Poetic Voices: Shakespeare, Donne, Marvell, and Milton
Shakespeare’s Sonnets: A Closer Look
Sonnet 18: Beauty’s Eternal Summer
Mood: The speaker begins with admiration, praising the subject’s beauty, but shifts to melancholy as the poem progresses, acknowledging the inevitability of death. Initially, the poem seems to be a love poem, but it quickly turns to despair. The subject is described as fairer than summer, and despite death, their beauty is deemed eternal, like summer that returns each year.
Summary: You, who are ever more beautiful than a summer day, will not die, and your beauty will not disappear. Your beauty will survive in the memory of men through my poem as long as there are men to read it.
Topic: The opposition between mortal, ephemeral nature and immortal art (poetry). The contrast between material nature and the eternal Platonic world of art.
The mortality of nature versus the eternity of art. The poem’s life is linked to the life of human beings. Art’s life is eternal. “Ars longa, vita brevis” – Shakespeare establishes a relative relationship in the duration of art. Poetry will immortalize human beauty as long as there are human readers.
Parts: The first quatrain presents a rhetorical question followed by an affirmation, capturing our attention. In the following six lines, the poet discusses the fragility of summer’s beauty. The summer’s reputation is tarnished. He then re-establishes the equivalence between summer and beauty. Line 9 shifts the focus to the beauty of his beloved. The first two lines introduce the topic. Lines 3 to 8 discuss nature’s mortality, while lines 9 to 12 address the immortality of art. The last two lines add a restriction to that immortality, linking it to the life of human beings.
Sonnet 60: Time’s Relentless March
Mood: Melancholic yet hopeful. The poem reflects on the passage of time, how it destroys beauty and brings us closer to death.
Summary: Our time runs as quickly as waves (1st stanza). We rush from childhood to maturity without stopping (2nd stanza). As time passes, we lose beauty and youth. Time strips away our beauty, revealing our inner self (3rd stanza). Only his poem will survive destruction and keep your beauty alive.
Topic: “Tempus fugit” (time flies) and the immortality of art.
Sonnet 129: The Destructive Power of Lust
Mood: The speaker is furious, motivated by indignation and shame. There’s a sense of perplexity in the middle, culminating in resignation at the end. Fury transitions to perplexity, then to resignation.
Summary: Lust is the source of misery for human beings (1st stanza). Lust is a trap for the individual (2nd stanza). Lust makes the experience ephemeral and unreal (3rd stanza). Yet, nobody knows how to escape lust; it’s inevitable (final couplet and second part).
Topic: The destructiveness and inevitability of lust.
John Donne: Love and Metaphysical Conceits
The Good-Morrow: A New Life in Love
2nd Voice: The speaker addresses the beloved.
Mood: Enthusiastic and hyperbolic.
Summary: All past beauties were mere dreams compared to you (1st stanza). Now we begin a new life, fully conscious, marked by exclusiveness and independence. We exclude the external world, as our world is sufficient (2nd stanza).
This poem is a hyperbolic description of someone in love, rejoicing that their passion is reciprocated. It emphasizes the eternal nature of true love.
Topic: True love (beginning of the poem) marks the beginning of eternal life (end of the poem).
The Sun Rising: Love’s Defiance of Time
2nd Voice: The author addresses the sun.
Mood: Challenging, aggressive, boasting, and patronizing.
Summary: Lovers are exempt from society’s ordinary rules. All power, glory, and beauty are concentrated on the lady’s side. The couple is the only existing thing. Therefore, the sun only needs to warm them.
Topic: Love is absolute.
Parts: 1st, the writer challenges the sun. 2nd, he focuses the world on his bed. 3rd, he asserts that they are the only reality.
Andrew Marvell: Carpe Diem and Courtly Love
To His Coy Mistress: A Plea for Love’s Urgency
2nd Voice:
Mood: Ironic. The speaker hyperbolically exaggerates to the lady. From lines 21 to 32, the mood shifts to pathetic as he discusses life’s brevity. The pathetic tone turns to black humor. His aim is to enjoy the lady’s company. He initially uses the “amour courtois” model, then employs fear to make the lady aware of death’s proximity, urging her to seize the moment.
Summary: Lines 1-21: If we had time, I would seduce/love you according to the amorous code. Lines 22-32: But time is short; I sense death’s approach and fear dying before making love to you. Lines 33-46: So let us take advantage of our youth and seek pleasure before death arrives.
Topic/Parts: Lines 1-20: “Tempus fugit” (time flies). Lines 21-32: Transition to “carpe diem” (seize the day). Lines 33-46: “Carpe diem”.
Biographical Sketches
William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
William Shakespeare was born in Stratford-upon-Avon in 1564. He was likely educated at the King Edward IV Grammar School in Stratford, where he studied Latin, a bit of Greek, and read Roman dramatists. At eighteen, he married Anne Hathaway, and they had two daughters. Between 1585 and 1592, Shakespeare worked as an actor and playwright in London. In 1594, he joined the Lord Chamberlain’s company, the most popular acting troupe at Court. In 1599, Shakespeare and a group from the Chamberlain’s Men formed a syndicate to build and operate the Globe Theatre. While regarded as the foremost dramatist of his time, both he and his contemporaries believed poetry, not playwriting, would bring lasting fame. Shakespeare’s sonnets explore time’s inevitable decay and the immortalization of beauty and love through poetry. He invented thousands of words, often combining or altering Latin, French, and native roots. After 1612, Shakespeare retired from the stage and returned to Stratford. He died on April 23, 1616, and was buried at Stratford Church.
John Donne (1572-1631)
John Donne was born into a Roman Catholic family in London in 1572. He received a strong religious upbringing until he enrolled at the University of Oxford at age 11. After three years at Oxford, he likely transferred to the University of Cambridge for another three years, though he never obtained a degree from either institution. In 1590, he converted to Anglicanism. He then moved to London to study law at Lincoln’s Inn. With a promising legal career ahead, he joined Robert Devereux, the second Earl of Essex, on a naval expedition to Cadiz, Spain. Upon returning in 1598, he became the private secretary for Anne More. Donne and More secretly married in 1601. After being dismissed and briefly imprisoned for his actions, Donne continued to live in London, working as counsel for an anti-Catholic pamphleteer. In 1608, Donne reconciled with his father-in-law after a few attempted suicides. In 1615, he became an Anglican priest and began delivering his now-famous sermons. St. Paul’s Cathedral appointed him Dean in 1621. He died in 1631 from an unknown terminal illness. All of Donne’s renowned works were published posthumously.
Andrew Marvell (1621-1678)
Andrew Marvell was born in Yorkshire in 1621. When Marvell was three, his family moved to Hull. He was educated at Hull Grammar School and matriculated as a Sizar of Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1633. In 1638, Marvell became a Scholar of Trinity College and remained in residence until 1640. He traveled abroad in France, Holland, Switzerland, Spain, and Italy from 1642 to 1646. In 1650, Marvell became the tutor of twelve-year-old Mary Fairfax, daughter of Sir Thomas Fairfax, retired Lord General of the parliamentary forces. To this period likely belong Marvell’s “To His Coy Mistress” and “The Definition of Love.” Marvell befriended John Milton by 1653. Initially a supporter of the King, Marvell became an adherent of Cromwell under the Commonwealth. In the summer of 1657, he tutored Cromwell‘s nephew and ward, William Dutton. In 1657, Marvell was appointed assistant to John Milton, Latin Secretary for the Commonwealth. In 1659, he was elected M.P. for Hull and continued to represent it until his death. During his last twenty years, Marvell engaged in political activities, participating in embassies to Holland and Russia and writing political pamphlets and satires. He died in 1678.
John Milton (1608-1674)
John Milton was born in London. He was initially educated at home by a Scottish Presbyterian tutor. His education continued at St. Paul’s School. In 1625, he entered Christ’s College, Cambridge. While at Cambridge, he wrote elegies and epigrams in Latin, and sonnets in Italian and English, including “On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity” in 1629. He then traveled to France and Italy, where he was welcomed into the neo-Platonic academies of Florence and quickly established his reputation. He visited Rome and Naples. Back in England by 1639, he set up a school, initially teaching his sister’s two young sons, then the sons of friends and noblemen. In 1642, he married Mary Powell, the 17-year-old daughter of a family to whom Milton’s father had lent money. His pamphleteering was highly successful, and he was adept at patiently dismantling his opponents’ arguments, neutralizing their emotive power. He published a volume of his poems in 1645. His wife returned to him that same year, and she bore him four children before dying in childbirth. He was appointed Secretary for Foreign Tongues to Cromwell‘s Council of State, involving him in government affairs and dealings with foreign powers. However, his eyesight began to fail, and by 1651, he was completely blind. He continued to work as Latin Secretary and, in 1656, married Katherine Woodcock, who bore him a son in 1657. Both mother and son died shortly after the birth. Cromwell died in 1658, and with the restoration of the monarchy in 1661, Milton went into hiding and was briefly imprisoned when found. His major work, Paradise Lost, was issued in ten books in 1667. He married again in 1663 to Elizabeth Minshull. He died in 1674.