Donne and w;t

Comparative study of text and context

Ideas Intertextuality
Death, Love-Human Relationships, Religious Belief-God/Science vs Religion, Suffering
Values
What values are explored?
How is this related to context? (Change)
How (Content)?

Why?

How do they relate to each other?

How does the composer get their ideas across to the responder?

If Poisonous minerals
If poisonous minerals, and if that tree
Whose fruit threw death on else immortal us,
If lecherous goats, if serpents envious
Cannot be damned, alas, why should I be?
Why should intent or reason, born in me,
Make sins, else equal, in me more heinous?
And Mercy being easy, and glorious
To God; in his stern wrath, why threatens he?
But who am I, that dare dispute with thee
O God? Oh! of thine only worthy blood,
And my tears, make a heavenly Lethean flood,
And drown in it my sin's black memory;
That thou remember them, some claim as debt,
I think it mercy, if thou wilt forget
Donne
- Donne writes about judgement,
- If all of these cannot be damned, why should I be?
- Why should my sins be considered worse than anyone elses, because I know the difference
between good and evil?
- Intellectualism
- Why should I not be forgiven if its so easy for god to do?
- You cant over intellectualize death.
- You cant argue your way out of death.
- Biblical references
- Rhetorical questions
- Lethean-The river of forgetfulness-Greek allusion
- Binary opposites-Sin and Redemption
W;t
- Jason is a symbol of science (intellectual, unfeeling) I havent got time for this)
- Pseudo-memory scene, almost a flashback. Commentary on Donnes sonnet 9.
- Intellectual language, complex, lecturing, analysis.
Donnes poem demonstrates a futile attempt to convince God that a mans sin should not be worth
more than any other.
Death Be Not Proud
Death be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for, thou art not so,
For, those, whom thou think'st, thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poore death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleepe, which but thy pictures bee,
Much pleasure, then from thee, much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee doe goe,
Rest of their bones, and souls deliverie.
Thou art slave to Fate, Chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poyson, warre, and sicknesse dwell,
And poppie, or charmes can make us sleepe as well,
And better then thy stroake; why swell'st thou then;
One short sleepe past, wee wake eternally,
And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die
Donne

W;t

This Is My Plays Last Scene
This is my play's last scene; here heavens appoint
My pilgrimage's last mile; and my race,
Idly, yet quickly run, hath this last pace,
My span's last inch, my minute's latest point;
And gluttonous death will instantly unjoint
My body and my soul, and I shall sleep a space;
But my'ever-waking part shall see that face
Whose fear already shakes my every joint.
Then, as my soul to'heaven, her first seat, takes flight,
And earth-born body in the earth shall dwell,
So fall my sins, that all may have their right,
To where they'are bred, and would press me, to hell.
Impute me righteous, thus purg'd of evil,
For thus I leave the world, the flesh, the devil.

Donne

W;t


Wit: Apt association of thought and expression, calculated to surprise and
delight by its unexpectedness. OED
Edson heard that John Donne was one of the difficult poets to read, so he
seemed to be a perfect subject for her hard-edged protagonists research. Not
ever having studied Donne, Edson spent countless hours sifting through
centuries of criticism and commentary. She even found a model for her
character E.M. Ashford in the real-life, Oxford University professor, Helen
Gardner, whose meticulous work on Donnes Holy Sonnets made her a well-
known authority among scholars. Scholarly quibbles are very meaningful,
notes Edson, A poem with a comma and a poem with a semi-colon are two
different poems. She found that to anatomize a poem down to its
punctuation was similar in some respects to the way a medical researcher
studies the anatomy of a human being.
To say it popped into my mind is the most accurate way of describing
it. It just came to me.
When comparing her play to Donnes poetry we need to establish the
similarities and differences in a number of areas.
Context and Background
Poetry of John Donne Drama of Margaret Edson: W;t
Personal Personal
Born in 1572, Donne's Father died when
John was 3 years old. His brother Henry
died of gaol fever for harbouring a Catholic
priest. As other Catholic families they were
grievously persecuted.
It may be the deaths of two people close to
him at a young age left an indelible
impression on a young man.
Born in 1961, in Washington, D.C. where she
grew up, her mother, a medical social worker
and her father, a newspaper columnist,
encouraged her early theatrical leanings:
Edson and her girlhood friend, Julia Louis-
Dreyfus, of Seinfeld fame, performed plays in
their basements and Edson was an active
member of the theatre program in high
school.
Jack Donne trained as lawyer led a
dissolute rakish student life,
A great visitor of ladies and a great
frequenter of Playes
Donne left the Catholic Church likely due to
lack of any chance of advancement.
In his middle years, he writes mainly of
love, but in his mature years, Dr. Donne
composed The Holy Sonnets shortly after
his wife died when he decided:wholly on
heavenly things my mind is set.
It shows us Donne in his mature years, no
longer overtly concerned with the
relationship between the sexes but with his
relationship with God.
Some have argued that as a result of
leaving the Catholic Church to become
Dean of St Pauls Anglican Church caused
him to become neurotic and guilt-ridden.
Donne used a great deal of specialized
knowledge in his poetry. He, like Hamlet
was an eclectic Renaissance scholar and
makes references to Astronomy, astrology,
world exploration, geometry, medicine,
metallurgy, and numerous other scientific
discoveries.
While Donne writes passionately and
intensively on love and death, he is adopts
a detached objective approach, rather than
a maudlin or sentimental one.
We cannot assume that the persona of his
poems necessarily reflect his situations or
life.
She graduated magna cum laude in 1983 with
a degree in Renaissance history. Edson spent
a couple years doing odd jobs.
In 1985 she took a job as a clerk on an
oncology/AIDS unit at a research hospital in
Washington. The unit was doing clinical trials
of the drug AZT for AIDS patients and
developing new protocols for the treatment of
ovarian cancer. In her unobtrusive clerical
position, Edson was able to watch the
interactions of very sick patients with their
caregivers, and to observe how patients
coped with their illnesses and the often
dehumanising environment of a bustling
hospital. She left the hospital after a year, but
the experience stayed with her.
In 1991, just prior to her thirtieth birthday, she
decided to write a play about her year at the
hospital. She was struck by the low survival
rate of women with ovarian cancer and awed
by their dignity and bravery in the face of
death: One was a science writer with three
children, going through very aggressive
treatment for ovarian cancer. I tried to tell her,
in my 22-year-old way, that I admired her
courage, and she said very calmly, I dont
have much choice, do I?
Edson knew she wanted her main character
to be someone who moved from a position of
authority and power to a position of
dependency. She considered protagonists in
medicine and law, but liked the idea of a
highly of articulate academic who discovers
that her expertise in literary interpretation has
little to do with the real-life trauma of cancer,
which cannot be addressed through scholarly
research or school intellectual argument.
Poetry of John Donne Drama of Margaret Edson: W;t
Prevalence of Death:
Sheltered from Death:
Death had a more immediate presence in
the past than in todays sanitised sheltered
times. With public executions - decapitation
of traitors, heads spiked on London Bridge,
burnings at the stakes, dismemberment of
bodies, people were more exposed to the
grim gruesome realities of prevalent death.
Fifteen thousand people died in London
during the plague while Donne lived there
and each morning a mortuary cart would
We are cushioned and protected from seeing dead
bodies to preserve their dignity. Most people have rarely
see a dead body as it is usually covered by a sheet or
body bag, coffins draped with shrouds are seldom
opened for viewings.
George W Bushs administration even banned the
televising of coffins of returning dead from the Iraq war.
pass down the streets calling for people to
bring out your dead to be flung and piled
upon each other for mass immolations. No
wonder they were inured and brutalised but
also pre-occupied by death.
Dead members of the family were laid out at
home so there was a lot more immediacy,
awareness and acceptance of death.
Social, Cultural and Historical: Social, Cultural and Historical:
Elizabethans were highly conscious of
Heaven and Hell. There is a strong
certitude of an afterlife.
Here is an interesting comment about the
times taken from an essay called
Shakespeares Tragic Justice by C J
Sisson
For the Elizabethan, and for Shakespeare,
the unseen other world of eternity was not
only more certain in mens belief, but it was
closer to the world of human reality, ...... . A
man prepared his baggage for his passage
through death to that other world as he
would prepare for a journey from Stratford
to London, not booted and spurred, but
shriven, anointed, having made his peace
with God as well as his last will and
testament, indeed as part of that peace. For
so the Order for the Visitation of the Sick
admonishes a man to make his will for the
better discharging of his conscience.
Donne was fascinated by the mystery of
Christs death with its possibility for
Salvation.
Anti-Catholicism represents a division in
religious belief.
Edson is writing in the time of Post
Modernism, with its lack of certainty on most
issues including the afterlife.
Absurdity (that which has no purpose,
meaning goal or objective) is the result of
disillusionment with the rationalism, which
attempted to justify the exploitation of the
working class and poor, the affluence of the
rich, the wanton yet condoned destructiveness
of two world wars, and the unquestioned belief
in evolution and progress. No longer can we
accept a unanimous consensus of moral and
social order.
The decline of religious faith, the destruction
of the belief in automatic social and biological
progress, the discovery of vast areas of
irrational and unconscious forces within the
human psyche, the loss of a sense of control
over human development in an age of
totalitarianism, and weapons of mass
destruction and mass persuasion, have all
eroded a sense of confidence in the future of
the world.
Individualism ranks supreme.
Values and Ideas
Poetry of John Donne Drama of Margaret Edson: W;t
Purpose and Audience Purpose and Audience
Donne flaunts his cleverness- his wit
To demonstrate his wit was all his art.
I did best when I had least truth for
my subjects.
Donnes poems range from a passionate,
intense and personal declaration of love to
a philosophic celebration of the dualism of:
soul and body, emotion and intellect. His
later poems deal with a pre-occupation with
death.
Donne is writing and reading his work in the
court of the King. He didnt want to be
known as a writer.
The play is a play about death and dying, but
what seems to have impressed audiences is
the lesson the play presents for the living.
Edson is driven by a need to expose the
posturing, arrogance and callousness of the
scholarly academic elite of both the Sciences
and the Arts.
Edson was writing for a wider general
audience as she sent her script to as many
theatres as possible.
The definition of self The definition of self
Donne is writing in a period of transition
from medieval concepts of a uniform,
unanimous or monolithic world with one
ruler a monarch, one church Anglo-
Catholic/, one economic system
feudalism, and a conformist outlook in life
to a more tolerant diverse society.
Individuals were expected to submerge
their identity with the larger community.
No man is an island entire of itself
Donne defines himself as a scholar, lover
and finally as Dean of St Pauls, but always
as a penitent sinner unworthy, yet pleading
for Gods mercy and grace.
Individualism runs rampant. People are
obsessed with self serving aspirations and
damn everyone else.
Narcissism rules: We are subtly encouraged
by movies, marketing, advertising and pop
culture, not to regard each other as selves
deserving respect and trust but as objects for
consumption.
Greed is sexier than gratitude,
competitiveness is better than cooperation.
Power and money are what matter.
Mostly we live in a heightened state of
insatiability, wanting what we cant have,
forgetting and discarding what we already
have.
Brittle fragile relationships are normal, with
each person watching their backs rather than
the faces of the person they most want to love
and be loved by.
Forgiveness and Other Acts of Love by
Stephanie Dowrick
Modern celebrity is based on idolising transient
superficial plastic people.
Style and Language
Poetry of John Donne Drama of Margaret Edson: W;t
Direct short - punchy Recognition of need for simplicity
Donne is an iconoclastic he innovatively
breaks the rules and attacks sacred cows.
Donne is recognised for his verbal ability to
arrest our attention.
His language is simple, colloquial, direct
and forceful
His is the language of argument; the
language of logic and reasoning.
He uses of short monosyllabic words to
create a punchy argumentative voice.
He uses natural rhythms and strong lines
often too harsh for our ears.
He uses original creative images - his
unique poetic vision.
Donnes concrete images evoke abstract
ideas.
Irony comes through in Posners statement:
Cancer is the only thing Ive ever wanted. He
is referring to his passion in medical research,
but this statement vividly demonstrates the
quirk of fate that has inverted the positions of
authority between Posner and Bearing.
Cancer, of course, is the last thing that Bearing
wanted.
Play on Words: Double meaning:
Ive got less than two hours. Then
Curtain. (page 2)
Having a former student give me a
pelvic examination was... degrading.
(Page 19)
Ejaculations in Seventeenth Century
Manuscripts and Printed Editions of the
Holy Sonnets. (Expressions in ....)
Issues, Concerns, Themes, Values
Poetry of John Donne Drama of Margaret Edson: W;t
Love and Death Life and Death
As in most literature his is a search for
meaning and direction in life. In the
Canonization he reveals his disillusionment
with society and finds meaning only in his
love.
In an age of change, doubt and uncertainty,
we require something stable to believe in.
Personal experience is one of the few
certainties left.
All experience is personal, emotional and
subjective - but Donne and the other
Metaphysicals used their poetic talents to
define emotional experiences by a series of
intellectual parallels. They tried to objectify
subjective emotions.
In his divine poetry there is the struggle of
faith, the conflict between what Donne was
and what he would be, between will and
conscience; an attempt to bring harmony out
of conflict.
Donnes greatest struggle was to master his
temperament and his greatest hope was not
for forgiveness of his early excesses but for
a consistent piety which would save him from
despair. The sensuous immediacy of the
love lyrics is replaced by moral intensity and
agony of the Holy Sonnets.
Academic elitism is taken to task in one
of her classes Vivian makes this
statement:
Doctrine assures us that no sinner is denied
forgiveness, not even one whose sins are
overweening intellect or overwrought
dramatics.
Cerebral people often neglect the
emotional aspect of their lives and
Edson attempts to illustrate how sterile
life can become if we dont live a full
holistic life.
Techniques:
Poetry of John Donne Drama of Margaret Edson: W;t
Donne appears to have a cocky attitude to authority
Kings, God, The Sun and even Death.
Wit: Dr Samuel Johnson, writing 150 years
after Donnes death. criticised him for:
the most heterogeneous ideas yoked
by violence together.
He also describes this quality as:
a combination of dissimilar images, or
discovery of occult remembrances in things
apparently unlike.
Donnes creates a distinctive dramatic voice
that appears authentic and real. He had a
tremendous influence on other poets who
specialised in the dramatic monologues such
as Robert Browning and T.S. Eliot.
Edson adopts an objective approach rather than the
Aristotelian empathetic one. The initial alienating
device of Vivian Bearing addressing the audience
directly destroys any illusions of empathetic theatre.
It is not my intention to give away the plot; but I think
I die at the end.
Immediately we become detached and become
engaged objectively, rather than emotionally. The
direct narration to the audience helps to economically
speed up the transfer of information.
Other alienating devices include the rapid change of
scenes, flash backs, and the use of irony.
The various flashbacks fill us in on what came before
and give us insights into Vivians past.
We should not assume the speaker is
necessarily Donne or that he is serious. Like
all his poetry, Donne is playing to the gallery
and more interested in demonstrating his flair
for language and the playful use of outlandish
comparisons called Conceits than proving a

point.
Evaluation:
Donne Edsons Wit
Donne was revived in the 1930s by T.S. Eliot and has
enjoyed a long period of idolisation by literary scholars.
It is the sharpness and clarity of the written word that
gives him the adulation he enjoys.
He has influenced many poets and is
well read today.
Wit was first performed in California in 1995
to critical acclaim and won the Pulitzer Prize
in New York in 1999. It has also been
adapted for television in 2001 where it was
nominated for two Golden Globe awards.
The London Times sums up the play as
being moving, funny and wise about the
limitations of the intellect and the value of the
heart. Wit has been produced all over
America as well as in international theatres.