The Theme of John Donne’s "The Good-Morrow": Love, Depth and Devotion, Triumphs over all Earthly Mutability and Morality


John Donne’s The Good Morrow is a characteristic metaphysical poem which deals with the theme of love a strong and true passion of love. After this souls walking up the lover and the beloved are consumed with the passion of love and they became one. In fact, oneness in love triumph over all earthly mutability and morality and shines ever in mutual attachment a love which does not deal with the body but in the bond between the bond souls of the lovers. The concentration of thought and compression style marks it is a metaphysical poem. The metaphysical conceits are drawn from geography mythology scholastic and philosophy and an intellectual approach to the subject of love make the poem a metaphysical poem. Read more about Poetry        

             
The title phrase in John Donne's poem "The Good-Morrow", ‘Good Morrow’ means, good morning. It is a form of greeting when one first meets someone in the morning session. The lover in the poem bids Good morning to the souls of his and his beloved which have woken up to the realization of love. It has a deepening significance as it refers to the awakenings of the souls of the lovers after a long slumber and their meeting and falling in love with each other. Read more about Poetry

The poem begins with a listed questionnaire:

“I wonder, by my troth, what thou and I
Did, till we loved? Were we not weaned till then?
But sucked on country pleasures, childishly?
Or snorted we in the Seven Sleepers’ den? ”

Shakespeare in India:Shakespearean Studies in India with the Introduction of English Education in India (Assamese) in the Early Nineteenth Century



Historians may assess the British occupation of India in different ways with much good that this occupation brought and more evil that it left behind. But perhaps no one will disagree that introduction of  William Shakespeare   on Indian sub-continent was an act of unmixed good which continued to shed its rays on the Indian literary scene even when the sun had set in the Indian Empire of Shakespeare’s countrymen.

Nature of English Comedy before Shakespeare: Analyzing the Key Points




As in Greece, drama in England was in its beginning a religious thing. Its oldest continuous tradition was from the mediaeval Church. Early in the Middle Ages the clergy and their parishioners began the habit, at Christmas, Easter and other holy days, of Playing some part of the story of Christ's life suitable to the festival of the day. Read More about Drama  These plays were liturgical, and originally, no doubt, overshadowed by a choral element. But gradually the inherent human capacity for mimicry and drama took the upper hand; from ceremonies they developed into performances; they passed from the stage in the church porch to the stage in the street.  

During the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, Miracle plays and Mysteries afforded one of the favourite entertainments of the common people. Miracle plays, in the strict sense of the term, were dramatic representations of miracles performed by saints; mysteries, of incidents from the New Testament and elsewhere, bearing upon the fundamental principles of Roman Catholicism. The distinction, however, was not strictly observed. Monks were the authors of these plays, and they were acted in the churches, or on stages erected in the churchyard or in the fields, or, as at Coventry, on movable stages wheeled from street to street. The actors were sometimes the brethren of a monastery, sometimes the members of a trade guild. Though Miracle plays were no doubt written with a moral purpose, we often find that in their desire to be amusing and instructive at the same time, the writers of them permitted the amusing element to overbalance the instructive one. They included comic interludes. Read More about Drama  These humorous episodes inserted into serious biblical narratives or dramatic histories of saints captivated the illiterate masses. Joseph's confusion over Mary's virgin conception of Jesus Christ, a Jewish spice seller haggling with Jesus's disciples, and Noah's frustrations with his implacably skeptical spouse were among the situations most often enacted. The liberty often taken with Scriptural personages for the sake of comic effect, and the frequent buffoonery and ribaldry found in the plays, strange though they seem to modern readers, were no doubt eminently attractive to the rude crowd that witnessed the performances; but they can scarcely have tended to its edification or improvement.

Comedies rose from village merry-makings during the vintage, the word comedy meaning village song. Comedy at the time when Shakespeare began writing may be said to fall into four classes: From the Miracle play it was an easy transition to the Morality, in which the characters were personified virtues and vices, such as Folly, Repentance, Avarice or the like. By degrees the vices and virtues came to be represented by persons who stood for a type of these, Brutus representing Patriotism, Aristides, Justice, and so on. Plays of this description and Moralities were largely taken advantage of by both Catholic sand Protestants to enforce their several views. Read More about Drama   It is obvious that it is only a single step from Moralities in heir latter form to the regular drama; though whether the true modern drama arose out of them or from the Latin classical drama maybe doubted. At any rate, the first English comedy was written by a classical scholar, who found his model in Terence, and owed nothing to the writers of Moralities. Nicholas Udall, headmaster of Eton, was its author. It is called "Ralph Roister Doister," and was first printed in 1566, but is known to have been written several years previously. Divided into acts and scenes, and furnished with a regular plot, it marks a great advance upon the plays which had hitherto gratified the thirst of the people for dramatic representation. It is written in rough verse, and is pervaded by a sort of schoolboy fun, which would seem to suggest that it was originally written for representation by the author's pupils.

There is first the hard, unlovely type, represented at its best by Shakespeare's Comedy of Errors, descended from Latin comedy, with perhaps some slight admixture of the fabliau element. The play exemplifies the common Elizabethan practice of adapting classical comedy to the contemporary stage: The plot is loosely based on the play Menaechmi of Roman dramatist Plautus, and it also borrows from his Amphitrus. The story revolves around the twins Antipholus of Ephesus and Antipholus of Syracuse, their parents, and the family’s two servants, Dromio of Ephesus and Dromio of Syracuse, who are also twins. Read More about Drama  A shipwreck separates the family into two groups, leaving the mother with one son and one servant and the father with the other pair. The 'errors' of the play’s title are caused by repeated instances of mistaken identity. These are finally dispelled when the two pairs of twins meet, are properly recognized, and rejoin the other members of their families. After the Comedy of Errors Shakespeare never wrote a whole play in this style, though traces of it appear in comic sub-plots—as, for example, the scenes with Gobbo in The Merchant of Venice.

Much more important is the comedy of Lyly. Examples of direct borrowing have often been cited, but so thin and pale do Lyly's figures look beside the greater master's creations that we are apt to sweep aside the evidence of this debt as fundamentally unimportant. Shakespeare had, however, clearly made a careful study of Lyly's work, and we must allow for the probability that he saw at least as much in it as we do. Now, Lyly's plays are essentially masques; that is to say, they are representations of actual incidents of the time at which they were performed, translated by the language of allegory and symbolism into a more radiant plane of existence. Read More about Drama The characters, for example, in Endymion are not fully worked out—merely designated—because the audience knew that Endymion was Leicester, and Cynthia Elizabeth, and so on. It was not the business of the poet to create, but to flood the given facts with a golden light of poetry which should show the entire fairer connections. The masque is, in fact, the direct antithesis of satire. Now, the great comedy of all other literatures belongs to the satirical family—it exaggerates whatever is ugly in human nature in order to make it ridiculous—and Ben Jonson's comedy shows that without Lyly and Shakespeare English comedy would probably have followed the same lines. The scene of Shakespeare's comedy is laid in a golden world, and the suggestion of that ethereal atmosphere comes from Lyly. Lyly failed because he does not at the bottom of his heart believe in his golden world; Shakespeare's task was to give it truth. For example, we may feel that the creation of Viola's twin to satisfy Olivia is a little improbable/ but it is at least better than Lyly's device of actually transforming a girl into a man to remedy a similar mistake of “Fancy." Still, it is from Lyly that we must start to understand Shakespeare’s comedy at its heart, and The Tempest, designed as it seems to be, in its present form, as a more or less personal statement, shows everywhere memories of Lyly's work.

Again there is a group of plays whose homogeneity has been somewhat overlooked those constructed with an Induction. The most interesting is Peele's Old Wives' Tale, but the plays of Munday, The Taming of a Shrew, and the practice of Jonson; show how widespread was its use. It is worth while to examine briefly what seems to have been the artistic theory involved in its use, because Shakespeare apparently repudiated it. Read More about Drama  The character of the Drunkard in A Shrew was of a kind sure to appeal to Shakespeare, and apparently he could not find it in his heart to cut him out altogether; but he destroys the effect of an Induction by leaving out the later dialogues with Sly, and, by clearing him off the stage.

Timeline of Comedy:

πŸ‘‰425 BC: Aristophanes produces "The Acharnians"
πŸ‘‰254 BC - 184 BC: Plautus writes plays
πŸ‘‰1550?: Kyogen plays emerge
πŸ‘‰1550?: Commedia dell'arte emerges
πŸ‘‰1564 – 1616: William Shakespeare writes plays, including comedies
πŸ‘‰1666: MoliΓ¨re produces "The Misanthrope"
πŸ‘‰1842 – 1848: Balzac writes "The Human Comedy"
πŸ‘‰February 1895: Oscar Wilde's "The Importance of Being Earnest" premieres
πŸ‘‰1923: George Bernard Shaw publishes "Saint Joan"
πŸ‘‰1950s: The rise of television led to the creation of classic sitcoms such as "I Love Lucy" (1951-1957) and "The Honeymooners" (1955-1956).
πŸ‘‰1960s: The counterculture movement inspired a new wave of comedy, with comedians like Lenny Bruce and Richard Pryor pushing the boundaries of what was considered acceptable in stand-up comedy.
πŸ‘‰1970s: The popularity of sketch comedy shows like "Saturday Night Live" (1975-present) and "Monty Python's Flying Circus" (1969-1974) rose, paving the way for future sketch shows.
πŸ‘‰1980s: The emergence of cable television and the VHS market allowed for more diverse forms of comedy, leading to the rise of alternative comedians like Eddie Murphy and Robin Williams.
πŸ‘‰1990s: Sitcoms such as "Seinfeld" (1989-1998) and "Friends" (1994-2004) became cultural phenomenons, and stand-up comedians like Jerry Seinfeld and Chris Rock continued to dominate the comedy scene.
πŸ‘‰2000s: The rise of the internet allowed for the proliferation of web-based comedy, and shows like "The Office" (2005-2013) and "30 Rock" (2006-2013) pushed the boundaries of what was considered acceptable for network television.
πŸ‘‰2010s: The proliferation of streaming platforms led to the creation of more diverse and boundary-pushing comedies, such as "Master of None" (2015-present) and "Atlanta" (2016-present). Stand-up comedy continued to thrive, with comedians like Louis C.K. and Dave Chappelle continuing to push boundaries.


Ref: 
1. Dobree, B., & Wimsatt, W. K. (1956). English Stage Comedy. Shakespeare Quarterly, 7(4), 423. https://doi.org/10.2307/2866366

John Dryden's Fables, Ancient and Modern: "Preface to the Fables": General Discussions


“If by the people you understand the multitude, the hoi polloi, 'tis no matter what they think; they are sometimes in the right, sometimes in the wrong; their judgement is a mere lottery.”-John Dryden (1631 - 1700) English poet, playwright, and literary critic. "Of Dramatick Poesy"

The celebrated Preface to the Fables, one of his most important essays, is commonly regarded as one of the masterpieces of English criticism, and appeared a few months before Dryden's death in 1699. Read More about Age of Dryden This was prefixed to a volume of translations and adaptations, which bore the title Fables, Ancient and Modern, translated into Verse from Homer, Ovid, Boccaccio, and Chaucer: with Original Poems. The Preface as it stands is chiefly a criticism of Chaucer, renowned for its catholicity of taste, but it contains also comparisons of the different poets named in the title, and a defence of his own conduct from charges made against him by Blackmore, Milbourn, and, particularly, Jeremy Collier, whose Short View of the Profaneness of the English Stage (1698) had attacked the plays of Dryden, among others.

The Preface illustrates the general character of Dryden's criticism; like all his other pieces, it is occasional, and seems to indicate the things that he was interested in and the principles that he devised and employed. Read More about Criticism  It is a very interesting study to trace the change in material and the critical principles which these prefaces show, and for this study Mr. W. P. Ker's Essays of John Dryden is a valuable book.

Dryden employs a method of comparison, balancing Homer and Virgil, Chaucer and Ovid, Chaucer and Boccaccio, Chaucer and Horace and Virgil. Read More about Criticism  The material comprises facts of life, of personality, of time and place, of character, of learning, of style, of invention, of imagination, of structural design (which Dryden regards as very important in the determination of the result), of understanding of the subject, of verisimilitude, of dramatic naturalness and taste, of good sense and judgment, the "following of nature," of style and verse and harmony, and such things. Read More about Age of Dryden    Under some of these heads his facts are wrong, as in his attributing of Piers Ploughman to Chaucer, and his strictures on Chaucer's verse, and, in general, his knowledge does not, in all ways, correspond to our own (cf. Lounsbury's Studies in Chancer, for a more modern view of the facts), but wherein he fails is because of deficient knowledge rather than by reason of unsound judgment on the evidence ; in both knowledge and taste he was, as we are fond of thinking, far in advance of his age.

Let's Find out the Answers:
  •  Make an analysis of the topics of Dryden's essay. Point out any other principles besides those enumerated that you have noticed, and also show the points of comparison on which the critical findings rest. What does Dryden say with regard to the relative value of these points of interest?
  • What does he say of "conceits," and how sound are his reasons?
  • Compare the present essay with the Epistle Dedicatory to the Rival Ladies (1664, Ker, Vol. I., p. i) with a view to showing the difference of material in each. With the preface to Annus Mirabilis (1666, Ker, Vol. I., p. 10).
  • With the essay on Heroic Plays (1672, Ker, Vol. I., p. 148), and others. Compare it, in point of material, critical principles, appeal to authority, method of arriving at judgments, and form, with the celebrated Essay of Dramatic Poesy, 1668.
  • Compare Dryden from these points of view with preceding and succeeding critics, such as Sidney, Ben Jonson, Addison, and Samuel Johnson.                                        
 Ardhendu De  

Ref:
1. W. P. KER. (1900). ESSAYS OF JOHN DRYDEN. OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS, AT THE CLARENDON PRESS.
 2. Criticism in English Poetry, Chapter, Dryden- M. A. Goodman and F. N. Chorean

George Bernard Shaw as a Dramatic Artist: Mastery of Stagecraft, Elaborate stage-directions, Realistic



Is George Bernard Shaw a Dramatist or Philosopher?

George Bernard Shaw has a definite message to deliver. He has a philosophy to propound. “I am no ordinary playwright. I am a specialist in immoral and heretical plays. My reputation was gained by my persistent struggle to force the public to reconsider its morals. I write plays with the deliberate object of converting the nation to my opinion on sexual and social matters. I have no other incentive to write plays, as I am not dependent on it for my livelihood.”- On account of this he is generally regarded as a philosopher, a propagandist, a debater and a social reformer and not as a dramatist and a man of the theater.

“Shaw is a literary satirist and iconoclast, but no playwright.” This is the view of many. But nothing is farther from the truth. Shaw “is essentially a man of the theater and his natural affinity for the stage is as strong in him as his evangelical tendency”. It is altogether wrong to think that he “is merely an advanced propagandist who has chosen the theater as a ready and insidious instrument for the furthering of his ideas.” Shaw is essentially a man of the theater. He is a consummate dramatic artist. He has shown greater knowledge of the stage and its technique than any of his contemporaries. He has taken greater pains to make his plays really interesting and appealing to the audience. The dramaturgic skill of his plays is no less essential than their philosophic ideas. Essentially a playwright, him plays are instinct with the life of the theater.

A Wonderful Mastery of Stagecraft

 George Bernard Shaw had a wonderful mastery of stagecraft. His skill in the art of construction of plays was consummate. He evolved a technique of his own to suit his purpose. But he was no innovator and did not invent any new technique. He adopted the traditional methods whenever he found them suitable for his purpose. He borrowed freely from Ibsen who introduced some new methods in his drama. Thus he made a harmonious synthesis of the old and the new methods to evolve one to suit the need of his plays. In imitation of Ibsen he discarded ‘asides’ and ‘soliloquies’. He directed his effort to an easy and natural concatenation of events as was not seen in the plays of his time. As a matter of fact he “used the technique of Euripides and Moliere, he revived the idiosyncratic differentiation of character seen in Shakespeare, he provided the actors and actresses with enormously effective parts, such as had not been created by a British writer for nearly three hundred years, and he restored the long rhetorical speeches which are in important feature of primitive dramaturgy”.

 Shaw’s Dramatic Technique 

The special features of Shaw’s dramatic technique are:
 (i) His prefaces, 
(ii) His elaborate stage-directions, 
(iii) His rejection of the artificial limitations of the classical unities, and
 (iv) Lack of action and conflict in his plays.

Shaw
George Bernard Shaw
was hardly dependent on the stage for the publicity of his plays. He was fully conscious of the blindness of the commercial theaters of London. He knew that the theatrical managers would be shy to produce his plays for commercial reasons since his plays would not readily attract a large audience. He, therefore, decided to make the appeal of his plays wider by first committing them to print. So, he wrote his plays, primarily more for reading than for acting. With this end in view he wrote a preface for each of his plays to introduce it to the reading public. 

With the same end in view he gave elaborate stage-directions in his plays. His prefaces were intended to explain the purpose of his plays and the messages they were meant to convey. They gave him an opportunity to argue at length certain matters which were of interest to him. By means of his elaborate stage-directions he aimed at creating the atmosphere of the stage in the study of his plays. They combine the function of the novel and the drama. They create the necessary atmosphere, comment upon stage-settings and interpret characters rightly.

Shaw's Refusal of Three Classical Unities of Time, Place and Action

The English playwrights immediately before Shaw were in favor of keeping up the three classical unities of time, place and action in their plays under the influence of the French dramatists whom they imitated. Shaw rejected those artificial restrictions outright and followed Shakespeare in violating the classical unities in the construction of his plays.


No Conflict in Shaw's Drama

Shaw’s plays are marked by an absence of conflict which is an essential element in dramatic action. This is regarded as a serious drawback of Shaw’s dramatic art. It is a fact that conflict in the physical sense is really absent in Shaw’s plays. But his plays are not altogether without conflict. There is always a mental conflict present in his plays. There is clash of competing ideas and opposing standards of human values in them. “If conflict in drama necessarily implies a clash involving either violent physical action or intense emotional disturbance, then conflict in that sense is often lacking in the Shavian drama. It is however by design lacking, and its place is taken by mental action, which to Shaw is far more exciting. For the conflict of passion Shaw substitutes the conflict of thought and belief: or rather, he brings moral passions to the stage to brake the long monopoly of physical and sensual passions. His is the drama of the thinking man. The true revolution which must be ascribed to him is the transference of conflict of modern drama from the physical to the mental place.” This is how A. C. Ward has commented on the absence of conflict in Shaw’s plays.

No Action But Dramatic Dialogues

Shaw’s plays are lacking in action. They are, in fact, no more than dramatic dialogues. The characters in his plays merely stand or sit and discuss and argue things. They talk together and hold debates. They do things little. This, of course, is true. But the lack of action in his plays has been amply compensated by the flow if ideas, by the dazzling bouts of intellectual swordsmanship, and also by amusing wit. There is a profusion of these elements in his plays to keep the attention of the audience sufficiently engrossed so that they never feel for the absence of action. The fact is that Shaw is not very much interested is action. He reduces action to make room for discussions. He does not devise action that develops naturally from the characters or is a logical outcome of the situation. Sometimes he introduces violent and arbitrary action to keep the play moving. Such action does not spring naturally from the development of the plot or the characters. It bears little relation to the general structure of the play. It is often ‘arbitrary and convulsive, and does not spring naturally or resolve itself into the organic structure of the play.

Plot of a Shavian Drama

The plot of a Shavian drama is very simple. It is made up very meager elements and is altogether free from multiplicity of action. There is no complexity of events. It is usually divided into three Acts but occasionally into four Acts. There is no subdivision into scenes.

Shaw’s characterization

It is generally believed that Shaw’s characterization is defective. The characters of Shaw’s dramas are shadowy unrealities. They are not individuals but mere types. They are not characters by automatons bestriding the characters are merely “mouthpieces for his own ideas”, and they preach openly or by implication Shaw’s own gospel. The view regarding the characters of Shaw’s dramas is only partially true. It is true that “the larger numbers of his personages are instinct only with the life of intelligence and are but the mouthpieces of the author.” It is equally true that “everything that a character says comes out of his creators mind.” But it is not true that all his characters are not “individual people with authentic personalities but only gramophone records” to express his own ideas and air his own views.

 Shaw’s characters are not without variety and vividness. They have a peculiar quality which makes them stay in the memory and enables them to pass into conversation. Shaw’s principal characters are, with more or less deliberation, abstraction from humanity but his minor characters are human beings drawn in the spirit of Shakespeare or Dickens, though they too serve as black ground to his ideas. Shaw’s women “are distinctly unpleasant and practically unsexed women. Their bodies are as dry and had as their minds, and even where they run after men, as in the case of Anne in Man and Superman, the pursuit has as much sense appeal as a time table. Whether such women ever existed, or whether in creating them Ibsen convinced Shaw, they ought to exist as a counter-irritant to the romantic, swooning, novel reading females of our boyhood, is an open question.” Shaw’s characters are excellent talkers. They are never dull and monotonous. They are “various, versatile and vital”. They live in a world of their own ideas and are quite at home there. 

Language of Reason and Intellect

Shaw writes his plays in prose which is the language of reason and intellect and not in verse which is the language of emotion. He is one of the greatest masters of English prose with a masterly command over the English language he writes natural, racy, and vivid dialogues. His language smacks of cold intellectuality. It is free from emotional fervor. It is sparkling with fun, wit and humor. It serves a practical and utilitarian purpose and is used for reasoning, argument and discussion. He is a great stylist. His style is peculiarly his own. He wields it is an effective weapon to assert his point of view with conviction. Shaw himself has said that his style is an instrument of assertion. “A true style”, says he, “is never achieved for its own sake……Effectiveness of assertion is the Alpha and Omega of style. He who has nothing to assert has no style and can have none: he who has something to assert will go as far in power of style as its momentousness and his conviction will carry him. ”  

The Reality of Life 

George Bernard Shaw is a realist. He writes with a serious purpose. The reality of life is the most serious and exciting thing to him. He finds that ‘life is real, life is earnest,’ But he has not imitated the appearances of life. He has explained to his audiences the reality that lies at the core of things beneath their deceptive appearances. His realism is absolutely free from any touch of romance and sentimentalism. He has based his dramas on what he regards, as ‘genuinely scientific natural history’. As scientific history is free from romance, his dramas too are entirely free from it.

Conclusion

Shaw  writes with a purpose. He has made his plays vehicles of his ideas. His plays are about something that matters. The following observation of Cyril Edwin Mitchinson Joad deserves attention in this connection. He says, “Shaw’s interests in his plays lie pre-eminently in morals, politics and philosophy. He is in fact, a philosopher. Moreover, he possesses, as did Plato, a strong dramatic gift. The gift he deliberately uses to bring his ideas on human life and how it should be lived and on human communities and how they should be run to the notice of the people who would not read strictly philosophical works, presenting them so entertainingly and startlingly that audiences who saw the plays would remember either through pleasure or from shock the ideas which had been brought so forcibly to their notice.” 


References
1. George Bernard Shaw | Biography, Plays, & Facts. (n.d.). Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/biography/George-Bernard-Shaw
2. Plays by George Bernard Shaw : Shaw, Bernard, 1856-1950 : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive. (n.d.). Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/playsbygeorgeber0000shaw
3. Demaray, J. G. (1963). Bernard Shaw and C. E. M. Joad: The Adventures of Two Puritans in Their Search for God. PMLA, 78(3), 262–270. https://doi.org/10.2307/460869
4. Barry, P. C. (1945). The Unwisdom of George Bernard Shaw. The Irish Monthly, 73(870), 510–518. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20515449
5. Joad, C.E.M. Shaw. London: Victor Gollangz, 1949.
6.Shaw, G.B. Preface. Plays Unpleasant. London: Penguin, 1946.

Metaphysical Poetry: Examine Major Metaphysical Poets


"In the seventeenth century a dissociation of sensibility set in from which we have never recovered."
T. S. Eliot (1888 - 1965)

 Introduction

It was Dr. Samuel Johnson who first christened Donne and his followers the metaphysical poets in his Life of Cowley. About the beginning of the 17th century appeared a race of writers that may be termed the metaphysical poets. Johnson derived the term from Dryden’s disparaging remark that Donne "Affect the metaphysics”. So in current literary criticism ‘Metaphysical’ underlies the special feature of Donne’s poets –The lively play of intellect, the alliance of passion and playfulness and a reorganization of many-sidedness of human passion -complex and dramatic and unusual in syntax and imagery. The poetic practice of Donne started a powerful movement which unfenced a large body of poetry in the first halt of 17th century and brought about a revival of metaphysical poetic tradition in the modern era. 

Characteristics of Metaphysical Poetry

After careful evaluations of metaphysical poets a few common traits are found. first of all it's Complex Conceits. Metaphysical poetry employs intricate and unconventional metaphors, often combining disparate ideas to explore profound philosophical or spiritual concepts. added to that there is Intellectual Wit. The poets often use wit and wordplay to engage readers intellectually, creating intricate and thought-provoking verses that require deep contemplation. Their poetry is Paradox and Ambiguity, sometimes even ludicrously unwanted.  However majority of the Metaphysical poets embrace paradox and ambiguity, using contradictory ideas and images to challenge conventional wisdom and explore the complexities of existence. this school of poetry combines Intellectual and Emotional Elements, often veiling intense emotions beneath the surface of elaborate metaphysical conceits. They never stop experiments with Unconventional verse Forms, such as irregular rhyme schemes and meter, to match the complex and unconventional ideas expressed in the poems.

Now let us examine major metaphysical poets under the following heads.

John Donne

John Donne (1572-1631) 

Known for his complex metaphysical conceits, Donne's poetry explores themes of love, spirituality, and mortality with intellectual rigor and emotional depth. He is the most independent of the Elizabethan poets revolted, as Albert says, against the easy faced style, stock imagery and pastoral conventions of follower of Spenser. He aimed at reality of thought and vivid nests of expression. “Wit, the soul of metaphysical poetry, makes Donne a poet of exceptional brilliance. It is his very genoas that fashions his feelings and his thought” (Legouis) His poetry embraces principally themes of love and religion, metaphysical in his conception and vigorous expressions of his intensely perennial feeling and reveals a powerful and complex being. They are profoundly sensuous and very often sublimated by the thought of death. The Anniversary, The Flea, The Good Morrow, A Nocturnal upon St. Lucy’s Day, A valediction: Forbidding Mourning , The Sun Raising, The Canonization, Holy Sonnets are of his most typical metaphysical poems. They all display intellectual complex imagery and irregularity of form. He frequently employed the conceit, an elaborate metaphor making striking syntheses of apparently unrelated objects or ideas. His intellectuality, introspection, and use of colloquial diction, seemingly unpoetic but always uniquely precise in meaning and connotation, make his poetry boldly divergent from the smooth, elegant verse of his day. His passion, feeling and sensuality are couched in wit and conceits.

 In portraying these characteristics and sudden flight of mood from the material to the spiritual, Donne resort to breath- taking, farfetched and fantastic images; parted lovers are like the legs of a pair of compasses, lovers is a spider  which ‘transubstantiates’, all his sick body is a map, his physician is a cosmographers and death his south-west discoveries,. He religious poems comprising the ‘Holy smock are the expressions of a deep and trouble soul. Intense and personal as the sonnets are, they are characterized by the intellectual subtlety, the scholastic learning and the wit and conceits of the love poems. However, inspire of ‘affecting the metaphysics,’ as Dryden alleged, there is no doubt that Donne enriched poetic tradition in the way he refined thought. Donne exerted considerable influence on his followers, their poetry has lyrical beauty, love or religions subject, metrical felicity of speech.

George Herbert (1593-1633)

 He is remembered chiefly for his religious poems The Retreat, The Temple and The Collar. Comparing Donne he has a simple and unimpeded devoutness but shows his metaphysical quality in his usual conceits and in the blending of thought and felling. His poetry combines religious devotion with intricate metaphors and imagery, expressing his deep faith and exploring the complexities of human experience.

Thomas Carew (1598-1639)

The lyrics of Thomas Carew show the influence of Donne but have a gravity and wit of their own. He fuses intense religious imagery with metaphysical exploration, often employing paradoxes and vivid sensory language to express spiritual longing and ecstasy. His long poem The Raptures is, however, marred by sex and bad taste.

Richard Crashaw (1613-49)

Richard Crashaw, the Roman Catholic poet, shows the influence of Donne in his best wrote poem steps to The Temple. His poems are not always metaphysical inspire of his preference for the stricken conceits. They lack complexity of mind, conflict and tension and his approach is more emotional then thoughtful and his images are pictorial than intellectual 

Henry Vaughan(1622-95)

 Vaughan's metaphysical poetry delves into themes of nature, spirituality, and the human soul, blending complex metaphors with a profound sense of wonder and contemplation. Henry was influenced by Donne and Herbert. He has a mysticism as revealed in such poem The Retreat and I saw Eternity The other Night. Vaughan was more successful in his love poems. However he anticipated words, words in his mystic regard for nature.

Andrew Marvell (1621-1678)

Marvell's metaphysical poetry encompasses themes of love, politics, and nature, characterized by his wit, intellectual depth, and imaginative use of language. Marvell's intellectually rigorous and finely balanced lyric verse include the well-known lyric works  The Garden, To His Coy Mistress, The Definition of Love,  and  Bermudas. 

Thomas Traherne (1636-1674)

Traherne is often considered as the last of the Metaphysical poets. Traherne's metaphysical poetry explores the relationship between nature, God, and human existence, often reflecting a sense of wonder and celebrating the beauty and interconnectedness of the world.

References
 1.ALBERT. (2000). History of English Literature (Fifth Edition) [English]. OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS.
2. Legouis & Cazamian’s : History of English Literature - in 5 Vols. (n.d.). Legouis & Cazamian&Rsquo;S : History of English Literature - in 5 Vols. https://www.shreepublishers.com/index.php?route=product/product&product_id=1190
3.Full text of “Johnson’s Lives of the poets.” (n.d.). Full Text of “Johnson’s Lives of the Poets.” https://archive.org/stream/johnsonslivespo02napigoog/johnsonslivespo02napigoog_djvu.txt

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