Rice University

The Role of the Lady in Donne's Songs and Sonets

Author(s): Ilona Bell
Source: Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900, Vol. 23, No. 1, The English Renaissance
(Winter, 1983), pp. 113-129
Published by: Rice University
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 SEL 23 (1983)
ISSN 0039-3657

The Role of the Lady

in Donne's Songs and Sonets
ILONA BELL

It has been said of Donne that "he was an egocentricsensualistwho

ignored the feelingsof the woman," and despite arguments to the
contrary,the charge lingers.' Many readers continue to believe that
Donne "cannot see [thewoman], does not apparentlywantto see her; for
it is not of her thathe writes,but of his relationto her; not of love but of
himselfloving."2 Throughout this centurymost criticshave read the
Songsand Sonetsmore as an assertionof Donne's ego than a responseto
the lady's feelings,more as an expression of ideas he brings to the
relationshipthan perceptionswhichemergefromit.3I offera minority
perspective,some speculations as to whyDonne has been unjustlyac-
cused, and some argumentsforgrantingDonne what he in factachieves:
an empathetic,imaginative,and varied responseto the lady's point of
view.

Ilona Bell is an assistant professorof English at Williams College. She is currently

workingon the poetryof George Herbert and John Donne.

'Kenneth Muir, ed., Collected Poems of Sir Thomas Wyatt (Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard Univ. Press, 1949), p. xxix. Joan Bennett, "The Love PoetryofJohn Donne,"
Seventeenth-CenturyStudies Presented to Sir Herbert Grierson (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1938), pp. 85-104, still provides the most compelling and sensible defense of
Donne's attitude toward love and women, largelybecause she stressesthe quality of the
relationbetweenthe twolovers,but her positionhas not been universallyaccepted. Silvia
Ruffo-Fiore, for example, in "Donne's Parody of the Petrarchan Lady," CLS 9,4
(December 1972):392-407, is extremelyharshon the earthlywoman's failureto live up to
Donne's Petrarchan ideal. See also Iqbal Ahmad, "Woman in Donne's Love Poetry,"
Essays on John Donne: A Quater Centenary Tribute, ed. Asloob Ahmad Ansari (Ali-
garh: Aligarh Muslim Univ., 1974), pp. 38-58.
2J.E. V. Crofts, "JohnDonne: A Reconsideration," John Donne: A Collection of
CriticalEssays,ed. Helen Gardner (Englewood Cliffs,N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1962), p. 82.
3The best response is J. B. Leishman, The Monarch of Wit, 7th edn. (London:
Hutchinson, 1965), pp. 208-25, but dismissiveresponsescontinue. PatrickCrutwell,for
example, in "The Love PoetryofJohnDonne: Pedantique Weedes or Fresh Invention?"
Metaphysical Poetry,ed. Malcolm Bradburyand David Palmer (Bloomington: Indiana
Univ. Press, 1971), p. 22, says"So much forthe man: what of the woman? There is less to
be said of her, since . . . all this poetryis composed exclusively,even domineeringly,
fromtheviewpointoftheman. The woman is the partnerin the sexual dance, and thatis
all she is."

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114 THE LADY IN SONGS AND SONETS

Paradoxically, Donne may have been ill-servedon thisissue both by

the New Criticismand the biographical criticismit soughtto supplant.
When Sir HerbertGriersonfirstrecommendedDonne in 1921, he said
that "the central theme of [Donne's] poetry is ever his own intense
personal moods, as a lover, a friend,an analystof his own experiences
worldlyand religious"(my emphasis). In 1937 J. E. V. Croftsobserved
that Donne is "so conscious of himself[that] we are aware of him-the
man speaking-in a manner and to a degree hardlyto be paralleled in
our reading of lyricpoetry."4Certainly,intenseself-consciousnessis an
essential element of Donne's genius, yet self-consciousnesscan easily
seem like self-absorption,an "inclination to attitudes of withdrawn
egocentricity,"a "nagging,nudging,quibbling stridency,"and thatis a
serious limitation, as C. S. Lewis concluded: "Donne's poetry is too
simpleto satisfy.Its complexityis all on thesurface- an intellectualand
fullyconscious complexitythat we soon come to the end of."5
Ironically,Donne's poetrycame to seem even more narrowlyself-ab-
sorbed when criticalattentionshiftedfromthe biographical identityof
Donne, the man, to the dramatic "identityof the speaker" (the termis
fromthatcatechismofNew Criticism,UnderstandingPoetry,byBrooks
and Warren). The new criticsposed endless questionsabout the speak-
er's tone, the speaker's choice of language, the speaker's complexly
shifting,developing attitudes. As Leonard Unger concluded, Donne's
poetryand modern criticismboth emphasize "the conflictof attitudes
within the mind of an individual."6 Of course, New Criticism also
stressedDonne's unusually concrete dramatic situations. Yet Donne's
speakerseemed so brilliantlyegocentricthatthedramaticsituations,the
windowsand curtains,the suns and ladies, onlyseemed to intensifythe
speaker's self-dramatizationsand to provide a scene for his specula-
tions.I As the speaker'seruditedisplaysand internalconflictsgrew,the
lady disappeared furtherand furtherintothesilence,an inanimateprop
in the speaker's dramatic scene.

4Grierson, "Donne and Metaphysical Poetry,"John Donne's Poetry,ed. A. L. Clem-

ents (New York: Norton, 1966), p. 122; Crofts,p. 82.
5Clay Hunt, Donne's Poetry: Essays in Literary Analysis (New Haven: Yale Univ.
Press, 1954), p. 176; Lewis, "Donne and 17th Century Love Poetry,"John Donne's
Poetry, p. 157.
6Unger,Donne's Poetryand Modern Criticism(Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1950), p.
75.
7See Arnold Stein,JohnDonne's Lyrics: The Eloquence ofA ction (Minneapolis: Univ.
of Minnesota Press, 1962), p. 166: "Certainlyno otherlyricpoet has used the subject of
his own mind so consistentlyas an object, as an end of art"; George Reuben Potter,"John
Donne's Discovery of Himself," Univ. of Caltfornia Publications in English (1934)
4:3-23. Recent critical emphasis on the reader only strengthensDonne's solipsism; see
Scott Wilson, "Process and Product: ReconstructingDonne's Personae," SEL 20 (Win-
ter 1980):91-103.

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 ILONA BELL 115

The most recent criticismof the Songs and Sonets has attemptedto
humanize Donne's soul, to emphasize feelingsrather than intellect,
psychologyratherthan philosophy.8I hope to contributeto thiseffort,
for I propose a revisionistreading which gives more attentionto the
lady's dynamic, suasive effectupon the speaker's own intensepersonal
moods.9 To my mind, what Donne and his speaker expressed most
intenselywas not egocentricity or intellectualitybut empathy,a quality
all-too-rarelyconsideredbyDonne's critics.JonathanCuller's dynamic
poetics of the lyricprovides an apposite theoreticalmodel, a helpful
correctiveto the emphasesof New Criticismand biographical criticism.
Culler argues that the lyric brings "into being a voice and a force
addressed, and thisrequiresus to considerthe relationshipfromwhich
the qualities of the voice and the forcecould be drawn and to give it a
centralplace withinthepoem."''0In Donne's Songsand Sonets"theforce
addressed" is most oftena woman. We should accordinglyaffordher
and the relationshipshe bringsinto being a more "centralplace" in the
poems. "I
In itssimplestmanifestations,thisargumentseems unexceptionable,
givenDonne's typicaldramaticsituations.Afterall, Donne was capable
of writing"Break of Day" fromthe woman's perspective.And in "A
Valediction: of weeping," when the lady's tears drown the speaker's
carefullycraftedmetaphors, he instantlysacrificeshis argument and
triesanother that reflectsthe lady's feelingsmore accuratelyand thus
"quickly make[s] that, which was nothing,All." When the speaker is
lyingin bed tryingto impressand flatterand entertainthelady, when he
is settingout on a dangerousjourneyand the lady is objectingtearfully,
when he is dreaming a passionate dream and the lady thoughtfully
appears, we mustperforcethinkof her- the forceaddressed- as a real
character who plays an independent and influential,if tacit, role in
Donne's dramas. These momentsare strikingand well-recognized,but I
cite them to illustratea less evident point: the lady's acknowledged
actions are only the most extravagantremindersof the continuingand
even more importantimplied reactionswhichgive her and the speaker's

8See especially essays inJust So Much Honor, ed. Peter Amadeus Fiore (University
Park: Pennsylvania State Univ. Press, 1972), and Barbara Hardy, The Advantage of
Lyric: Essays on Feeling in Poetry,ch. 2, "Thinkingand Feeling in the Songs and Sonnets
of John Donne" (Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, 1977), pp. 18-32.
9Silvia Ruffo-Fiore argues that Petrarch made Donne skeptical about the poet's
capacity to understand the lady
I0Culler,StructuralistPoetics: Structuralism,Linguisticsand the Study of Literature
(Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press, 1975), p. 166.
" By contrast, and typical of Donne's critics,Judah Stampfer,John Donne and the
Metaphysical Gesture (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1970), p. xv, thinksthat "charac-
tersin lyricpoems are embodied impulses. They are what the speaker grasps of them."

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116 THE LADY IN SONGS AND SONETS

relationshipwith her a distinctand crucial role in poem afterpoem.12

Donne may have been egocentricand sensual, but he did not ignore
the feelingsof the woman. Quite the contrary,I suggest:the unconven-
tional brillianceof Donne's love poems arises(at least in part) fromhis
unprecedented capacity to elicit and articulate and respond to the
woman's point of view.'3 At first,in poems like "Goe, and catche a
fallingstarre"or "Loves usury,"empathyinformsthe witty,lustybrag-
gadocio that enables the speaker to defend himself, to foresee and
pre-emptrejection.But soon enough, empathychanges froma charac-
teristicand discomfitingimpulseto a deliberateand efficaciousrhetori-
cal strategy.Ultimately,empathy defeats distrustand becomes the
passionatelyadvocated and jealouslyprotectedideal of"The good-mor-
row," "The Anniversarie,""The Extasie," or "A Lecture upon the
Shadow." Now and again, in momentsof outrage and betrayal,empa-
thyfalters.Yet evenwhenthespeakersoundsmostcold and vengeful,in
"The Apparition" or "The Funerall," for example, his cajoling and
persuasioncontinue,so instinctively does he perceiveand appeal to the
lady's point of view. Once we begin to recognizethe speaker'sconsider-
ation and the lady's influence,Donne's poems seem less like egocentric
displays and more like attentiveconversations,more like complexly
shiftingdialogues betweenman and woman than anylyricpoems I know
(discountingactual dialogues such as Sidney's or Marvell's).
Because Donne's attitude toward women has seemed so contradic-
tory,criticshave traditionallydividedDonne's Songsand Sonetsintotwo
categories: witty,cavalier poems writtenby Donne, the cynical rake,
"the great visitorof ladies," and idealized poems of love, writtenby
Donne, the man who subsequentlyfell in love with and married Ann
More at such great personal sacrifice.14 But for me the issue is not
whetherDonne deprecates women, whether he idealizes the sex, or
whetherhe abuses a stringof women and exalts one. Try as he may to
sound scornfuland cavalier, regardlessof what he may say at any given
moment,whetherhe professesindifferenceor canonizes love, Donne is
neverable to disregardthewoman'spointofview. The lady continuesto

"2DwightCathcart, in Doubting Conscience: Donne and the Poetry of Moral Argu-

ment (Ann Arbor: Univ. of Michigan Press, 1975), comes closest to my position;
however,whereI see empathyhe sees an adversaryrelationship:"the speaker character-
isticallyfindshimselfbesieged by the 'you' and respondsaggressively.. . . These poems,
as theyare responsesto some silentspeaker, show themselvesto disagree, even to disagree
strongly.There is a sense in thesepoems of the speaker saying,No, thatis not itat all" (p.
19).
'3H. M. Richmond, "The Intangible Mistress,"MP 56 (May 1959):217-23, argues
thatthe aloof, unknowable mistressis a stockfigurein Renaissance poetry,and he thinks
Donne's mistressis no exception.
14See, forexample, Theodore Redpath, The Songs and Sonets ofJohnDonne (Lon-
don: Methuen, 1956), pp. xxiii-xxiv; Crutwell, p. 21.

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 ILONA BELL 117

disturband check and alter the speaker's assumptions,even when he

cockilytriesto denigrate her point of view.
If Donne ever speaks as "an egocentricsensualist"surelyit is in the
poem entitled "The Indifferent."Justas the title warns, the speaker
flauntshis callousness. "I can love her, and her, and you and you," he
brags,as ifall thelustywomenin England wereessentiallyindistinguish-
able and equally insignificant.Yet methinksthegentlemandoth protest
too much. In the second stanza this flippant cynicism becomes so
patentlyhyperbolicand outrageous that it begins to sound less callous
and more mischievousor teasing:

Will no other vice contentyou?

Wil it not serve your turn to do, as did your mothers?
Or have you all old vices spent, and now would finde out
others?15

Like Hal and Falstaffin Eastcheap, the speaker clearly enjoys this
traditional flyting:your mother is a . . . . Yet the escalating insults and
accumulating questions bespeak more wit and inventionthan convic-
tion.16 We should not be too surprised,therefore,to discoverthat the
entire outburstmay have been provoked by a specific woman whose
threateneddevotionhas threatenedthespeaker'sfreedom:"Must I, who
came to travailethorowyou, / Growyourfixtsubject, because you are
true?" Here the syntax and logic become suddenly, noticeably more
complex, betrayingemotional stressand serious concern that frivolity
has failed to dispel. Must I grow your fixed subject? Why does the
speakerfeelcompelled to ask?Surely,he is not as callous or indifferentas
he has been pretending.
Like manywittyyoungmen, the Indifferent enjoysboastingabout his
sexual exploits,but underneathit all, he is surprisinglytender-hearted.
At his wit'send, he finallyturnsto Venus, and it is onlywiththe help of
thistraditionaldea ex machina thatthepoem ends as lightlyas it began,
or almostas lightly,forthespeaker'shelplessnessshowsthathe is drawn
to take the woman's point of view more seriouslythan his rakishself-
image allows him to admit. In the end, even the titlesuggeststhat "The
Indifferent"is a persona, more temporarythan "fixt."
My theoryabout thesepoems of lustyfrivolity is that again and again
the speaker creates a swashbucklingself-image which he strugglesto

15AIIquotations fromDonne's poems are fromThe Poems ofJohnDonne, ed. Herbert

Grierson, 2 vols. (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1912), 1.
'6Hunt and Cathcart both insistthat the persona "speaks as a moral man." Cathcart
interpretsthe morality seriously; Hunt tips off the reader to "the comedy of the
dead-pan clowning" (p. 6). In contrast, Leishman, pp. 148 ff., sees "a wittyand
outrageous exaggeration appropriate to a kind of moral holiday."

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118 THE LADY IN SONGS AND SONETS

perpetuate."7 "Song: Goe and catche a falling starre" expresses the

classic attack on women as the ficklesex: "No where / Lives a woman
true,and faire." Yet even as he affirmsthiscynicalpremise,the speaker
betrayshis own poignantwishthat the conventionalprejudice were not
true: "Such a Pilgrimageweresweet,"he confesses.In "Loves Usury"the
speakertriesto strikea bargain withthe God oflove: ifpermittedto play
the field while he is young, he will gladly play the devoted, suffering
loverwhen he is old. Given thewittytone and the conventionalmythol-
ogy,one mightexpect thisto be just one more Renaissance poem about
Cupid's infamouspower to strikeman blind with love, but once again
the real problem is not Cupid's dart but the speaker'sinherentsensitiv-
ity: "Spare mee till then, I'll beare it, though she bee / One that loves
mee." That pivotal phrase, "I'll beare it," betraysall the feelingsthe
speaker has been tryingto hide. The indifferent,the tough guy, the
wittyprofligate,actually finds it difficultand painful to ignore the
woman's feelings. Donne's most cynical poems are not attempts to
seduce the lady, but attemptsto escape once she (or is it he?) has been
caught. It seems strangelyapt thatJohn Donne's name is Don Juan in
reverse.
"Womans constancy"is usuallyread as another,evenmore complexly
ironicattackon woman's inconstancy.18 Actually,it is just the opposite,
just what the titlesays: a defenseofwoman's constancy,spoken,in fact,
by a woman. The key to the dramatic situation is the phrase "vaine
lunatique. " The listener,the lunatic,mustbe a man because he is under
the influenceof the moon, Luna, who is traditionallyfemale: alluring,
changeable, always chaste. With more wit than witchcraft,the lady
teaches this lunatic that he is not only under her influence; he is also
under the influence of his limited conventional expectations about
women, prejudices which he should learn to recognize and transcend.
The catalogue of wittyexcuses she imagines he will say tomorrow,
when he leaves, is at once a flatteringtributeto the man's wit and a
demonstrationofher own cleverness.Behind the banter,however,lies a
seriesof all-too-seriousquestions. The lady has grantedthe gentleman
her ultimatefavorsfor"one whole day." Having presentedherselfas a
'7Where I see stressand conflict,most criticssee extremesingle-mindedness. Wilbur
Sanders,John Donne's Poetry(Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1971), p. 47, says
that in poems like "The Indifferent,""The Apparition," and "Womans Constancy" the
"unity is achieved by suppressing whole expressive registersof the human speaking
voice." Virginia Woolf, The Second Common Reader (New York: Harcourt Brace,
1960), p. 23, comes closest to my sense of these poems: "Even while he was at his most
fickle and gave fullestscope to his youthfullusts, Donne could predict the season of
maturitywhen he would love differently."
8I am gratefultoJohnShawcrossforconvincingme that the speaker is female. For a
more conventional reading, see, forexample, James Winny, A Preface toJohn Donne
(London: Longman, 1970), pp. 120-22. Even if the speaker were male, I can see no
reason to assume, as Sanders does, pp. 46-47, that the woman is a whore.

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 ILONA BELL 119

faithfulsoul, she suddenlybegins to worrythat the man professedhis

love onlyto coax her into bed. Knowingthat she is not a virgin,will he
now assume she is a whore?Because she is not chaste, will he thinkshe
cannot be true? If she is reserved,will he feel like one of many? But
conversely,if she appears too faithfuland devoted, will he be all the
more eager to escape a commitment?
For all thesereasons,theladyfacesa difficultsituation,but she risesto
the occasion. Her conclusion is at once a brilliantpre-emptiveattack
and a clever persuasivestrategy:

Vaine lunatique, against these scapes I could

Dispute, and conquer, if I would,
Which I abstaine to doe,
For by tomorrow,I may thinkeso too.

The lady's wittytentativeness,neitherdesperatelyeager nor callously

cavalier, challenges and mystifiessimultaneously.
As "Woman's Constancy"demonstrates,fablesabout woman's incon-
stancy begin as man's defense against women and end as woman's
defenseagainstmen. Bygrapplingwithall herimaginativeand intellec-
tual resourcesto foreseetheman's pointofview,the lady makes her own
point of view all the more tantalizingand suasive.
For all the cynical wit and perverse charm of these poems, John
Donne, the great visitorof ladies, neverbecomes a thoroughlyconvinc-
ingrake preciselybecause he cannot evercompletelyignorethewoman's
feelings.The real struggleis not betweenthe speaker'spromiscuityand
the lady's fidelity,but between the speaker's public bravado and the
unacknowledgedsensitivity whichforceshim, in theend, to seek protec-
tionagainsthisown natural impulses.Not surprisingly, therefore,when
he stops vaunting aloud, the scornful,lusty bachelor, assuming the
persona of an indifferent,he becomes a fine lover: funny,flexible,
attentive,tender,psychologicallyacute, and uncommonlyempathetic.
Perhaps the best place to see this transformationoccurringis "The
Sunne Rising." At theopeningof thepoem we are intenselyaware of the
man speaking, flamboyantly,insistently.The speaker is so brazen and
assertivethat the lady's thoughtsand feelingsseem all but irrelevant.
The focus of attention- the force addressed- is not the lady but the
sun. Still, the lady is verymuch present,as we learn in the second line,
and the speaker challenges the sun as much forher sake as forhis own:
"Why dost thou thus, / Through windowes,and throughcurtainescall
on us?" Most readerswould agree thatwe mustkeep the lady in mind if
we are to appreciate the speaker'sperformance.19For despitehis grum-
'9Cathcart, pp. 29-30, 114-15, apparentlydoes not. He is so convinced that Donne's
mind is "of the sortwhich is interestedin, is fertileof, primarilythe doings of men," that
he never pauses to consider the effectof the lady's presence.

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120 THE LADY IN SONGS AND SONETS

bling, he is showingoff,tryingto impressherwithhis ingenuityand wit,

calling the sun a "sawcypedantique wretch"in orderto exhibithis own
saucy irreverence,defyingthe sun to proclaim and exalt his love.
Since we can only deduce the lady's responses from the speaker's
assertions,it is natural to assume that she languishes in a posture of
uncritical,speechlessadmiration. Yet ifwe pause to ask how she has in
fact responded, hoveringbetween the lines we can discern a distinct
point of view which has considerable influenceon the speaker's argu-
ment. In tryingto impressthe lady, the speaker adjusts his argumentto
court her approval and address her reservations.Without radioaI;y
alteringthe meaningof the poem, thissuggestsa more concretepsycho-
logical motivationforthe developmentof ideas and emotionswithinthe
poem.
In the opening stanza the speaker'sbravura becomes more and more
extravagantuntil he finallyclaims that his love, all love, is absolutely
impervious,nay superior,to thesun and the courseofnature: "Love, all
alike, no season knowes, nor clyme, / Nor houres, dayes, moneths,
which are the rags of time." This generalizationis grandlyimpressive
and funny,but obviouslyuntrue,as the lady clearlyknows,forshe has
just watched him grousingat being awakened, tearing theirpeaceful
slumbersintorags. Does herface expressskepticism?I suspectso, forthe
speaker suddenly begins to watch her expression intently:"I could
eclipse and cloud [thybeams] witha winke / But that I would not lose
her sightso long."20 Both as a challenge to the sun and a complimentto
the lady, thisis a marvellousand wittyrhetoricalmove. Yet in asserting
his power over the sun, the speaker acknowledgesthe lady's power over
him, and it is not simplya question of her beauty, forifthatwere all he
would not be afraid to blink: her eyeswould shine forthmore brightly
aftera moment'sdarkness.The speaker'seyesare fixedunflinchingly on
the lady's, I think,because he is inordinatelyconcerned with her re-
sponse, determinedto discoverwhat she thinksabout everyword he
utters.Now aftertryingto convinceher that love is imperviousto time,
he suddenly admits that he is affectedby time: "If her eyes have not
blinded thine, / Looke, and to morrowlate, tell mee" (my emphasis).
The speaker completelyreverseshis argument,just as he is tryingmost
blatantlyto please the lady. Since complimentand correctionare one
thought, it seems clear that the speaker's new rhetorical strategyis

20MurrayRoston, The Soul of Wit: A StudyofJohnDonne (Oxford: Clarendon Press,

1974), p. 15, is so prepared to disregardthe lady that he misreads the lines: "When the
lovercloses his eyes,the sun willindeed continue to shine forthe restof the world; but for
him, the centreof his closed solipsisticuniverse,it has in fact ceased to exist . . . To be
noticed by the lover at all, the sun must relyon the beauty of the mistress,who alone
entices him to open his eyes. There is an obvious humour of exaggeration here, but the
deeper theme continues to stressthe sanctityof the isolated, individual self."

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 ILONA BELL 121

calculated to winthelady'sapproval. I would go even further:I thinkhe

has altered his stance afterwatchingher expressionand discerningher
doubts.
In the thirdstanza the speakermakes an even clearereffortto adjust
his argumentto allay her reservations.The processbeginswithanother
grand claim: "She'is all States,and all Princes,I, / Nothingelse is." This
is meant to be impressive,but itis outrageous,and worseyet,tactless.As
mycontemporaryfemalestudentspointout, itis notveryflatteringto be
told thatone is a passive,inanimatestateruled by a man.21Apparently,
the Renaissance lady had her doubts, too, for'thespeaker immediately
correctsthe slight: "Princes doe but play us," he adds. This not only
resuscitatestheexternalworld,but it also givesthelady equal powerand
status, which has the effectof chasteningthe speaker's egocentricity.
The resultis a discernibleand significantshiftin the balance of power.
The speaker has been tryingto impressthe lady withhis power and
verbal ingenuity,with idealized generalizations about the transcen-
dence of his love, with extravagantdeclarations of his admiration for
her. Now suddenlyhe is less anxious to asserthimselfand more eager to
demonstratehis attentivenessto others,includingthatbusyold fool,the
sun: "Thine age askesease . . . Shine here to us." Surelythisexpression
ofkindnessand concernis meant forthelady'shearing; and to mymind,
it is the speaker's most impressiveand effectiveprofessionyet, for it
proves that despite his self-assertions,he can be courteous, gentle,
responsive, and remarkablyempathetic.22And that change in tone
occursin poem afterpoem, in "The good-morrow,"forexample, where
the speaker also growsincreasinglysensitiveto the lady's point of view.
At theoutset,thespeakerexpressesa desireto exchange intimacies:"I
wonder by my troth,what thou, and I / Did, till we lov'd?" Yet his
playful vision of sucking on cunt-ry pleasures childishly,his coarse
tall-tales about snortingcommunally in the seven sleepers' den, his
masculine boasting about other beauties he "desir'd, and got," all
suggest that he is more anxious to create an outrageous, wittymyth
about his formersexual exploits than to discoverhow the lady feels at
present.23 Even when he pauses to pay a generous,courtlycompliment,

2'Wilbur Sanders, p. 74, notes the problem- "'Where does the real woman come into
the picture?' one will grumble at such moments. 'Why is it that she is the States and
Donne the Princes, and not the other way round?"' -yet fails to see that the speaker
recognizes and answers these veryquestions.
22Sanderscomes closest to my sense of the conclusion when he says about "Sweetest
Love," "there is also the sense one gets that his voice has had to develop a whole new
expressiveregisterto deal withhis acute consciousnessofthewoman's presence" (p. I 1). I
do not agree with Elizabeth Pomeroy'sconclusion, "Donne's Sunne Rising," Explicator
27 (September 1968): item 4, that the poem ends as a "serious validation of subjective
reality."
2"As Stein notes, p. 70, "the past may be thought insulting."

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122 THE LADY IN SONGS AND SONETS

he cannot stop boasting about himself and his conquests. Like the
Indifferent,he seems highlyself-absorbed,and fora momentwe may
again wonder whetherhe is an egocentricsensualistwho ignores the
feelingsof the woman. Yet the great burstsof playfulexuberance, the
shockinglycolloquial, unrefinedlanguage, all suggest an underlying
intimacyand trust;and thatemergesmuch more stronglyin the second
stanza:

And now good morrowto our waking soules,

Which watch not one another out of feare;
For love, all love of other sightscontroules.

Suddenly the speaker seems highly conscious of the lady's feelings,

conscious that fromher point of viewjokes about other loversmay be
morethreateningthan amusing. Now he goes out ofhiswayto clarifyhis
earliercomment:"all love ofothersightscontroules"recalls and perma-
nentlydismisses"any beauty I did see." In an effortto counter his
previousobliviousness,to allay any fearshe may have unwittingly pro-
voked, the speaker makes a seriouseffortto credit and understandthe
lady's point of view: "Let us possesseone world, each hath one, and is
one." This metaphoracknowledgesthe lady's independence and equal-
ity.Moreover,as in "The Sunne Rising,"thespeakerhas begun to watch
her veryclosely,tryingto discernher point of view; and his attentionis
rewarded with a plain, heart-feltexpression: "My face in thine eye,
thinein mine appeares, / And true plaine heartsdoe in the faces rest."
This simple, straightforward professionof mutual openness and trust
seems absolutelycompelling,24but the speaker is stillcarefulto distin-
guishbetweenmine and thine,stillwaryof assuminga unityof thought
and feeling: "Where can we finde two betterhemispheares/ Without
sharpe North, without declining West?" Clay Hunt argues that this
image is a "symbolof the sympatheticfusionof the loversinto a single
self-containedentity,"25but I thinkit deliberatelyacknowledges and
maintainstheirtwo distinctperspectives:two hemispheresmay inhabit
the same globe, but thereare oceans of distance and differencebetween
them. The speaker is makingeveryeffortto bringthe lady and himself
closer together,but he is still chastened by his self-centeredness,still
wary of the negative feelings he has just provoked. In conclusion,
therefore,he announces thathe is no longerwillingto forceher feelings
into his image:

24Herethe criticsall seem to agree. For two examples of many see David Daiches, 'A
Reading of the Good-Morrow," JustSo Much Honor, p. 184, and N. J. C. Andreason,
John Donne: ConservativeRevolutionary(Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1967). p.
217.
25Hunt,p. 61.

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 ILONA BELL 123

What ever dyes, was not mixt equally;

If our two loves be one, or, thou and I
Love so alike, that none doe slacken, none can die.

These lineshave troubledmanyreadersand critics,especiallythosewho

wish the poem to culminate in a perfectspiritual union.26 Scholarly
explication helps, but not sufficiently.What is really at issue is the
nature of the relationshipbetween the two lovers. In the contextof the
precedingstanzas,themixtureof qualificationand assuranceis dramat-
ically apt and emotionallyencouraging. The speaker hopes theirloves
willbecome one, but he knowsthatmutual rapprochementdepends on
true and equal minglingof two distinctperspectives.The lady must
learn to accept his lapses, and he must learn to be more sensitiveto her
fearsand feelings.And so he will,he promisesand demonstrates- forhe
makes no conclusions. Like the preceding question, this conditional
formulationallows her to choose whethertheirdesireswill coalesce or
whethertheywill remain separate but equal partnersin love. Yet the
speaker cannot resistone final plea: she can test the equality of their
love, he suggests,punningin thelast line, by the qualityoftheirphysical
relationship:if"thou and I / Love so alike, thatnone doe slacken, none
can die." If his sensitivityto her, and hers to him, has increased, then
neitherwill slacken until theyare both ready to die, to reach a climax
together.On thatbasis the speaker venturesto suggest(drawingon the
alternativemeaningofdie) thattheirlove willremainvitalas long as she
desiresand gets as much as he. At once jovial and serious,thispunning
conclusionshowsthatthespeakerwho once sucked on cunt-rypleasures
childishlyhas discoveredthat mutual enduringlove offerseven greater
pleasures, both sexual and spiritual.
What preciselydoes itmean, then,in a lyricpoem spokenby a man to
articulate and integratethe woman's point of view? This is the way

26Thereseem to be twoprincipal responses.One group of critics,typifiedby Hunt, p.

64, insiststhat theirlove has produced a union so complete that theirseparate identities
have merged into one another. MyrilJones,"Donne's "The Good-Morrow,"' Explicator
33 (Janu'ary1975): item 37, provesmathematicallythat "the twomysteriously turnout to
be one"; Andreason saystheyattain the "self-immolatingcharity"of neo-Platonic love.
The second response acknowledgesthe tentativenessof the syntax.Here the interpreta-
tionsvarywidely. Stein, pp. 73 and 76, notes the "tentativenessof two possible conclu-
sions, both based upon an if," yetconcludes "theyare one and theydo love alike. They
have been mixed equally." Redpath, p. xxxvi,says "This uncertaintyshould, I believe,
be regarded as the sign of an honest attemptnot to exaggerate about the relationshipof
love, while at the same time recognizingitspower." Sanders, pp. 67-68, is the bleakest:
"the unresolvednature of the finalstanza proceeds fromthe fact that, somewherein the
course ofit,Donne loses theburningawarenessofthe woman's presencewhichmakes the
firsttwo so potent; and he is left,consequently,with a lapful of doubts and misgivings,
tryingto piece them togetherinto the required affirmation,and failing."

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124 THE LADY IN SONGS AND SONETS

Donne explains the process in "A Valediction: of my name, in the

window":

'Tis much that Glasse should bee

As all confessing,and through-shineas I,
'Tis more, that it shewes thee to thee,
And cleare reflectsthee to thine eye.
But all such rules, loves magique can undoe,
Here you see mee, and I am you.

Donne strivesto make the speaker's words as "all confessing" and

transparentas glass so that the lady can see his heart as she sees his face.
At the same time,he striveseven "more" to achieve a clear, undistorted
pictureof the lady so that theycan both see her as she sees herself.And
that is a highlyoriginal aspirationfora Renaissance poet, unknownto
mostofDonne's predecessors,to Wyattor Sidney,forexample. Donne is
insistent;he pauses to stressand clarifythe point:

'Tis more,// that it/ shewes thee/ to thee,

And cleare/ reflects/thee to/ thine eye.

As the wordsand rhythmsboth demonstrate,Donne has dedicated and

actuallysubordinatedhis poetryto the lady's visionof herself.For both
Donne and thelady, theresultis a magical multiplicationof empathetic
understandingwhich produces true intimacy: "and I am you." This
window, like the scientificformula in "The good-morrow" and the
princelyco-operation in "The Sunne Rising,"provesthatDonne's love is
clearest when it is most many-minded, when it faces rather than re-
pressesthe similaritiesand differencesbetweenthe man's and the lady's
point ofview. If love'smagic can finally"undoe" the differencebetween
I and thee,itis onlyafterthelovershave seen each otheras clearlyas they
have seen themselves.And that brings us to "The Extasie," a poem
which has defied our categories perhaps more than any other: is the
speakerdescribinga momentofspiritualtranscendence,or is he cleverly
usingthe language ofspirituallove to advance his all-too-earthyseduc-
tion?27

27Therehave been too manyinterpretations of thispoem evento list.Stillbasic to

understanding themajorpointsofcontention are: PierreLegouis,DonnetheCraftsman
(Paris: Didier, 1928), pp. 61-69; A. J. Smith,"The Metaphysicof Love," RES 9
(November1958):362-75;HelenGardner,"The Argument about'The Extasie,"'Eliza-
bethanand JacobeanStudiesPresentedto F. P. Wilson(Oxford:ClarendonPress,
1959),pp. 279-306;Merritt Hughes,"The Lineageof'The Extasie,"'MLR 27 (January
1932):1-5, and "Some of Donne's 'Ecstasies,"'PMILA 75 (December 1960):509-18;
Barbara Lewalski, "A Donnean Perspectiveon 'The Extasie,"' ELN 10,4 (June
1973):258-62.

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 ILONA BELL 125

I have no doubt thatthe "Extasie" describesthe firstsexual encounter

betweentheman and thewoman. The evidenceseemsincontrovertible:
the passionate, sweatypalms; the assertionthattheirphysicalattraction
firstbrought them together;the pregnant comment that "as yet" the
union of hands and eyes "was all our propagation"; the final assertion
that theirminds and souls have alreadymerged and theirbodies are to
follow. At the same time, I think "The Extasie" is a most unlikely
seduction poem, first,because it is told in the past tense, and second
because its"dialogue of one" is neverarticulated. It is hard to imagine a
man manipulAtinga woman withwords,ifthe wordsare neveruttered.
In fact, these two qualities, the full-fledgedmemoryand the silence,
recollected and verbalized in retrospect,make "The Extasie" less dra-
matic and less persuasive(though nonethelessconvincing)than almost
any other of the Songs and Sonets.
If "The Extasie" is neithera poem ofseductionnor a poem ofspiritual
purity,what is it?Exactlywhat the titlesuggests:a momentof transcen-
dent joy, rememberedas an ideal preciselybecause it was that unique
occasion when the speaker and the lady found themselvesin total
harmony,thinkingand wishingforpreciselythe same thing.The poem
has to be told in thepast tense,because theexperiencewas ineffable.For
once, thespeakerwas nottryingto persuade herto see thesituationfrom
hisviewpoint,and she was notresisting,feelinghe had failedto consider
or understand her viewpoint.The day-long meditation, the absolute
silence, the completecommunion,all made thatkind of verbaljousting
unnecessary.Since theirmindsand souls had momentarilybecome one,
it only seemed natural- and they both felt this, independentlyand
simultaneously- that this intimacy should extend to their bodies.28
That, the speaker insistsquite rightly,is not a seduction but an ecstasy
which"interinanimates, " bothsexuallyand emotionally.For whatelse is
a "dialogue ofone" but a miracle- a dialogue ofthepair as one - which
silentlytranscends the normal limits of human communication and
personal difference?29
This mergingof individual identity,this mutual feelingthat "I am
you," thisexaltationofbody and groundingofspirit,is what thespeaker

"At thispoint Legouis, p. 68, stresses"what the man has won and the woman lost."
That is preciselywhat the poem loses when we read it as a seduction poem.
"Not all criticswould agree. A. J. Smith sees the "dialogue of one" as "a weak joke";
Andreason thinks it reveals Donne's irony and exposes the blindness of the lovers'
casuistry.Charles Mitchell, in "Donne's 'The Extasie': Love's Sublime Knot," SEL 8
(Winter 1968):91-101, all but equates "the dialogue of love between man and woman"
with"the speaker talkingto himself."To my mind, that equation is preciselywhere so
much Donne criticismgoes wrong. Rene Graziani, "JohnDonne's 'The Extasie,' and
Ecstasy," RES 19 (May 1968):121-36, concludes that "the dialogue of one is probably
Donne's own invention." I find that the most telling remark of all.

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126 THE LADY IN SONGS AND SONETS

desiresbut neverso fullyattainsin poem afterpoem: "The good-mor-

row," "Lovers infiniteness,""The Flea," "A Valediction: of the booke."
On most of these occasions the speaker has to settlefor a clear under-
standingof two distinctpoints of view, mixed equally but not perma-
nentlyor indistinguishably.Empathy is one thing; agreementis quite
another, as "The Dreame" illustratesmost dramatically.
Like "The good-morrow"and "The Sunne Rising," "The Dreame" is
a poem about awakening,but it is not an aubade, forthe speaker has
been sleeping alone and dreaming of the lady. Justwhen his dream is
about to reach its climax, she appears:

Yet I thoughtthee
(For thou lovesttruth)an Angell, at firstsight,
But when I saw thou sawest my heart,
And knew'stmy thoughts,beyond an Angels art,
When thou knew'stwhat I dreamt, when thou knew'stwhen
Excesse of joy would wake me, and cam'st then,
I must confesse,it could not chuse but bee
Prophane, to thinkethee any thingbut thee.

Obviously delighted by her unbelievably perfecttiming, the speaker

interpretsherappearance as a signofjust how fullyand miraculouslyshe
has grownto understandhis thoughts.Recalling his firstimpressionof
her as an angel, he jokes - and he has good reason, since the dream is
obviously sexual - that it would be profane to think of her now as
anythingbut a woman. Despite its intent,thejoke is more complimen-
tarythan salacious. Since angels cannot know men's thoughts,it is a
markofjust how fartheirunderstandinghas developed thatthe speaker
does in fact preferand value her capacity to divine and satisfyhis less
angelic and more human thoughts. Yet for all the speaker's witty
suasion, afterappearing so opportunely,the lady departsprematurely,
provingthat even empathy has its limits: there are some rules which
love's magic cannot undo.
The mostchillingexample ofthepowerand limitsofempathyis "The
Apparition," a terrifying little revenge drama, complete with ghost,
flickeringtaper, and "cold quicksilversweat."30The speakerinsiststhat
his "love is spent," but his visionof being murderedby the lady's scorn,
suggeststhathisimaginationis stillintensely,passionatelyengaged, and
the poem is clearly an attemptto keep the lady's imagination equally

3?Thispoem has provoked the most scathing critiques of Donne's lady. For example,
C. William Millerand Dan S. Norton,Explicator 4 (February 1946): item24, assume the
lady becomes a "used prostitute"riddled withsyphilis,and William Everson,Explicator
4 (June 1946): item 56, concludes "her degradation is complete." Stanley Freeman,
Explicator 30 (October 1971), item 15, is kinder: he thinks the speaker hopes to
"intimidatethe lady intolovinghim" byplayingon "her femininefearand contrariness."

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 ILONA BELL 127

engaged. The speaker's scenario demonstrateshis continuingcapacity

to imagine, to the minutestdetail, how the lady feels. If she rejectshim,
he warns, she will be exposed and treated as a "fain'd vestall." As a
result, he predicts, she will be isolated, humiliated, and rebuffedby
subsequent lovers:

And he, whose thou art then, being tyr'dbefore,

Will, if thou stirre,or pinch to wake him, thinke
Thou call'st for more,
And in false sleepe will fromthee shrinke.

Unlikethe speaker,theseless attentivelovers,neitherwillingnor able to

empathize, will mistakenlythinkshe merelycalls for renewed sexual
attention;he alone knowsthat what she reallywants and needs most is
understanding.The speaker wants the lady to keep thinkingabout the
factthathe is stillthinkingabout her withan uncannyabilityto foresee
and understandher feelings.3'Thus he deliberatelywithholdshis final
threatin orderto make a continuingclaim on herimagination: "What I
willsay / I willnot tell thee now, / Lest that preservethee." If the lady's
threatenedrejection has made the speaker momentarilyvituperative,
his empatheticimaginationmakes his threatenedrevengeterrifyingly,
persistently,persuasive.
Jonathan Culler's emphasis on "the force addressed" could not be
more apt, forDonne's poems are lessdramaticself-assertionsoftheman
speakingthan dramatic discoveriesof the speakerlearningto recognize
and accommodate the power of the force addressed. Donne's lyric
imagination enables him to discover that the ideal is "a dialogue of
one" - thatecstaticmomentwhen a genuineexchange ofopinion proves
that "our loves are one." But he also discoversthat there is no point
pretendingor insistingthat two people's thoughtsare "alike" if one
person is silentlydoubting or disapproving."2Again and again, the
lady'scriticalpresence(criticalin both senses)encouragesthespeakerto
recognize his own pretences, to perceive the tender impulses hiding
beneath his cynicalbravado, to face theconcreterealitieswhicheven his

31Fromthis basic fact, Stampfer,p. xvi, reaches quite the opposite conclusion: "In
Donne's 'Apparition,' the speaker describes some woman; she exists, but only as he
grasps her."
"This has rarelybeen seen as a virtueby Donne's critics.A more common feelingis
described by Helen Gardner, John Donne: the Elegies and The Songs and Sonnets
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965), p. xxx: "the union of lovers is an end in itselfin
Donne's poems, needing no justificationand reaching to nothingbeyond itself.... To
have imagined and given supreme expression to the bliss of fulfillment,and to the
discoveryofthe safetythatthereis in love givenand returned,is Donne's greatestgloryas
a love-poet." See also Pam Ulrey, "The 'One' in Donne's Poetry," RenP
(1958-1960):76-83.

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128 THE LADY IN SONGS AND SONETS

grandestrhetoriccannot extenuate. He, in turn,teachesher to appreci-

ate just how unique is his understandingof her.
Donne's predecessors,Wyatt,Spenser,Shakespeare, wrotegreatlove
poetry,but theyscanted the woman's point of view. Wyatt finds the
woman alternatelypassionate and heartless,and at the best, ungrasp-
able: "and wild forto hold." He writespoem afterpoem which fails to
engage the lady directly,and when he finallydoes speak, he is more
anxious to bemoan his sufferingthan to elicit her point of view. As-
trophel is increasinglyfrank about his own motives and desires, but
Stella remains as much a mysteriousideal to him as she does to us. No
writer,certainlyno male writer,has evercaptured thewoman's point of
view more brilliantlythan Shakespeare did in his plays, but in the
sonnetsthe dark lady neveremergesfromobscurity.She remainsawful
and available. In Donne's love poems thelady'seyesmayblind thesun or
blot out the rest of the world, but they do not blind the speaker. If
anything,theyenable him to see himselfand the lady more clearly:

If thou, to be so seene, beest loath,

By Sunne, or Moone, thou darkestboth,
And if my selfehave leave to see,
I need not theirlight, having thee.

Donne rarelydescribesthe lady's person,but he does watch her expres-

sion. He seizes the moment when "true plaine hearts doe in the faces
rest,"and he also noticeswhen "heartsdo not in eyesshine." Again and
again, Donne sees, as Wyattand Sidneycannot, exactlywhat thelady in
his poems is thinkingabout and wishingand fearing. Donne shows a
negativecapability, an instinctiveempathyforthe lady, which I think
remains unrivalled by any Renaissance lyricpoet.
IfDonne werea lesseror a lessimaginativepoet, hiscontinualprobing
of the woman's point of view would be more predictable and less
nourishing.But Donne was unconventionaland restlessby nature. By
listeningto and respondingto thelady, he discoversthat"Loves sweetest
Part, Variety,"was not to be found in conventionalposturesof love or
conventionalexpectationsofladies, but in that"dialogue ofone" or two,
that "new made Idiome," which seeks communion but is continually
prepared to recognize disjunction.
Perhaps, it would be appropriate to conclude where so many essays
about Donne and women begin, with Dryden's famous remark that
Donne "perplexes the minds of the fair sex with nice speculations of
philosophy,when he should engage theirhearts, and entertainthem
with the softnessesof love."" Dare I suggestthat the opposite is more
nearly true: that Donne has perplexed the minds of both sexes with
33Quoted in John Donne's Poetry, p. 106.

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 ILONA BELL 129

brilliant speculations about women which might have engaged their

minds and hearts had they not preferredto be entertained by the
abstrusespeculationsofphilosophyor the"softnessesoflove." Unlikehis
Petrarchan predecessors,when Donne writesof love he writesnot of
imagined love or exalted beautybut oflovingand being loved, at times,
of hating and being hated, not of ladies seen and admired from a
distance but of a lady who is highlypresent, loving and criticizing,
judging as well as admiring.
VirginiaWoolfonce said thatMiddlemarchwas thefirstnovelwritten
for adults. I thinkDonne's Songs and Sonets are the firstRenaissance
love poems writtenfor adults, loving and empatheticenough to grant
the man's and the woman's point of view equal credence. It seems
appropriate,therefore,thatVirginiaWoolf was the firstand almostthe
last critic I have found who actually pauses to describe the lady in
Donne's poems: "She was brown but she was also fair; she was solitary
but also sociable; she was rusticyetalso fondofcitylife;she was skeptical
yet devout, emotional but reserved- in short she was as various and
complex as Donne himself."84

34Woolf,p. 22. See also Iqbal Ahmad, esp. p. 57.

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