing the poem and depicts his friend as dead before his prime. It is the sudden untimely end of a precious spirit that calls for Doric lays and 'oaten pipes.' Another important feature of the pastoral elegy is the practice of presenting a procession of mourners. In 'Lycidas' the principal mourners are three: the pastoral landscape with its shepherds representing poetry, the spirit of the river Cam representing scholarship and St. Peter representing religion. Again, in the pastoral tradition the poet reproaches the gods for not saving the dead man from disaster. The nymphs of the sea had not come to his rescue. But then the poet realizes that they could nave done nothing to avert the calamity. It was an ill-fated ship, built in an eclipse and tragedy was inevitable.

         Milton also employs the pastoral practice of depicting Nature as sharing the grief of the human world. The woods and hills, the caves and rivers are described as mourning for Lycidas. This convention of pathetic fallacy goes back to Theocritus and Bion. Again in the manner of these Sicilian pastoral poets Milton gives a list of flowers that are to be offered in honour of the dead-the rathe primrose, the pale gessamine, the glowing violet, the well-attired woodbine and a host of other summer flowers "to strew the laureate Herse where Lycid lies."

The famous digression in 'Lycidas' on Fame and the corrupt clergy are also in line with the pastoral tradition. Reflections on fickle Fame are natural in a poem whose theme is death. The attack on the corrupt clergy is also nothing new. Satire of the clergy was a recognized feature of Renaissance pastoral poetry. As Edward King had intended to take holy orders St. Peter's tirade against the corrupt church is in place. Digressions of this nature are part of pastoral tradition and Milton make effective use of them in this poem.                                                            •

The conclusion of the poem is also in the general pastoral tradition. The note of grief and loss gives way to the note of reconciliation, resignation and even rapture at the end. In a fine blending of pagan and Christian beliefs, Milton claims that Lycidas is not dead. He is in heaven keeping the company of saints and angels and acting as the guardian spirit of the Irish sea. He is like the sun that rises every morning in celestial glory. Lycidas has passed through the portals of death to the joys of an everlasting life.

It is worth recalling Dr. Johnson's famous criticism of the pastoral machinery of the poem. His main complaint is that 'Lycidas' is destitute of genuine feeling for "passion runs not after remote allusions and obscure opinions .... Where there is leisure for fiction there is little grief," It is indeed. Unfair criticism. Dr. Johnson is applying here the tests of prose to poetry. Milton wrote at a time when pastoral poetry was much in favour. Milton actually followed tradition in 'Lycidas." In spite of Dr. Johnson's criticism, the poem has received almost universal praise through ages. Mark Pattison, a famous critic, says that 'Lycidas' is the high watermark of English poetry and its full enjoyment a final fruit of literary culture.

A VALEDICTION: FORBIDDING MOURNING BY JOHN DONNE

Summary

The speaker explains that he is forced to spend time apart from his lover, but before he leaves, he tells her that their farewell should not be the occasion for mourning and sorrow. In the same way that virtuous men die mildly and without complaint, he says, so they should leave without "tear- floods" and "sigh-tempests," for to publicly announce their feelings in such a way would profane their love. The speaker says that when the earth moves, it brings "harms and fears," but when the spheres experience "trepidation," though the impact is greater, it is also innocent. The love of "dull sublunary lovers" cannot survive separation, but it removes that which constitutes the love itself; but the love he shares with his beloved is so refined and "Inter-assured of the mind" that they need not worry about missing "eyes, lips, and hands."

Though he must go, their souls are still one, and, therefore, they are not enduring a breach, they are experiencing an "expansion"; in the same way that gold can be stretched by beating it "to aery thinness," the soul they share will simply stretch to take in all the space between them. If their souls are separate, he says, they are like the feet of a compass: His lover's soul is the fixed foot in the center, and his is the foot that moves around it. The firmness of the center foot makes the circle that the outer foot draws perfect: "Thy firmness makes my circle just, / And makes me end, where I begun."

Commentary

"A Valediction: forbidding Mourning" is one of Donne's most famous and simplest poems and also probably his most direct statement of his ideal of spiritual love. For all his erotic carnality in poems, such as "The Flea," Donne professed a devotion to a kind of spiritual love that transcended the merely physical. Here, anticipating a physical separation from his beloved, he invokes the nature of that spiritual love to ward off the "tear-floods" and "sigh-tempests" that might otherwise attend on their farewell. The poem is essentially a sequence of metaphors and comparisons, each describing a way of looking at their separation that will help them to avoid the mourning forbidden by the poem's title.

First, the speaker says that their farewell should be as mild as the uncomplaining deaths of virtuous men, for to weep would be "profanation of our joys." Next, the speaker compares harmful "Moving of the earth" to innocent "trepidation of the spheres," equating the first with "dull sublunary lovers' love" and the second with their love, "Inter-assured of the mind." Like the rumbling earth, the dull sublunary (sublunary meaning literally beneath the moon and also subject to the moon) (overs are all physical, unable to experience separation without losing the sensation that comprises and sustains their love. But the spiritual lovers "Care less, eyes, lips, and hands to miss," because, like the trepidation (vibration) of the spheres (the concentric globes that surrounded the earth in ancient astronomy), their love is not wholly physical. Also, like the trepidation of the spheres, their movement will not have the harmful consequences of an earthquake.

         The speaker then declares that, since the lovers' two souls are one, his departure will simply expand the area of their unified soul, rather than cause a rift between them. If, however, their souls are "two'' instead of "one", they are as the feet of a drafter's compass, connected, with the center foot fixing the orbit of the outer foot and helping it to describe a perfect circle. The compass (the instrument used for drawing circles) is one of Donne's most famous metaphors, and it is the perfect image to encapsulate the values of Donne's spiritual love, which is balanced, symmetrical, intellectual, serious, and beautiful in its polished simplicity.

Like many of Donne's love poems (including "The Sun Rising" and "The Canonization"), "A Valediction: forbidding Mourning" creates a dichotomy between the common love of the everyday world -and the uncommon love of the speaker. Here, the speaker claims that to tell "the laity," or the common people, of his love would be to profane its sacred nature, and he is clearly contemptuous of the dull sublunary love of other lovers. The effect of this dichotomy is to create a kind of emotional aristocracy that is similar in form to the political aristocracy with which Donne has had painfully bad luck throughout his life and which he commented upon in poems, such as "The Canonization" This emotional aristocracy is similar in form to the political one but utterly opposed to it in spirit. Few in number are the emotional aristocrats who have access to the spiritual love of the spheres and the compass; throughout all of Donne's writing, the membership of this elite never includes more than the speaker and his lover--or at the most, the speaker, his lover, and the reader of the poem, who is called upon to sympathize with Donne's romantic plight. 

THE FLEA BY JOHN DONNE

Summary

The speaker tells his beloved to look at the flea before them and to note "how little" is that thing that she denies him. For the flea, he says, has sucked first his blood, then her blood, so that now, inside the flea, they are mingled; and that mingling cannot be called "sin, or shame, or loss of maidenhead." The flea has joined them together in a way that, "alas, is more than we would do."

As his beloved moves to kill the flea, the speaker stays her hand, asking her to spare the three lives in the flea: his life, her life, and the flea's own life. In the flea, he says, where their blood is mingled, they are almost married-no, more than married-and the flea is their marriage bed and marriage temple mixed into one. Though their parents grudge their romance and though she will not make love to him, they are nevertheless united and cloistered in the living walls of the flea. She is apt to kill him, he says, but he asks that she not kill herself by killing the flea that contains her blood; he says that to kill the flea would be sacrilege, "three sins in killing three."

"Cruel and sudden," the speaker calls his lover, who has now killed the flea, "purpling" her fingernail with the "blood of innocence." The speaker asks his lover what the flea's sin was, other than having sucked from each of them a drop of blood. He says that his lover replies that neither of them is less noble for having killed the flea. It is true, he says, and it is this very fact that proves that her fears are false: If she were to sleep with him ("yield to me"), she would lose no more honor than she lost when she killed the flea.

Commentary

This funny little poem again exhibits Donne's metaphysical love-poem mode, his aptitude for turning even the least likely images into elaborate symbols of love and romance. This poem uses the image of a flea that has just bitten the speaker and his beloved to sketch an amusing conflict over whether, the two will engage in premarital sex. The speaker wants to, the beloved does not, and so the speaker, highly clever but grasping at straws, uses the flea, in whose body his blood mingles with his beloved's, to show how innocuous such mingling can be--he reasons that if mingling in the flea is so innocuous, sexual mingling would be equally innocuous, for they are really the same thing. By the second stanza, the speaker is trying to save the flea's life, holding it up as "our marriage bed and marriage temple."

But when the beloved kills the flea despite the speaker's protestations (and probably as a deliberate move to squash his argument, as well), he turns his argument on its head and claims that despite the high-minded and sacred ideals he has just been invoking, killing the flea did not really impugn his beloved's honor-and despite the high-minded and sacred ideals she has invoked in refusing to sleep with him, doing so would not impugn her honor either.

This poem is the cleverest of a long line of sixteenth-century love poems using the flea as an erotic image, a genre derived from an older poem of Ovid. Donne's poise of hinting at the erotic without ever explicitly referring to sex, while at the same time leaving no doubt as to exactly what he means, is as much a source of the poem's humor as the silly image of the flea is; the idea that being bitten by a flea would represent "sin, or shame, or loss of maidenhead" gets the point across with a neat conciseness and clarity that Donne's later religious lyrics never attained.

JOURNALISM AND THE ESSAY (18th Century)

The essay (meaning, according to Montaigne, 'an attempt') originated as a repository of casual ideas on men and matters. To Montaigne it was more a means of thinking aloud, than a literary type. In England it was cultivated by Bacon and the humanists. But as literature became more formalized and academic in the latter half of the 17^th century, its practice gradually passed out of fashion. Later, a combination of circumstances peculiar to England gave a group of humanists the "opportunity of creating it anew. Their work appeared in a detached, fragmentary form like the essays of Montaigne, Bacon or Cowley. But in method and scope it was an achievement of marked originality, and exercised a profound influence of the prose style, and indeed on the civilization of their epoch. In origin, the 18th century Addisonian essay had little in common with the Renaissance essay, but belongs to the history of the daily press. Since the beginning of the Civil War, England had been the home of diurnals and news-sheets. But, thanks to the Licensing Act of 1662, the 17th century produced no serious attempts at journalism. From the time of William's accession, news-sheets and Mercuries began to multiply. In 1690 John Dunton hit on the ingenious idea of publishing the Athenian Gazette, afterwards changed to the Athenian Mercury, a periodical to answer questions; in 1702 the Daily Courant began its long Career till 1735; and in 1704, Daniel Defoe started the publication of The Review.

DANIEL DEFOE

As a pamphleteer Defoe showed great grasp of details and an intuitive foreknowledge of events that characterize great journalists and social writers. Towards the end of the 17th century he published An Essay Upon Projects, proposing various social and economic improvements in England, as well as displaying an insight into the manners and morals of his contemporaries-one of the chief qualifications of an essayist. In his writings Defoe kept harking upon politics and public controversy. Though Defoe's prose is vigorous, fluent and homely, he had not cultivated the subtle persuasiveness of style without which the public does not care to read about its own manners and mannerisms. The same is true of his Review. This remarkable venture into journalism is an admirable attempt to estimate the forces of international politics and to weigh the merits of commercial and ecclesiastical questions at home. But when he turned to the culture and conduct of his age, he created nothing great. The Review is by no means Defoe's only contribution to the progress of social journalism. Some ten years later he was to return to the investigation of city morals and manners, and was then to find highly developed organs of expression and a large appreciative public of readers.

RICHARD STEELE

Richard Steele was a playwright, tractarian and cavalry officer who plunged into journalism and produced a new literary type out of the Mercuries, reviews and gazettes. He was the first venturer to perceive that up till now political essays had been addressed to the wrong public. It was a time when the English monarchy had lost its hold on the nation. At the same time the growth of cdmmerce was giving importance to the middle class. It was an age of domesticity, and literature ceased to draw inspiration from the court. Such tendencies had created for themselves a publicity in the coffee-houses. Thanks to the Londoner's passion for club life, this new type of tavern had multiplied enormously since the Civil War. Every house had its distinctive members who respected each other's opinions and tolerated each other's eccentricities.

The man who opened the eyes of his fellow townsmen to the humours of middle class life was Richard Steele. Steele had the ordinary equipment of an educated man of the period, but contact with life on all its sides had developed in him an unfailing insight into artificiality and a generous admiration of worth. He could appreciate the trivial and serious sides of life in their correct proportion. It was not in his ideas that his genius displayed itself, it was in the way he expressed them. When the Tatter first appeared (April 12, 1709) it was conceived on much the same lines as any previous periodical.  A section was devoted to society news and theatrical criticism, another to poetry, another to literature and yet another to politics, each under the article of a coffee-house.

Ever since Tudor times London had been growing fast, and the constant migration to the capital had created a new need - the need of a standard of city manners of urbanity. Steele used the periodical to supply this want, and gradually evolved a new mouthpiece of public opinion. For a long time he confined himself to destructive criticism. He protested against the impertinences of the newly constructed middle-class society and satirized swindlers, bores, chatterboxes and coxcombs.  

Gradually, Steele's satire began to penetrate more deeply. He was the first English author to discover how far virtue and happiness depend on the intimate relationships of family life. His interest in domesticity led him inevitably to the problems of married life. Steele was one of the first English authors who wrote for women; he was also one of the first who put into prose the new ideal of feminine perfection. There are moments when he looked beyond the accomplishments of social life and caught glimpses of the morbid tendencies which the restraints of civilization sometimes aggravate. One can remember in this regard his studies of 'inferiority complex', megalomania and envy. As was to be expected of a humanist, Tatler discovered some of the purest gems of human nature hidden in obscure lives.

JOSEPH ADDISON

Joseph Addison was the presiding genius of the Spectator (March 1, 1711 to Dec 6, 1712). Steele had succeeded in discovering the range and scope of the periodical essay, but Addison realized its artistic possibilities. He knew that it should become a stylized type of literature, and he set himself to a single theme and to deal with familiar things. At the same time the essay must have the charm of novelty. Addison was fully aware of these problems. In the Spectator he excluded politics, religious controversy and pedantry, but he embraced every topic of literary, social or moral interest. He adapted and applied universal wisdom to shed light on questions of current interest, and he peopled his pages with types and characters to illustrate his pronouncements. Unlike the Tatler, he dwelt more insistently on the moral purpose of his paper; and each issue of the Spectator contained a single thought, every creation distinct from its neighbour, though all bearing a strong family likeness. But it is in the tone and attitude of the Spectator that its originality and merit will be found. If it staged the familiar scenes of city life, it showed them the scenes from the viewpoint of a humanist. The new periodical shut its eyes to all distinctions accept that of vice and virtue, and employed no criterion but that of common sense.

The Spectator purported to be conducted by a small club, including Sir Roger de Coverley, who represents the country gentry, Sir Andrew Freeport, Captain Sentry, and Will Honeycomb, representing respectively commerce, the army and the town. Mr. Spectator himself, who writes the papers, is a man of travel and learning, who frequents London as an observer, but keeps clear of political strife. The obpct of the papers was 'to enliven morality with wit, and to temper wit with morality'.

Addison taught his age restraint, good manners, good sense, forbearance and mutual esteem. He pointed out that drama was decaying under the influence of French scenery and stage effects. He recalled literary men to the spirit and simplicity of old ballads, and social thinkers to the rising importance of commerce. He encouraged self-culture by contending that English readers could find in Paradise Lost as high a standard of excellence as was consecrated by the Iliad and the Aeneid.

 Addison's Satire

Unlike Dryden, Pope and the Tatler in its earlier numbers, Addison never satirized persons, but ridiculed customs and prejudices. His method was to collect as many examples as possible of some prevailing absurdity, gravely crowd them all into one illustration and then leave the reader to laugh at the incongruous result. In this way he ridiculed the staging of the opera, headdresses which make the wearers hideous, men who fill their letters with French military terms, and a number of other issues. Never has more wit and accurate knowledge with less venom been employed on the censure of folly.

Addison and Steele: a comparison

Steele did not have Addison's gift of drawing a moral, or his scholarly knowledge of current topics, or] his polished style. But Steele had the playwright's eye for situations and for the interplay of characters. He had by nature a surer gift of reading the human heart, and by experience a keener insight into city life. Steele went deeper when he discussed education and insisted that the true place where young people are made or marred is home. He gave the middle class their standard of good manners and warned them of the darker vices of city life.

OTHER PERIODICALS

Both Tatler and Spectator provoked many rivals and enemies. Some of them were Female Tatler, The Inquisitor, Free Thinker, Plain Dealer, Medley and Rambler (the last by Dr.Johnson).

JONATHAN SWIFT

Of the papers that were most influenced by the new journalism, the most important was The Examiner. Swift found that he had much in common with both Addison and Steele, and with something of their spirit but with more power he attacked imposters in the person of John Partridge. His immortal pamphlet Predictions for the year 1708, made famous the name of Issac Bickerstaff, which Steele was glad to adopt in the Tatler, as a symbol of good sense and sincerity. Swift made several suggestions for the Tatler, and contributed at least 5 papers; but soon his mood became too saturnine (gloomy) and savage for the witty and humane creation of his two friends. Swift's almost inhuman indictment of life could find expression only in books and pamphlets which compromise nobody but the author. 20th century criticism has stressed Swift's sanity, vigour and satirical inventiveness rather than his alleged misanthropy.

THE GUARDIAN

After the Spectator ceased publication, both Addison and Steele busied themselves with the stage, but neither could throw off the habit of social journalism. In 1713 Steele brought out The Guardian to deal with society, and detail the privacies of life and character. Later Addison joined in. The Chief interest of the Guardian will be found in the renewed interest it created in the art of essay writing. But very few contributors survived the tide of time for the reason that they were put off by the apparent informality of the work. An art which sets the writer off into self-revelation requires from him a certain temperament. Because it enters so many houses and coffee-houses so frequently, it must have something common to all its readers. It must be tolerant, universal, reactionary, free from anything sectarian, polemic, controversial. Hence some of the talents which produced brilliant pamphlets spelt sheer disqualification for essay-writing. Pope, for instance, contributed to the Guardian-his subtle wit and graceful colloquial style is undeniable, but his thoughts were charged with too much venom. Of the other contributors, George Berkeley is perhaps most significant.

RESTORATION COMEDY

With the re-establishment of monarchy in England, in 1660, the theatres were reopened and there was an upsurge of dramatic activity. One of the characteristic genres of the period was Restoration comedy, the high point of the comedy of manners. Its predominant tone was witty, cynical and amoral. The plays were mainly in prose, with passages of verse for the most romantic moments; the plots were complex, characterized by intrigues, and were usually double or even triple. Wit and sparkle, repartee, and discussions of marital behaviour provide much of the interest, reflecting the fashionable manners of the day. Standard characters include fops, bawds, country squires and promiscuous widows. Respectable citizens avoided the theatres, which they saw as a source of corruption, and the playwrights came under heavy attack for frivolity, blasphemy and immorality, by such critics as Jeremy Collier.

JOHN DRYDEN: Dryden's major plays include-comedies: The Wild Gallant, Secret Love, The Assignation, or Love in a Nunnery, etc, tragi-comedies: The Rival Ladies, The Spanish Fryer, Love Triumphant, tragedies: The Indian Emperor, Tyrannick Love, or Royal Martyr, The Conquest of Granada, Aurangezebe, All of Love or the World Well Lost etc. He also made a new version of Troilus and Cressida.

Except All for Love, Dryden's plays are no true part of his mind, and he knew it. His statement that he had written no others to please himself hits the lack of sincerity of these plays, which is the worst of their many faults. Dryden wrote down to a debauched and frivolous audience, which looked in tragedy, not for human action or genuine passion, but for the rhetorical discussion of politics and love; while in comedy, no imbroglio could satisfy it unless covered with the slime of indecency.

The tragedies have many speeches of powerful rhetoric. Another strong point in them is the construction of the plot. The actions, however, are often monstrous and revolting and the events are improbable in themselves. In Shakespeare's world of imagination, these improbabilities are at home, but in Dryden's works imagination is supplanted by reason, with the result that the events and their settings are hopelessly at variance.

WILLIAM WYCHERLEY: Wycherley's major plays are Love in a Wood, The Gentleman Dancing - Master, The Country Wife and The Plain Dealer. Wycherley must not be classed with Etherege and Sidley as a mere depicter of the merry life of the time without comment or criticism. In The Country Wife, for instance, there are sardonic comparisons and a moral standard that various actions and ideas are held up for reprobation or contempt. In The Plain Dealer these traits are accentuated with energy almost fierce in its intensity. It may however be said of Wycherley that he portrays too warmly the vice that he castigates. Though not brilliant and refined as Etherege's polished dialogue, the speech of his characters is direct, terse and far more life-like. Wycherley's satire is of characters rather than abstractions. He had a keen sense of characterization as well.

THOMAS OTWAY: Otway appears to have been weak, affectionate, impulsive and utterly lacking in moral courage. His life was embittered by an unrequited passion for the tragedienne Mrs. Barry, his letters to whom show a great depth of feeling. His plays include The Orphan, The Atheist and Venice Preserv'd, of which the last is his masterpiece. His plays are full of tenderness. In expression he is simple, terse and almost without ornament.

NATHANIEL LEE: Lee was of a wild, impetuous nature with an underlying strain of madness. His plays are typically heroic, written for the stage, and full of show and rhetoric. The extravagance of metaphor in many of his speeches often passes the bounds of sense and reason. Nevertheless, that his plays were immensely effective on the stage is amply proven by theatrical history.

MRS. APHRA BEHN: Mrs. Behn's plays include The Rover, Sir Patient-Fancy, The City Heiress, etc - all comedies. Her novels are The Fair Jilt, Oroonoko, The History of The Nun, etc. She had also written poetry and translations from French. Mrs. Behn was the first professional woman writer in England. Her comedies have acquired a reputation for gross indelicacy, but are no worse in that respect than the drama of her contemporaries. Her novels have always been more popular than her plays. Her masterpiece is Oroonoko or The Royal Slave. Much of her work is marred by the haste with which she wrote.

WILLIAM CONGREVE: Congreve's major comedies are The Old Bachelor, The Double Dealer, Love for Love, and The Way of the World. He also wrote one tragedy - The Mourning Bride. In 1698 Jeremy Collier published his Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage. Congreve felt the blow deeply. (His answer, Amendments of Mr. Collier's False and Imperfect Citations, contains much excellent reasoning against Collier's petulance) Collier attacked Dryden, Wycherley, Congreve, Vanbrugh, D'Urfey and Otway, complaining particularly of indecency in stage dialogue and mockery of the clergy. The work created a great impact, Congreve and D'Urfey were prosecuted and Betterton and Mrs. Bracegirdle (actors) were fined. Although Restoration Comedy continued to flourish in the works of Congreve, Vanbrugh and Farquhar, its days were numbered.

Congreve was a dramatist of genius. In his plays there are many passages of deep feeling; the action never drags, the speeches are full of life. The Way of the World glitters with a frozen brilliance It was the fault of Congreve's age perhaps that he could not break from the restrictions of artificial comedy into broader scenes of life and a wider outlook which we can see in Vanbrugh, inferior as he is in wit and technique. However Congreve was, without doubt, the wittiest of Restoration playwrights.

SIR JOHN VANBRUGH: Vanbrugh’s comedies are characterized by a breadth of humour and a raciness of treatment. The Relapse, or Virtue in Danger, The Provok’d Wife, The Confederacy etc. are his major works. Vanbrugh had vigor, an audacity and often a dashing disregard for probability which carried him triumphantly through situations that in another writer might well provoke censure. Though in The Relapse the Dramatist is extremely careless of technique; it still is a masterly comedy.

GEORGE FARQUHAR: Farquhar was extraordinarily diffident and this may have greatly obscured his natural talents. His comedies – Love in a Bottle, The Constant Couple, etc – show recklessness and easy morals, tempered with careless good nature. Unlike other Restoration dramatists, he occasionally had a conscience and decorum.

GEORGE ETHEREGE: Etherege’s witty, licentious comedies include The Comical Revenge; or, Love in a Tub (1664) and She Wou’d If She Cou’d (1668). These set the tone of the Restoration comedy of manners that Congreve was to continue. His last play, The Man of Mode (1676), is famous for its creation of the great fop, Sir Fopling Flutter.

THOMAS SHADWELL: Shadwell’s plays, written in the tradition of Jonson’s comedy of humours, are distinguished for their realistic pictures of London life and for their frank and witty dialogue. They include The Sullen Lovers (1668), Epsom Wells (1672), and The Squire of Alsatia (1688). His devotion to Jonson instigated his feud with Dryden, whom he succeeded as poet laureate in 1689. Shadwell attacked Dryden in The Medal of John Bayes (1682) and was himself lampooned in Dryden’s Absalom and Achitophel and Mac Flecknoe.

MILTON’S GRAND STYLE

Sublimity of thought and grandeur of style mark Milton’s verse, where matter, meaning and melody blend harmoniously together. Milton is vexed with rhyme and advocates the free use of epic verse (blank verse) so that he may explore all possibilities of poetic expression. He considered rhyme to be an invention of a barbarous age and no necessary adjunct or ornament to a poem. Milton improved upon the blank verse used by Shakespeare and his followers: he added latinisms, inversions, periphrases, and other paraphernalia. Critics do not take the same view of this innovative blank verse. Blank verse is known for its concentration and flexibility, and Milton deprived it of these qualities. But those readers who value the ceremonical aloofness of epic verse hold that these sacrifices were worthwhile. Miltonic epic verse, cannot even be compared to dramatic blank verse – the former is heroic and used for achieving a grandeur and loftiness that suited Milton’s themes.

Milton’s verse is highly stylized, effortlessly perfected by a mastermind. It is written in magnificent, majestic language and its sound and gait are unparalleled in English poetry. The management of sound and stress creates a sonorous effect. In spite of the many latinisms and allusions, Milton’s verse is strikingly simple and beautiful. The poet is never obscure in his lines; he is always lucid. Milton often varies his style to relieve the reader from monotony. C.S. Lewis said of his style that “it is a grand great stream upon which we are embarked.” Milton’s similes impress the readers intellectually, aesthetically and physically – they are not only appropriate to the situations but also open up a new world of myths, fables and classical allusions. Miltonic similes, though classical, are very original and different. Here the vehicle of course resembles the tenor, but the simile does not stop there. Many more points of interest are quickly and successively brought in, creating a rich matrix of comparisons. Sound, meaning, thought and feeling get integrated. These similes are also digressive and echo mythology as well as a great tradition of literature which the epic falls back upon. Pope said rightly of his style: “what oft was thought but never so well expressed”. It can probably be argued that Milton’s Grand Style does not suit lighter themes. But Milton was a man of solemn thought and there is not one line that he has written in the lighter vein. All his works deal with serious themes in a classical manner. They are carefully calculated to produce a mighty impression upon the ear, mind and imagination of men of scholarship. That they did superbly well, and they shall continue so in the days to come.

JOHN MILTON

In his youth (as seen in his Latin epistle to Diodati – Epitaphium Damonis) Milton was a gentle and sociable youth, a lover of music, dancing, women, plays and country pleasures; at the same time studious, religious, high-minded and modest, a man of Protestant views. His early works include L’Allegro and IlPenseroso, Arcades, Comus and Lycidas. The first two of these offer a quintessence of English life, and the contrast in these 2 poems is that of 2 moods. Under one influence a man seeks light-hearted mirth. He delights in the cheerful sights and sounds of the morning, in the hay time and the harvest, in the simple feasts of the country folk. If he has left the country for the town, his pleasure is in pomps and pageants, in sumptuous weddings, in comedies and masques. Under the other influence he loves the quietude of the country, the trim garden in the repose of evening, the study of astronomy and philosophy, the sterner side of poetry the more religious notes of music. Arcades and Comus (a masque presented at Ludlow Castle) were set to music by Henry Lawes. Appearing after the publication of Prynne’s Histriomastix (a Puritan work attacking stage plays) they show that Milton did not share the extreme Puritan view that drama is evil in itself. Not the use of the dramatic form but its misuse was the evil. Comus is Milton’s first exercise in blank verse. Lycidas is a pastoral elegy on the death of Edward King. In this poem Milton refers to the myths of the ancient world, the teachings of Christianity and the political and ecclesiastical problems of Milton’s own time. Milton’s sonnets are in the Petrarchan form, 5 of them being written in Latin. Many of the sonnets serve as outlets to the deep poetic feeling which only awaited leisure for the making of a great work. Milton returned to poetry in the last phase of his career. The epic poem Paradise lost, originally in 10 books and subsequently rearranged in 12, was, first printed in 1667. Summary of the poem

Bk I - The poet states his theme (the Fall of Man through Disobedience) and his aim (to justify the ways of God to men). The defeated archangel Satan and Beelzebub are seen to be in the burning lake of hell. Satan convenes a council and his palace Pandemonium is built.

Bk II - The Council debates over the means of revenge. Beelzebub announces the creation of earth and man. Satan undertakes to visit earth alone.

Bk III - Milton invokes celestial light to illumine the darkness of his eyes. God is described and his success as well as the fall of man through free will is foretold. The Son of God offers himself as a ransom and is exalted as the Saviour. Satan alights on earth.

Bk IV - Satan overhears the conversation of Adam and Eve about the Forbidden tree of Knowledge and resolves to tempt them.

Bk V - Eve has a dream of temptation inspired by Satan. Raphael, sent by God, warns Adam about the temptation. Raphael’s narration about Satan’s rebellion.

Bk VI - Raphael’s narration.

Bk VII - Raphael’s narration ends with the creation of the earth and man.

Bk VIII - Adam talks of his life in Eden, the creation of Eve, etc.

Bk IX - Satan tempts in the body of a serpent, Eve brings Adam to the Forbidden fruit; Adam, recognizing that she is doomed, resolves to perish with her; they eat the fruit, lose innocence.

Bk X - Adam and Eve confess before the Son of God.

Bk XI - Michael relates to them their future—the death of Abel, Flood, the New Covenant.

Bk XII – Michael narrates the rest of the O.T. and the corrupt state of the Church until the Second Coming.

In Paradise Lost Milton tried to do away with the fictitious element which he saw in the great epics of Greece. He could not foresee an age to which the story of Adam would appear a mere myth. But this resolve deprived his own work of freshness and diverted him from the evergreen themes of the passions and purposes of man. The verse of Paradise Lost shows a spontaneous ease and is the natural product of previous thought. Paradise Lost was first designed as a drama and it still has a strong dramatic element, especially in the characterization of Satan. Dryden, as well as later critics, have said that Satan is the hero of the poem.

As yielding to the temptation had brought the Fall of Man, so in Paradise Regained Milton presents the foiling of temptation as the cause of man’s restoration. In the earlier work there is unity, but not simplicity. Milton’s taste, growing ever simpler, preferred Paradise Regained, because its theme has unity as well as simplicity. But the later work is far below in greatness and is a mere repetition of the theme of eternal conflict between good and evil.

For Samson Agonistes, published along with Paradise Regained, Milton took a hero whose physical affliction was the same as his own. Though a closet drama modelled on Greek tragedy, critics have claimed that its spirit is more Hebraic (or Christian) than Hellenic. As a writer, Milton’s towering stature was recognized early. Although appreciated as a master of polemical prose as well as of subtle lyric harmony, his reputation rests largely on Paradise Lost, which Dryden described as “one of the greatest, most noble and sublime poems which either this age or nation has produced”. Poets and critics of the 18th century were profoundly influenced by Milton’s use of blank verse and his treatment of the Sublime. But even then there were murmurs of dissent from Dr. Johnson, Addison, Bentley and others. Blake, in his The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, commented that Milton was “the Devil’s party without knowing it”. Shelley regarded Satan as the real hero of the poem. In the 20th century, T.S. Eliot was a strong critic of Milton.