A question pertaining to John Donne, Shakespeare and chronology.

[Royal Canadian]

Hello all,

This afternoon my class had a discussion about "The Bait" by John Donne and I noticed that one phrase was quite similar to Shakespeare's "Sonnet 130." The particular lines were lines 5 & 6, "There will the river whisp'ring run / Warm'd by thy eyes, more than the sun." Would it be anachronistic to argue that the comparison between a woman's eyes and the sun alludes to "Sonnet 130," where Shakespeare claims "My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun." I ask this because I could not find the dates of publication for these works, or any academic source arguing that there is a relation between them. I am hoping to argue that "The Bait" criticizes the shepherd who has falsely idealized his love as foolish, and that the allusion to "Sonnet 130" reflects a more honest love. Do any of you think this is a profound argument, or am I grasping at straws? Here are some links the poems if anyone is curious.

"The Bait"
http://oldpoetry.com/opoem/618-John-Donne-The-Bait

"Sonnet 130"
http://www.shakespeare-online.com/sonnets/130.html

"The Passionate Shepherd to His Love" (This is the poem that Donne is responding to)
http://www.rjgeib.com/thoughts/shepherd/shepherd.html

P.S.

This is just for class discussion and intellectual curiosity so don't worry, I am not trying to get my homework done for me :P

:thumbsup:

[OrphanPip]

It wouldn't be anachronistic, but the relationship is not really clear. Relating a woman's eyes to the sun is a trope of the sonnet that goes all the way to Petrarch. I think it's used by Philip Sidney too. It would a be stretch to say it's an allusion to Shakespeare, who is a very different poet from Donne.

Sonnet 123 - Petrarch

On earth reveal'd the beauties of the skies,
Angelic features, it was mine to hail;
Features, which wake my mingled joy and wail,
While all besides like dreams or shadows flies.
And fill'd with tears I saw those two bright eyes,
Which oft have turn'd the sun with envy pale;
And from those lips I heard—oh! such a tale,
As might awake brute Nature's sympathies!
Wit, pity, excellence, and grief, and love
With blended plaint so sweet a concert made,
As ne'er was given to mortal ear to prove:
And heaven itself such mute attention paid,
That not a breath disturb'd the listening grove—
Even æther's wildest gales the tuneful charm obey'd.

The Bait was published in 1633, but was likely written around 1600, while Shakespeare's sonnets were published in 1609 and likely written around 1599.

[LitNetIsGreat]

Ophan Pip is correct, but maybe not all is lost, perhaps you could still argue that Donne is using a familiar trope in response to Marlowe, in a belittling or ironic manner?

[OrphanPip]

Donne seemed fond of the image in general though, he uses it in "The Sun Rising" as well. There might be something in what Neely is saying, in that Donne is fond of taking conventional tropes and morphing them into something different by building up those complex conceits. Marlowe's poem shows a different approach to poetry, the language and subject of the poem is rather conventional, and the focus is on a clarity of vision and the rhythm of the lines.

First thing to do is to assess what Marlowe's poem is doing. The primary role of the pastoral poem is to discuss love and erotic passion in a setting divorced from the reality that people live, it is intentionally idealistic. I don't think it's so much about idealizing the love, after all she's apparently quite supernaturally beautiful in Donne's response as well, but is to idealize erotic passion and love itself, by bringing it to a place where eros can be unrestrained by responsibilities to society.

More in line with Neely's suggestion, the beginning of the poem is idyllic and in the pastoral mode, the fish are first introduced as part of a pastoral landscape, but Donne then develops the extended metaphor around the fish and the women's relationship to say something about the relationships between men and women. I feel that Donne's poem, much like Marlowe's, isn't so much about the woman, but about erotic passion, what he's really criticizing is the idealization of erotic pursuits.

[JBI]

Donne seemed fond of the image in general though, he uses it in "The Sun Rising" as well. There might be something in what Neely is saying, in that Donne is fond of taking conventional tropes and morphing them into something different by building up those complex conceits. Marlowe's poem shows a different approach to poetry, the language and subject of the poem is rather conventional, and the focus is on a clarity of vision and the rhythm of the lines.

First thing to do is to assess what Marlowe's poem is doing. The primary role of the pastoral poem is to discuss love and erotic passion in a setting divorced from the reality that people live, it is intentionally idealistic. I don't think it's so much about idealizing the love, after all she's apparently quite supernaturally beautiful in Donne's response as well, but is to idealize erotic passion and love itself, by bringing it to a place where eros can be unrestrained by responsibilities to society.

More in line with Neely's suggestion, the beginning of the poem is idyllic and in the pastoral mode, the fish are first introduced as part of a pastoral landscape, but Donne then develops the extended metaphor around the fish and the women's relationship to say something about the relationships between men and women. I feel that Donne's poem, much like Marlowe's, isn't so much about the woman, but about erotic passion, what he's really criticizing is the idealization of erotic pursuits.

Criticizing, I do not know - poets at the time and readers in general seemed to have had an understanding of poetry as a sort of form of rhetoric - I think he is just taking the form to the next level, as he is writing at a point when the conventions have been stretched - keep in mind, he is coming out of probably the most important decade of English Literature ever. What he is doing is using the poem as a vehicle for a certain type of rhetorical puzzle. That he means anything to me is doubtful, as much of his early poetry seemed to find audience merely with his close "men about the town" chaps, and his sort of learned snobbery was quite intact until he ran into trouble.

Still, if we take that idea, what then do we make of "bait"? Is the bait then the willingness to be caught, or the scheme? So much bends upon that, with his rather double edged images -

With silken lines and silver hooks.

A quite obvious pun, for instance, which reads as something like "silken" tinged with binding, and silver, tinged with getting caught.

Let others freeze with angling reeds,
And cut their legs with shells and weeds,
Or treacherously poor fish beset,
With strangling snare, or windowy net.

His depiction of love, is not breaking with Petrarchan conventions exactly, but what it is doing is "writing metaphysics into verse." (to paraphrase Johnson). he has taken the Petrarchan idea, seen in Shakespeare, and virtually every poet in between them, and has converted it into a rhetorical game - love as a war, love as entrapping - all conventional ideas, but here it is meditative, rather than purely stated as a conceit.

There will the river whisp'ring run
Warm'd by thy eyes, more than the sun ;
And there th' enamour'd fish will stay,
Begging themselves they may betray.

Now, to return to the original question at hand - what is meant by warmed? I would interpret it as another one of his double edged swords. He has taken the Petrarchan conceit, as he usually does, and transformed it with his rhetorical perversions - "warmed" here being likened to lured, or baited, when warmed, like the sun is implying a sort of positive heating, like seeing a loved one smile or something. Transfixed - baited - that is his usage, he has taken all the conventions, including the "caught" lover that Petrarch would seem to be, and Astrophil would be as well, and brought the language of Petrarch to a whole other level buy juicing up the rhetoric.

I believe T. S. Eliot wrote a famous essay on this sort of understanding of Donne as a poetic pivot point, which is worth looking into. As for quoting Shakespeare? The son, and all of the other images of this poem are rather typical Petrarchan conceits, that is perhaps why the poem is effective - readers of Donne's time would most definitely recognize them for what they were, hence noticing his inversions and expansions upon them. To suggest they are from Shakespeare would give Shakespeare too much credit - Shakespeare did not invent these ideas either, so it is a bit of a stretch - culturally they had been in English for almost 100 years by this point ala Surrey and Wyatt, and I would not doubt Donne had access to Italian texts dating before that. The sheer number of works using these conventions is astounding, so there is no possible way to trace the idea directly to Shakespeare.

[OrphanPip]

Yes, you're right that Donne probably didn't want to make much of a point, and is primarily just playing with the conceit. However, I think it's important to remember the allusion to Marlowe's poem. Even though the apparent paradoxes of Donne's rhetorical game make a clear meaning difficult, and do likely point to the game of it all being the primary goal, it still inverts the conventions of the pastoral idyll. Donne's quoting of Marlowe in the first two lines (it was a very popular poem apparently, with a contemporary response being written by Raleigh as well) as a jumping off point would create an expectation in the original readers of a typical pastoral poem, but Donne delivers something completely different. Moving away from Marlowe's idealized erotic dalliances with shepherdesses is an important part of that rhetorical game.

[JBI]

Yes, you're right that Donne probably didn't want to make much of a point, and is primarily just playing with the conceit. However, I think it's important to remember the allusion to Marlowe's poem. Even though the apparent paradoxes of Donne's rhetorical game make a clear meaning difficult, and do likely point to the game of it all being the primary goal, it still inverts the conventions of the pastoral idyll. Donne's quoting of Marlowe in the first two lines (it was a very popular poem apparently, with a contemporary response being written by Raleigh as well) as a jumping off point would create an expectation in the original readers of a typical pastoral poem, but Donne delivers something completely different. Moving away from Marlowe's idealized erotic dalliances with shepherdesses is an important part of that rhetorical game.

Marlowe isn't so innocent though. There is a sense of the violation of nature within his poem - it would seem like the young shepherd is not afraid to violate everything around him for the sake of the young "love". So, what to make of it? To me the great difference is not in the handling of love, but in the rethinking of the addressee. Donne's is just more philosophical, in that it brings a level of thought absent from the lyrical tradition of Marlowe and his Greek and Roman models.

[Royal Canadian]

Thank you everyone. You all have certainly exposed a more apt way to interpret Donne. Thank ye thank ye.