The late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries were challenging times for the English. Plague, typhoid, and other illnesses raged through the population; the infant mortality rate was high (Grassby), as was that of the mothers who gave birth. Life was difficult, and expectancy did not usually exceed forty years (Grassby). To add to the ever-present threat of physical death was the ever-present debate over the soul. Recently divorced from the Roman Catholic Church, England had been Protestant for most of the latter half of the sixteenth century. The soul and its fate were open to the ideological debate raging through the country. At a time when faith was considered as necessary as food and water, it was dangerous to declare one’s faith too openly. 

It was, nevertheless, an intrinsic part of life, and of death. William Shakespeare was no stranger to death, having lost his son at a young age (Stopes), nor would the religious debate of the time been far removed from his life (Cox). Neither was John Donne without his grief, having lost five of his children and his beloved wife prematurely (Pinka). Donne’s own faith had undergone change; later in his life Donne became an ordained servant of the Anglican Church, having disavowed himself of the Catholic beliefs of his birth (Wynne-Davies). It is understandable that death would be a ubiquitous subject to poeticize, and that the eternity of one’s soul, or spirit would be contemplated alongside it.

   These men, living somewhat contemporaneously, both had a talent for the lyrical expression of deep thought and sentiment. In two of the most canonical poems of the English Renaissance, both writers express their preoccupation with death and immortality, Shakespeare in, among others, Sonnet 60, and Donne in Holy Sonnet 10. In death’s inevitability both poems eschew its power to create fear and to dominate life, as though to philosophically negate its ability to permanently destroy is to free oneself to live fully, and to die peacefully, with knowledge that it is not the end. In form, these poems have their similarities; both are fourteen-line sonnets with similar, but not identical rhyming schemes, both make considerable use of metaphor and imagery, both in personal address to death itself, and in the turn of the couplet, and both express defiance of the eternity of death, and the immortality they will each, in their own way achieve. Shakespeare claims immortality in the verse itself, Donne in the survival of his soul into the afterlife of heaven. Shakespeare’s immortality comes from the lasting power of his words, Donne’s from the eternal faith of his religion. In these disparate interpretations of immortality can be read the religious conflict of the time, as well as the value of art and faith in society.

   There has always existed a fringe of society, not infrequently in the arts, that, as changes in society, the church of England, and in religious doctrine evolved, gained momentum. Many of these changes, instigated by King Henry VIII in the first half of the sixteenth century turned society more toward earthly pleasure, ambition, achievement, reward. This may be a direct result of Henry’s personality; in his early years he is said to have enjoyed life to its fullest. Although much of the legend of his many marriages is dynastic in nature, a significant part of his spousal turnover is corporeal, or carnal in nature. Henry rarely denied himself anything. He relished life and its gifts, rather than save himself for the afterlife. From this power shift in England during Henry VIII’s reign, we see the punitive, religious way of living receding, and a more secular way of living emerging.

   In the turbulent era in which Shakespeare and Donne produced written art, we see a distinct shift towards a more secular canon of literary work, largely embodied by Shakespeare himself, although Donne’s contribution cannot be overlooked, despite the religious nature of his later work. Donne’s earlier work embodied lust and love so salaciously that it has been omitted from many important anthologies over the centuries. 

   These poems share a death theme, and a defiance or denial of death, though they differ in context. Sonnet 60 acknowledges the inevitability of death, while asserting the ability to trick death: you and I may both die, but in these words, this poem, we will attain immortality. Holy Sonnet 10 denies death the power of finality; in death, says Donne, comes the eternal afterlife, a paradox of reasoning based on his faith. Shakespeare’s poem is free of any religious connotations, while Donne’s is a dialogue with death based on faith and religious dogma. The word versus the word of God.

   The differences lie in the conceptual image of dying and of death. In sonnet 60 death is an inevitability. In Donne’s 10, death is inconsequential. The turn in each rhyming couplet is the same – in a sense – reflecting defiance of death, but the turns are different. Shakespeare’s death is a forward-moving progression, dirge-like; Donne’s is making insignificant the power of death, even giving the power in death to another cause, to “fate, chance, kings, and desperate men” (Donne). That, says Donne, is what causes this thing called death; it has no authority to act on its own, but is enslaved to a greater power. Death is merely an effect, not a cause. Donne addresses a fundamental belief stemming from religion – that life on earth is insignificant, and earthly life is for the preparation of the soul for divinity in the afterlife. Above all, earthly life is not meant to be enjoyed.

   In form, structure, and content, the poems are similar. Three quatrains and a rhyming couplet, each with a distinct turn, reflect the differing ideologies of the two poets. Both poems utilize form: metaphor, imagery, meter, personification, paradox to support the thematic content. But we can see that Shakespeare is a man of words, while Donne, true to his profession, is a man of the word of God.

   Metaphor, one of the most powerful weapons in the poet’s arsenal gives each of these sonnets its power. We can believe equally in the metaphor of one’s time on earth marching to its end in the measured meter of waves on a pebbled shore as we can in the metaphor of death as an imposter. By the end of the poems, there is agreement and relatability from the power of these metaphors.

   Sonnet 60 is divided by punctuation and concept into three quatrains and a rhyming couplet, each quatrain using a different metaphor to illustrate the vagaries of time. In the first quatrain, the ocean’s tidal rhythms are a metaphor for the slow and steady accumulation of time upon life. This is the strongest metaphor in the poem. Shakespeare likens the rhythm of the waves to the passage of time, in both their incessant progression and in their measurement. The pebbles on the beach, being drubbed by the waves are people, so many of them, so indistinct, so insignificant, so replaceable. In the second quatrain, the imagery shifts to a different type of movement. The metaphor here is of the daily transit of the sun across the sky for a life span. The sunrise is a person’s infancy, “Nativity, one in the main of light” (Shakespeare); noon, the zenith of a person’s life, “wherewith being crowned” (Shakespeare); and sunset, the decline into death, “Time that gave doth now his gift confound” (Shakespeare). The third quatrain reveals the effects of time’s march upon a person’s image. Time is the destroyer of beauty and youth, “Time doth transfix the flourish set on youth” (Shakespeare). Although the metaphor is weaker, we still see that there is a conflict between youth and beauty and time that slowly erodes them into death. Here, the grim reaper’s scythe mows down “nature’s truth” (Shakespeare). The rhyming couplet represents a reversal of the poem, or a defiance of the effects of time and the permanence of death by claiming immortality through the words of Shakespeare’s poem, “to times in hope my verse shall stand” (Shakespeare).

   The progression of time is also reflected in the order of the metaphors. Shakespeare proceeds from the more abstract, more general – a comparison of time to the movement of the ocean, then a comparison of the sun’s movement to a human life span – to the specific: the effect of time’s advance on human youth and beauty. So, in each quatrain a metaphor, and each quatrain’s metaphor a progression from the abstract to specific. This is one of the ways in which Shakespeare uses form support the poem’s content. The use of imagery as a metaphor provides an excellent illustration of Shakespeare’s meaning. 

Ever the master of meter and feet, Shakespeare also uses this to support his theme. The undulating rhythm of the iambs in the first quatrain mirrors the rhythms of the ocean – up, down, up, down. He has separated each “wave” replacing the iambs at the beginnings of lines one and two with trochees. This further strengthens the metaphor and the concept. In the second quatrain, he emphasizes the beginning of line six, “crawls” to play into the metaphor of life span he used here – he is emphasizing infancy, beginning. Likewise the trochee at the beginning of line seven emphasizes the word “crooked” and the syllable “crook” to imply something not quite right, something off – i.e. aging or decrepitude. The trochee at the beginning of line eleven in the third quatrain illuminates the word “feeds” suggesting the victimization of youth by time.

   The first word of Holy Sonnet 10, “death,” establishes personification and apostrophe. It also establishes the tone of anger and defiance. Trochees at the beginning of the second and fourth lines of the first two quatrains support the tone of anger and build tension. The first foot of the third quatrain could be pronounced as a trochee or a spondee, and is followed by a trochee, a spondee and then two iambs. There is a very distinct rise and fall in the tone and sentiment of this line which lends the poem a preachy sound. The remaining lines of the quatrain are all iambic pentameter and begin with the repetitive “and,” implying that these lines, these thoughts are all subordinate to, and in support of, the first. 

   The rise and fall of the rhythm Donne uses in this poem, created by trochees and spondees strategically placed, give it the sound of a sermon, which emphasizes the religious overtones. The apostrophe, directed in anger and defiance at death suggests religion overcoming the natural world, and that faith in God will prevail. The sermonizing sounds unscripted, as if we are following the narrator’s thought process as he speaks, almost in a stream of consciousness.

   There is an unspoken conflict. Because of the apostrophe, what we experience as readers is one side of a confrontation where the narrator is verbally beating on his opponent, death. Though the narrator of Donne’s Holy Sonnet 10 seemingly speaks directly to death, personifying it, the tone of this poem feels more like he is trying to convince himself of death’s powerlessness, making it more likely that the apostrophe is not death but the narrator’s fear of death.

   In the first quatrain, Donne presents his first paradox – that, although death may “overthrow” people, they do not die, nor can the narrator be killed by death. He chastises death for its self-aggrandizement. In the second quatrain Donne compares death to sleep – an impermanent rest of the body and deliverance of the soul to heaven. Therefore, death is not frightening; therefore, death cannot be final, and does not win. The third quatrain belittles death further; it is subordinate to “fate, chance, kings, and desperate men” (Donne) and keeps company with the likes of “poison, war, and sickness” (Donne). In other words, death is merely a symptom, rather than a cause for concern. Donne presents his final paradox in the rhyming couplet: death will itself die. Death, which is actually more like sleep, is not the end, and the eternal life of the soul destroys the idea of death.

    Both of these poems are a legitimate address to death, both reflecting the times in which they were written. It is a testament to the artistry of the poets that such discrete interpretations of death and immortality can both be so beautiful, expressive, sentient, and illustrative of society. There is some truth in each of these interpretations for everyone to grasp onto. In a time of rampant disease, heretical and political execution, of dangerous or indeed no medical intervention, when death was ubiquitous, the denial of death seems monumentally necessary.

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Works Cited

 

Cox, John D.. Shakespeare’s Religion. Religions. 9.11. (2018) p. 343

https://www.proquest.com/docview/2550236858?pq-origsite=primo

 

Donne, John. “Holy Sonnet 6.” The Longman Anthology of British Literature, fourth edition.

Longman, 2010.

 

Grassby, Richard. The Business Community of 17th Century England. Cambridge University Press,

2002.

 

Pinka, Patricia Garland. "John Donne". Encyclopedia Britannica, 4 Apr. 2022,

https://www.britannica.com/biography/John-Donne. Accessed 7 December 2022.

 

Shakespeare, William. “Sonnet 60.” The Longman Anthology of British Literature, fourth edition.

Longman, 2010.

 

Stopes, C.C.. Shakespeare’s family. Project Gutenberg, 2008, 

https://www-gutenberg-org.library.sheridanc.on.ca/files/26315/26315-h/26315-h.htm#Page_87

 

Wynne-Davies, Marion, editor. Prentice Hall Guide to English Literature. Prentice Hall, 1990.

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