Wilde

     This essay will examine Oscar Wilde’s declaration ‘I am one of those made for exceptions, not laws’ in relation to his position as a homosexual celebrity in an age in which sex between men was punished severely by law. It will be shown that Wilde presented a self which opposed the social norms of his times and saw himself in the role of ‘artistic genius’ using examples from ‘Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young’(1894)and ‘De Profundis’ (1905.) Jeffery Weeks’ argument that this oppositional, artistic self stems from Wilde’s homosexuality at a time when the formation of homosexual identity was hindered by legal and social oppression will be discussed. This will be supported by evidence that the developing homosexual subculture was considered an unlawful exception to normative Victorian values using the newspapers’ coverage of homosexual scandals and John Addington Symond’s ‘A Problem in Modern Ethics’ (1891.) Ed Cohen’s A Walk on the Wilde Side (1993) and the trial transcript will be used to demonstrate how the language used in the Oscar Wilde libel trial highlighted the sense of his homosexual self as outside normative society and a threat to it. Cohen’s use of Mikhail Bakhtin’s theories to show how the newspapers’ ‘narratisation’ of Wilde contributed to creating the homosexual self will be discussed and Paul Ricoeur’s theory of ‘narrative emplotment’ will be outlined to demonstrate how this influenced the development of both negative and positive perceptions of the male homosexual. The passages from A Picture of Dorian Gray (1890) which were presented as evidence of homosexual typing at the libel trial will be shown to support this process and further examples of the coded language and double lives referred to by Weeks will be identified within the text. In conclusion, an argument will be made that Wilde’s uncharacteristically sincere and direct references to his homosexuality as part of his identity in ‘De Profundis’ could be seen to support Weeks’ argument that Wilde’s paradoxical, flippant style stems from the oppression of his homosexuality.

     When Oscar Wilde wrote in De Profundis; ‘I am one of those made for exceptions, not laws’ he was speaking of Victorian morality and his imprisonment for gross indecency. However the writings and public persona presented by Wilde show a much broader oppositional attitude. Lucy McDiarmid identifies Wilde as an ‘oppositional celebrity’ one whose attitude ‘directs them to appear free, unpredictable, improvisational, to shock and to surprise an enthralled public; to claim this lineage and yet to insist on uniqueness and revel in eccentricity.’ (2001, p449- 450)  Oscar Wilde’s ‘Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young’(1894) fulfils this criteria perfectly including philosophies such as ‘Wickedness is a myth invented by good people to account for the curious attractiveness of others’ and  ‘Those who see any difference between soul and body have neither’ which are in direct opposition to the moral values of Victorian society.

     However, Jeffery Weeks, a historian, sociologist and gay activist, argues that the oppositional attitude of Wilde is directly related to the oppression of his homosexuality. ‘The frivolous surface of Wilde’s art conceals a fundamentally serious purpose… many of his works can be seen as metaphors for his …ambivalent sexual position as a homosexual defying sexual orthodoxies’ (1977, p43 - 44) Weeks does not neglect the importance of the ‘artistic genius’ persona that Wilde projected very strongly in his autobiographical writing and life. In De Profundis (1905) Wilde compares himself favourably with Lord Byron and describes his own work as ‘genius…brilliancy, intellectual daring…whatever I touched I made beautiful’(p56) Wilde even seems to liken himself to Christ whom he describes as a poet and individualist for whom there were no rules but only exceptions(p70 -87.) However the fact that Wilde’s homosexuality, a central part of himself, is unacceptable and forbidden in society, Weeks believes, contributes largely to Wilde’s flippant rejection of conventional morality and reversal of social norms in his work and in his public persona. To Weeks this is the root cause of ‘the obsession with style, with a self protecting individualism, even eccentricity, which deflected social criticism, before it could hurt’( 1977, p45)

     This can be understood in relation to the focus on chastity and purity which characterised the nineteenth century. Following the abolition of the Contagious Diseases Acts of the 1860s which targeted prostitutes as the cause of venereal disease, there was a new focus on the chastity of men. By the 1880s 15,000 men had signed a pledge of chastity which included refraining from masturbation and this concept of male abstinence and modesty was proscribed under the title of ‘manliness’ (Cohen 1993, p73-89) In 1885 the Labouchere amendment was made to the Criminal Law Amendment Act which all forms of homosexuality between men illegal and created the crime of ‘gross indecency.’ (Porter & Weeks,1991,p1 )

     Within this mainstream discourse and culture there had been a developing male homosexual subculture.  Weeks dates this from the early eighteenth century and identifies it as ‘a response to the emergence of hostile norms’(1977,p36.)A system of coded communications and meeting places grew up and by the mid nineteenth century had become a complex network in large towns where men ‘ could imbibe the rituals of social contact and behaviour and the codes for communicating and the modes of living a double life’(1977 p37)A highly publicised case in 1870-1 in which two middle class homosexual cross dressers named Boulton and Parks were prosecuted but acquitted of ‘conspiracy to commit the offence of sodomy’ (Kaplan,2004, p115) made the public associate effeminacy with homosexual identity.  In 1889 ‘The Cleveland Street Affair,’ in which many titled men had been implicated in procuring sex from young boys, in a homosexual brothel had resulted in no prosecution and radical newspapers fuelled the public’s outrage at privileged men escaping justice (Kaplan, 2004, p114).

     John Addington Symonds, an early advocate of homosexual love described this negative public perception of the homosexual in his essay of 1891 ‘A Problem in Modern Ethics.'‘It is the common belief that a male who loves his own sex must be despicable, degraded, depraved, vicious,…incapable of humane or generous sentiments…that they are pale, languid, scented, effeminate, painted, timid, oblique in expression’ (p7-8.) This perception of the homosexual and the criminality of same sex sexual activity created the necessity for a double life, Weeks asserts, and hindered the merging of homosexuality into identity, miring the emerging homosexual self in secrets and defensiveness (1977,p41) Due to this necessary secrecy ‘homosexual experiences could be absorbed into a wide variety of differing lifestyles with no necessary identity as a ‘homosexual’ developing’(Weeks, 1977 p33)

     However, the trial of Oscar Wilde had a significant impact on this due largely to the press coverage of it at the time. Ed Cohen’s book A Walk on the Wilde Side (1993) focuses specifically on the life and trial of Oscar Wilde, setting his life and prosecution in historical and social context. Cohen argues that the celebrity of Oscar Wilde and the publicity of his trial contributed greatly to the emergence of homosexuality as part of identity(p131) He draws on Mikhail Bakhtin’s theory regarding the function of  trials as forming a link between factual evidence and the reporting of this evidence in narrative form by looking at the newspapers coverage of the libel trial of the Marquis of Queensbury. Because newspapers essentially convey a ‘story’ and could not use the word ‘sodomy’ or any explicit sexual details journalists presented Wilde as a ‘character’ within a narrative that society could understand (Cohen, 1993,p131.)  The Times said ‘The person of whom the words were written did appear, nay desired to appear and pose to be a person inclined to the commission of that gravest of all offences.’(in Cohen, 1993, p147) ‘Wilde was caricatured as a languorous long haired lover of sun flowers or as an utterly aestheticized utterer of epigrams’ (Cohen, 1993, p136)and contrasted to the Marquis of Queensbury who, despite a scandalous heterosexual sex life, was portrayed as a ‘manly’ man and concerned  father (Cohen, 1993, p142.)Kaplan argues that the press portrayed Wilde as ‘a symbol of cultural decadence, sexual exploitation, and dangerous deviance’ which would shape negative attitudes to homosexuality for generations to come (2004, p116.) The word ‘Oscarism’ came into existence to describe effeminacy and suspicions of homosexuality for decades following the trial (Cohen, 1993 p137)

     The emerging concept of the homosexual self was portrayed very negatively by authorities and media of the time but had some positive results for the self conception of homosexual men.  Cohen draws heavily on the work of the pioneering sexologist, Havelock Ellis. Ellis said ‘The Oscar Wilde trial …seems to have generally contributed to give definiteness and self-consciousness to the manifestations of homosexuality and to have aroused inverts to take up a definite attitude’ (in Cohen 1993 pp98.) Ellis cites an informant of his who had said the trial made him ‘ready to strike a blow when the time comes for what we deem to be right, honourable and clean’ (in Cohen, 1993,p99)

     It seems incredible that these opposing perceptions of the emerging homosexual self are formed from the same events and media exposure and, of course, the positive concept of the homosexual identity forms the ‘exception’ to the wider negative one made illegal by the Labouchere amendment. This can be understood using Paul Ricoeur’s concept of ‘narrative emplotment’ (1983-5) which complements Bakhtin’s narratological approach used by Cohen in his work on Wilde.  Ricoeur, a French philosopher whose work focuses on understanding the self, described his concept of ‘narrative emplotment’  as one which ‘configures events, agents and objects and renders those individual elements meaningful as part of a larger whole’ and ‘by bringing together heterogenous factors …creates a ‘’concordant dissonance” a tensive unity which functions as a redescription of a situation’ (Atkins, 2003,online) In this way the facts of the Queensbury libel trial formed into narrative by the newspapers in which Wilde was a very negative character can be ‘redescribed’ and retold in a new narrative form by a homosexual subculture and contribute greatly to a positive sense of homosexual identity and unity.

       The perceptions of the homosexual self during the Oscar Wilde trial were closely identified with aestheticism in art and Wilde’s work formed a large part of the evidence against him (Kaplan, 2004,p116.) The Westminster Gazette on the 6^th April 1895 claimed that ‘in England … the philistine element is strong to check the excesses of artistic temperament. Estranged by the decadents from the healthy influence of morality, art is a catalogue of degenerative pathology, perverted, degraded, morbid, maniacal…’ (in Cohen 1993 p169)

     In the libel trial against the Marquis of Queensbury the defending attorney Edward Carson needed to justify Queensbury’s statement that Wilde ‘posed as a sodomite’ and this justification included the accusation that Wilde produced a ‘certain immoral and obscene work … The Picture of Dorian Gray ... designed and intended. .. and understood by the readers thereof to describe the relations intimacies and passions of certain persons of sodomitical and unnatural habits, tastes and practices.’  (In Kaplan, 2004, p119)

     The questioning of Wilde about The Picture of Dorian Gray focused closely on the elements contrary to the normative, male sexuality and the laws of Victorian England and the press coverage echoed this. The transcript of the trial shows this to be emphasised in the language of Carson but also by Wilde himself. Carson asked Wilde if Hallward’s feelings for Dorian might lead an ordinary individual to suspect the artist of a ‘certain tendency’ and Wilde replied ‘I have no knowledge of the views of ordinary individuals,’ essentially setting himself outside social norms. He does this again when questioned about letters to Lord Alfred. When asked ‘Is that not an exceptional letter?’ Wilde replied ‘It is unique, I should say’ and when pressed ‘Is that an ordinary letter?’Wilde’s response was ‘Everything I write is extraordinary.  I do not pose as being ordinary, great heavens!’ (All italics are mine)Wilde’s rejection of the normative and Carson’s repeated use of words with the negative prefixes ‘im’ and ‘un’- ‘Immoral’ ‘Improper’ and ‘unnatural’ portray Wilde as exceptional and unlawful to the public. (Wilde vs Queensbury,1895, in Linder, 2010,Online)

     The passages of The Picture of Dorian Gray read by Carson related to Basil’s adoration of Dorian and Dorian’s mysterious secret life and are unlikely to have shocked practicing homosexuals and may well have made them feel validated in their same sex love. Weeks describes a need for a double life and a system of codes in his work on the developing homosexual subculture (1977, p36-7) and these can be detected in The Picture of Dorian Gray in ways not identified by Carson.

     Neil McKenna, a gay Journalist and writer, identifies the term ‘Greek’ as a euphemism used by Wilde for homosexual.  Following his work with his friend and mentor Sir John Mahaffy on his book Social Life in Greece which included the homosexual attraction to boys in ancient Greece the word ‘Greek’ began to be applied to the physical attractions of young men by Wilde (McKenna, 2004, p8.) This concept appears repeatedly in The Picture of Dorian Gray applied to the character of Dorian whose name refers to an ancient Greek population. He is described as having ‘the air of a young Greek martyr’ (p22) and to liken himself to ‘The gods of the Greeks(82.) Weeks describes a culture of effeminacy among homosexual men in the nineteenth century and we see this in the body language of Dorian. He ‘blushes’ when he meets Sir Henry whom ‘he had taken a fancy to’ and flirts with him saying ‘let our friendship be a caprice.’ He is described as having ‘cool, white, flower-like hands’ (p21-27,) he is frequently said to ‘cry’ out his speeches and often depicted as ‘sulky’ and ‘petulant’. Dorian proposes to Sybil Vane when she is dressed as a boy and ‘never seemed to me more exquisite’ (p61) There could certainly be some homosexual significance in Harry’s words ‘every impulse that we strive to strangle broods in the mind and poisons us’ (p23) and the description of Dorian feeling  ‘keenly the terrible pleasures of a double life(p128.)

     Jeffery Weeks’ argument that Wilde’s oppositional eccentricity was part of a ‘self protecting individualism’ caused by the necessary suppression of his homosexuality (1977,p43) could be seen as supported by passages in De Profundis, published after Wilde’s death, where he acknowledges his sexuality as part of his identity and writes with uncharacteristic, direct sincerity. Wilde describes telling a friend that his ‘perverse pleasures and strange passions’ were ‘a fact about me’ which must be ‘realised to the full’ for their friendship to survive (p101.) He expresses his desire to admit rather than deny his sexuality in court ‘How splendid it would be if I were saying all this about myself’ (p102) and says ‘(T)o speak the truth is a painful thing. To be forced to lie is much worse.’ (101)  

     Wilde died only three years after his release from prison and died in 1900 but he remains a gay cultural icon.  Richard Ellman’s book Oscar Wilde was published in 1988 and the film based on the book came out in 1997. These were based largely around his identity as a homosexual and portray it very positively. The IMDB précis calls Wilde ‘genius, poet, playwright and the First Modern Man’ and describes his court case as ‘instigated …by the mad Marquis of Queensbury’ asserting that he was convicted by ‘an intolerant Victorian Society’ (Samuelson,1997, online.) Neil Mckenna’s The Secret Life of Oscar Wilde aims to ‘present a coherent and psychologically convincing account of his sexual journey’ (xv-xvi) The blurb by Gay Times says this aspect of Wilde has been ‘curiously neglected’ previously despite the necessary secrecy within which Wilde’s sex life occurred. The Irish Independent’s comendation credits The Secret Life of Oscar Wilde for ‘reveal(ing)….the real nature of Wilde’s developing sexuality’ despite the clear emplotment on the part of McKenna demonstrated by the thoughts and feelings he expresses on Wilde’s behalf throughout the book. It seems Oscar Wilde has again become the subject of ‘narrative emplotment’ according to the social and cultural climate of our time.

    

     It is clear that there are numerous perspectives and theories on the oppositional and artistically dominated self portrayed by Oscar Wilde in his life and work.  Jeffery Weeks’ argument that this stemmed from Wilde’s oppressed sexuality has been supported in this essay with examples of homosexual subculture as an exception from social and legal cultural norms of the Victorian age. Ed Cohen’s relation of Bakhtin’s theories to the role of the newspapers in ‘typing’ Oscar Wilde as the exceptional and unlawful homosexual within the narrative of their news stories has been discussed. The surprisingly positive influence of this on the development of homosexual identity has been related to Ricoeur’s concept of narrative emplotment.  The use of The Picture of Dorian Gray by the defending attorney as evidence of Wilde’s exception from normative social values has been discussed and further examples of the coded language and double lives identified by Weeks found in the text. Week’s argument has been supported further by the uncharacteristically sincere references to his homosexuality as identity expressed by Wilde in De Profundis.  The narrative emplotment of Wilde’s life continues today and it is interesting to speculate whether he would feel the current popular depiction of him fulfils his wish expressed to Robbie Ross ‘Some day the truth will have to be known--not necessarily in my lifetime . . . but I am not prepared to sit in the grotesque pillory they put me into, for all time.’(1897, online)

                                                          Bibliography.

Atkins.K.  (2003) Paul Ricoeur (1913-2005) Available at: http://www.iep.utm.edu/ricoeur/  (Accessed: 28 December 2010)

Cohen. E. (1993) Talk on The Wilde Side. New York. Routledge.

Kaplan.M. (2004) ‘Literature in the Dock: The Trials of Oscar Wilde.’ Journal of Law and Society
31 (1) pp. 113-130. JSTOR (Online) Available at http://www.jstor.org/

McDiarmid, L. 2001. "Oscar Wilde's speech from the dock." Textual Practice 15 (3) pp 447-466. Academic Search Complete, EBSCOhost (Online) Available at http.//web. ebscohost.com. (Accessed 2 December 2011.)

McKenna.N. (2004) The Secret Life of Oscar Wilde. London, Arrow Books.

Porter and Weeks.(Eds) (1991) Between the Acts; Lives of Homosexual Men 1885-1967. New York Routledge.

 Samuelson.P. (1997) ‘Plot Summary for WILDE.’ Available at: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120514  (Accessed 28 December 2010)

Symonds.J.A  (1891) A Problem in Modern Ethics. Project Gutenburg [Online] Available at: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/32588 . (Accessed 19 December 2010)

Weeks (1977) Coming Out. London. Quartet Books.

Wilde. O. (1897) De Profundis. Reprint in De Profundis, The Ballad of Reading Gaol & Other Writings. Hertfordshire. Wordsworth Editions Limited. 2002.

Wilde. O. (1891) The Picture of Dorian Gray Reprint in The Complete Stories, Plays and Poems. London, Tiger Books. 1990.

Wilde Vs Queensbury. [1895] ‘Testimony of Oscar Wilde on Cross Examination
(April 3,1895)(Literary Part)’ In Linder.D. (2010) Famous Trials. Available at: http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/wilde/Wildelibeltranowcross.html (Accessed: 24 December 2010)

Wilde.O.  (1897) ‘Wilde Gives Direction about de Profundis.’ Available at: http://www.readbookonline.net/read/9873/23969/ 18 (Accessed 28 December 2010)

Publishing the Private: The Fashioning of a Prophetic Self in the Writings of Anne Wentworth.

     Anne Wentworth was a late seventeenth century religious writer who was excommunicated by her Anabaptist church for publicly condemning her husband and church for hypocrisy and formalism. This essay will consider notions of the public and the private in Seventeenth century England, and show that sectarian women had some access to the public realm via religious writing, but that Wentworth was perceived as having transgressed boundaries by writing about ‘private’ issues. Wentworth’s justification for doing so was that it was not her will but God’s.  She presents utter self-abnegation as an essential process that enabled her to prophesy the coming battle between good and evil figured as Zion and Babylon. For this reason, Stephen Greenblatt’s concept of self-fashioning will be useful for exploring Wentworth’s portrayal of her empowering transformation into the spirit of true Christianity.

      I will consider Wentworth’s loss of ‘self’ and fashioning of a new ‘spiritually androgynous’ prophetic self before examining more closely the process by which the conflict between  ‘Zion’ and ‘Babylon’ was discovered, and a private matter became so very public. We will see that the contradiction perceived by Wentworth between the public and private behaviour of her husband was then felt by her to be mirrored more widely by his ‘brethren,’ and that this led to a revelation that her husband and her church symbolised the hypocrisy and formalism of all forms of Christianity throughout the nation. Wentworth’s desire to communicate this discovery was not supported by any prescriptive programme for remedying it and it was this, it seems, combined with the intensely personal nature of her writings which prevented initial interest from developing into any significant public support.

     Anne Wentworth began to receive revelations in 1670 at the age of forty. She had been excommunicated by her Anabaptist church by the time of the publication of her surviving writings, A True Account of Anne Wentworth (1676), A Vindication of A. W.  (1677), Englands Spiritual Pill (1679), and The Revelation of Jesus Christ (1679.)These four tracts are highly polemical works in which she accuses her husband, William, of cruelly abusing her, and condemns his hypocrisy and formalism and that of the Anabaptists and all formal religion. She warns of imminent Apocalypse.

Scholarship around gender in the seventeenth century has tended to perpetuate the concept of a public, political sphere for men and a private, domestic sphere for women, largely drawing on the contemporary political work of John Locke and Jurgen Habermas’ The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (1962.) However, several scholars are sceptical of such a neat distinction. Alison Searle argues that “(T)here is this idea that women disappeared into a private sphere, but in fact there was a period of extraordinary energy and creativity which included women” (2014 p24,) and  Patricia Crawford shows that ‘public’ and ‘private’ were ‘permeable concepts’ and that ‘ women used religious beliefs & arguments about conscience to justify action in the public sphere”(1993. p57.)  Lois Schwoerer provides evidence that between 1640-1700 there were approximately 700 tracts by women, mostly sectarian, even though “traditionally defined, the family was inimical to a woman’s assuming a public persona” (1998. p59-61.) 

     This unprecedented engagement with print culture by middle class women is often argued to be a product of greater literacy among Protestant women generally and greater freedom of religious expression for sectarian women in particular. It is also commonplace to argue that the disruption of social structures and hierarchies during the civil wars and revolution encouraged women to challenge the gender hierarchy.  However, Katherine Gillespie feels there has been too much focus on the transgressiveness and disorderliness of women, arguing that active roles for women were nontransgressive and, in fact, necessary to the founding of independent churches.  Women, she argues, “played a much greater part than we have been led to believe in the emergence of the popular press, freedom of expression and the ‘public sphere’ so important for democracy” (2004 p28.)

      It seems that Wentworth’s first writings and prophecies were encouraged and supported by her church[1]  but that she was perceived as transgressing her bounds when she brought a private matter – her abuse at the hands of her husband - into public. Wentworth’s four tracts are largely justifications for doing this.  However, before discussing them, we need to think about exactly what is signified by ‘public’ and ‘private’ in the context of Wentworth’s texts. Erica Longfellow urges great caution in using these terms as an analytical tool because their meanings have not remained stable: “We tend to agree - as did early modern people - that that which is public is that which has national or community relevance” (2006. p315.) However, the word ‘private’ has changed radically. “Before 1700, ‘private’ was essentially a negative term – whatever did not pertain to the nation or community” (ibid.) People did not tend to use the word ‘private’ to describe solitary devotional or contemplative activities and, in fact, “many of the aspects of society we now understand as part of our right to privacy were generally deemed in the seventeenth century to be rightly available to the community” (p321.)

     Wentworth uses the word ‘public’ many times but ‘private’ only once. Speaking of the rift between herself and her husband and his Anabaptist brethren in A True Account, she says “If it had been a thing that could possible a been ended in private, then it should never have become public by any will of mine” (p 4-5.) It seems that ‘private’ already includes her Anabaptist community. Wentworth also makes it clear that others were aware of the conflict, “This was not done in a corner, neither am I a stranger in London but in and about the city, an hundred that were eye witnesses” (Account p9.) This might seem rather public to 21^st century minds but in all four texts, ‘public’ is used to refer to wider society reached by the method of publication.

     In Vindication, Wentworth responds to the brethren’s charge that “I did unduly publish things to the scandal and prejudice of my husband’(p2) saying “There is nothing hid from (God) and this matter is now become a public figure,” and  asserting that God had revealed  “that my oppressions and deliverance had a Publick Ministry of meaning wrapt up in them” [2] (pp11-12.) Although the word ‘private’ is not used again, Wentworth presents the negative of ‘public’ in terms of concealment of truth. In England’s Spiritual Pill, she says,  “My Earthly Husband could not bear, that God should make good his word, where he saith ”There is nothing covered which shall not be revealed, neither hid that shall not be known.”[3] (p728.) At the beginning of The Revelation, an anonymous source reports that the Lord had said ‘it was his will, that it should be made publick.” A True Account and Vindication contain the most extensive description of her life and The Revelation of Jesus Christ and England’s Spiritual Pill a detailed account of her apocalyptic prophecies, but all texts include the personal and the public and switch between them dizzyingly.

      Readers of the tracts are presented with an account of good versus evil, and the creation of the prophet Anne Wentworth is portrayed as a product of this conflict. For this reason, Stephen Greenblatt’s concept of ‘self-fashioning’ is useful. Self-fashioning, for Greenblatt, “involves submission to an absolute power or authority situated at least partially outside the self” (p8.) Furthermore, “self-fashioning is achieved in relation to something perceived as alien, strange, or hostile” which must be “discovered or invented in order to be attacked and destroyed” and “the alien is always constructed as a distorted image of the authority.” We see that Wentworth, in establishing herself as the prophet of God and speaking in terms of ‘Zion,’ and ‘Babylon’[4], is distinguishing true Christians from false Christians, and doing so on the levels of home, community and nation.  Greenblatt adds, “If both the authority and the alien are located outside the self, they are at the same time experienced as inward necessities, so that both submission and destruction are always already internalized.”  This sense of internal submission and destruction is central to Greenblatt’s self-fashioning. Wentworth stresses the degree to which her ‘self’ needed to be destroyed and then submitted to God before she could be healed and become the passive mouthpiece of God. Greenblatt tells us that “self-fashioning always involves some experience of threat, some effacement or undermining, some loss of self” (pp8-9.)

     Wentworth describes her loss of self beginning in her marriage, “18 years I had been my husband’s wife and consumed to skin and bone, a forlorn, sad, spectacle to be seen, unlike a woman” (Account p9.) At the point of death, “God spake as he did to the woman, "Luke 13.11. and said unto her, Woman, thou art loosed from thine infirmity; and he laid his hands on her, and immediately she was made straight, and glorified God: and I was as immediately restored as she” (ibid.) However, Wentworth was not restored to herself but underwent a further spiritual disintegration, “My God has so many years emptying me from vessel to vessel, breaking me all to pieces in my self and making me to become as nothing before him. He called and commanded me into this work when I was as a thing that is not my own eyes” (Vindication. p3.) As Hilary Hinds observes, this public ministry is “contingent on the fragmentation of the pre-existing Wentworth – this completion of the dissolution of the self that marks her out as fit to serve God” (p103.) Wentworth feels the need to stress this.  In Vindication, she says “In this great work, I have no wit, no favour, no understanding, no will of my own” (p 8,) in The Revelation “as for my own will, of that I have none” (p6) and in England’s Spiritual Pill, “I am not in my own will, but have given up myself to all the will of God” (p755.) This is clearly central to her message.

      In Vindication, Wentworth says that her husband and his brethren had called her ‘a heathen and a publican[5]’(p1) for defying the church, and presented her to others as “proud, passionate, revengeful, discontented and mad” (p2.) They portray her defiance of patriarchal authority as a personal transgression. Wentworth must show that it was no transgression at all but submission to God, the ultimate patriarch. For this, she called upon Protestant tradition of speaking of Christ as her spouse. In her study of Foxe’s female martyrs,  Megan Hickerson shows that “Foxe’s disorderly women martyrs are ultimately seen as subordinate to a husband, their rejection of earthly authority including that of their earthly husbands, proving abject self-abnegation” (p1051.)  In Vindication, Wentworth refers to William as her ‘earthly husband’ (p5) and Christ as her ‘heavenly bridegroom’(p9,) and makes an bold demand for her ‘ just and necessary liberty to attend a more than ordinary call and command of God to publish the things which concern the peace of my own soul and of the whole nation”(p6.) This is both a matter of private conscience and a public duty.

      Interestingly, gendered justifications and indeed a gendered self disappear almost entirely when Wentworth prophesises.  There is little use of female biblical figures.  In True Account she says, ‘they might as well have accused Abigail for saying her husband Nabal was churlish and foolish’ but then immediately adds “and have reproved Moses for writing” (p12.) Katherine Gillespie argues that sectarian women “articulated their vision of equality predicated on androgynous spirituality as opposed to embodied physicality” (p33.) Wentworth presents her spirituality in warrior-like terms which contrasts with her physical body in Spiritual Pill when the Lord says,  “They would not have me the Lord to choose a weak woman yet can they not at all hinder me; for I have chosen thee to be my Battle-Ax, to cut all formality down” (p749.) In True Account, Wentworth speaks of God’s promise that ‘he which overcometh shall inherit all things, and I will be his God and he shall be my son, which includes daughters as well as sons” (p1.) This clearly asserts spiritual equality.  It also brings to mind the words of the prophet Dewens Morry who, on being told she could not be the son of God because she was a woman responded “No, you are a woman. I am a man” (in Mack. 1982. p37.) Here masculinity is figured in terms of strong faith and femininity in terms of spiritual weakness. Phyllis Mack describes this as not uncommon, and cites Margaret Lynam calling ministers ‘silly women – ignorant and unstable,’ and Ann Gargill railing against the Anglican Church as a ‘harlot’ (p37.) For Wentworth, ‘Babylon’ is all formal religion and she refers to it as a ‘whore’ [6] throughout The Revelation, and to the people discrediting her prophecies as ‘foolish virgins’ in True Account, The Revelation and Spiritual Pill.[7] 

     One particularly interesting example of the transcendence of gender limitations is Wentworth’s identification with Mordecai from the Book of Esther. In this book, proud Haman, whom she likens to her husband in True Account (p17,) is destroyed, and long-oppressed Mordecai raised in his place. Mordecai is also mentioned in The Revelation,

 O this God! so great in power! wonderful is his Name!
Who will exalt those of low degree, & give his Enemies shame,
When the time, to advance poor Mordecai, was come,
Then was the time, for to hang up proud Haman (p4)

It is significant that Wentworth chooses not to identify with Esther who is, after all, the hero of the story or her intercessory role. Neither does she mention Mordecai’s actions in warning of a murder plot but presents him passively being raised by God because the time ‘was come.’  Vickie Taft wonders what Wentworth aimed to achieve in The Revelation “Did she hope to save "Babylon" from God's destructive wrath by convincing its sinners to repent? Did she hope to hasten Christ's Second Coming?” and concludes “Clearly, The Revelation is vindicatory and vilificatory rather than militant or reformative. Wentworth never calls for any specific social action therein or suggests that the Apocalypse can either be halted or hastened.”[8]  The same observation of fatalism can be made in England’s Spiritual Pill,

“No wonder they carp at words, and condemn the Message and despise the Messenger, as their forefathers, the Priests and Pharisees, did to our Lord Jesus….. those that are strangers unto God, cannot receive his word no more than they did in the days of Old. For the same spirit acts now as it did then….For it was their work to rail, and they could do no otherways” (p722.)

This appears like Calvinistic predestination at its most pessimistic. The Apocalypse is nigh and people are either on the right side or they are not, and this is determined by their ‘spirit.’

“The two spirits which divide the world are now in contest together, the children of light and the children of darkness. The great Battle of the Lord is begun; the Pharisees and foolish Virgins joyn with the wicked and prophane against the true seed of God.”(Pill p732.)

The focus is solely upon God’s power in crushing the ungodly and raising the ‘true seed’ recognised by their inner grace.  

         To understand this separation of the outward deeds and inward spirit and how a marital conflict expanded to become a national one, we need to look in more detail at the sequence of events in Wentworth’s life.  In Vindication, she describes herself as a victim of psychological and physical abuse.  With his “Barbarous actions” he had “over-done such things as not only in the Spirit  of them will one day be judged a murdering of, but had long since really  proved so if God had not wonderfully supported and preserved me” (p 4.) However, she spends little time on the abuse itself and focuses much more on how it contrasted with William’s public persona. “I am censured and reproached by persons who judge onely by outward appearance, not Righteous Judgement” (Ibid.) In True Account, she implores people to examine “his carriage to a wife this 23 years, not his carriage to the World before men for that is fair enough but what is it in secret” (p7.) In his community, her husband appears a good man, “(A)ll esteem my husband as he is an honest, moral man full of blind zeal and hath the gift of his tongue.  A man very fit for business and employment in this World, for he will not cheat or cozen any man’ (p12.) People do not see that “the same spirit he brought into the world with him, yet remains to this day” (p7.) God will reveal to Wentworth that he has “set thee and thy Husband for a true figure of Zion and Babilon, of the true and false Church, the two spirits I have placed in you. He is the oppressing, and thou the oppressed” (Pill p749.)

        Wentworth’s anger and indignation are not directed solely at her husband but also at the male authorities of her church, whom she perceives as equally hypocritically biased, “Being an Anabaptist church member, they fall upon me because they cannot bear the truth to be spoken of their brother” ( Account p7.) She appeals to people who condemn her on their account to  confirm “What was my condition when my husband brought three men that did fright and amaze me and astonish me to see, knowing no cause I gave them, nor what I had done more than this work.” They “whet their tongues as sharp swords and teeth as spears and arrows” (Ibid pp16-17.)

       For Wentworth, the intervention of the elders of her church in her marital woes only compounded them. It is easy to see her experience of institutional hypocrisy as almost more damaging than the personal hypocrisy of her husband. It was at this stage that she reached her lowest point and received her revelation. Wentworth cried unto the lord to know ‘why he suffered them to come and trouble and torment’ her and received the reply,

“I suffered four Men out of four of their Churches to come and deal with thee, for to figure out the four Pillars their formal House, stands upon, which are all rotten: and therefore I the Lord will throw down this their House of formality…Thou shalt declare the downfall of Babylon, thou shalt publish where she is and what she is; that her plagues are a coming and where they shall end. I the Lord will begin with the refined part of Babylon who think themselves holier than others…whereas they are but painted sepulchres, erroneous and censorious oppressors, being led by a lying spirit, with these, will I the Lord begin, and end with the wicked and prophane”(Pill 729-30.)

Here we have the core of Wentworth’s message and purpose; the defining problem with society that she was chosen to condemn; the distinction between the two spirits; the point of encounter between the authority and the alien at which her prophetic self was formed.  The alien is self-identified Christians who ‘think themselves holier than others;’ who behave one way in public and another in private; who perform, as her husband and his brethren did, the formalities of religion whilst abusing the weak and oppressed in a most unchristlike manner. Her aim from this moment of revelation is to show the ‘hypocrites and formalists,’ to be in the same state of damnation as the openly, publicly ‘wicked and prophane.’ In fact, it is even more urgent to deal with this hidden evil. The Lord will begin with them. Wentworth makes this parallel between private sin and public sin several times. [9] The language of concealment too is strong in all four texts. Wentworth repeats Luke 12.2.3 “There is nothing covered that shall not be revealed, neither hid that shall not be known” in True Account adding “it cannot be avoided, there is no help for it, but it will come to World’s hearing” (p10.) In Vindication, “He knows the secrets of all hearts, we are all open and naked in his sight: there is no dissembling in his sight” (p 11) and in Revelation, God will ‘make known’ the truth of Wentworth’s innocence (p20.)  References to hypocrisy and formality [10]abound and the related quote ‘the letter killeth but the spirit quickeneth’ is found in True Account, Vindication, and Spiritual Pill.[11] It is helpful to look at this quote in its context. Paul says,

“You yourselves are our letter, written on our hearts, known and read by everyone. You show that you are a letter from Christ, the result of our ministry, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts… He has made us competent as ministers of a new covenant—not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.” (2 Corinthians 3: 2-6 KJV)

Wentworth herself is the letter from Christ and will be raised up by God for what is written in her heart. Wentworth is transformed from an emotionally and physically worn-down woman to a powerful prophet, vindicated by God. Her passive suffering becomes righteous anger and she gains strength from her sense of ‘a more than ordinary calling.’ Searle encapsulates this attitude, “Her authorial persona was thus a dizzying juxtaposition of extreme self-abnegation and triumphant spiritual exaltation” (36.) She begins to write with a new fervour. She predicts the end of the world before the New Year of 1678. She warns the King and Lord Mayor. Her tone is one of utter certainty and purpose. When her marriage was a private misery, she was crushed by it. Now it is a ‘publick ministry’ she is empowered by God and she speaks with authority in terms of internal power. Revelation I states boldly, “Hearken to this all you, that are in forms of Religion; for it is not form, but power, that will secure you from the wrath of God in the evil day” (Revelation. p1) The title page of England’s Spiritual Pill announces it to be “A Through-Reformation of Church-worship, from Hypocritical and Idolatrous Formalities” and cites I Thessalonians 5.19, 20: “Quench not the Spirit, Despise not Prophesyings.”

     Anne Wentworth makes herself and her life public because she is no longer herself and she has left behind that life. She has been fashioned into a symbol of the spirit of true Christianity in the battle of good against evil, of Zion against Babylon. Her message is that true Christianity is in the spirit rather than the letter of religion, that the hypocrites and formalists are as damned as the wicked and profane and the end is nigh. However, although she feels compelled to communicate this discovery urgently and provide examples and comparisons and reiterations of God’s wrath, she supplies no prescriptions for salvation. Even in the section of England’s Spiritual Pill where Wentworth says “These are the Principles of my Faith, which I profess and own” (p723) there is nothing that differs noticeably from the ethos of the non-conformist churches she criticises. Taft suspects that Wentworth had to spend so much time justifying herself as a woman prophet that she could not develop a social programme, “Wentworth never moves beyond the language of personal vindication to engage in social discourse in The Revelation. In fact, Wentworth suggests that all that true Christians can do is await the Apocalypse.”[12] One can see how some prescription would be helpful in light of the impending apocalypse but I’d suggest this misses the point of her message.  The spirit is what brings life, not the letter.  Wentworth became impatient with requests for specifics, “Do not spend out thy self in answering every needless question of a people that are never satisfied, but leave it to the truth to try it out with them” (Pill p723.) If they are saved, they will feel it. The truth will reveal itself to them. It seems likely that she was unable to attract a substantial following at least partly because her prophecies were so difficult to act upon. Wentworth describes “being under so much reproach, contempt, and scorn because I was not willing to declare my principles and what Religion I am of” (Pill p765.) Her writings are also so intensely personal that they would have been difficult to relate to, and the advertisement for England’s Spiritual Pill suggests that this was a criticism of it, “(R)emember what the Lord saith in 8 Revel. of Anne Wentworths, published before, viz. They will not see how I the Lord have placed the two spirits in a Man and his Wife, to figure out Zion and Babylon. Stumble not and say she speaks for her self, what have we to do with a Woman and her Husband,, etc” (p720.) Ultimately, interest in Wentworth’s writings was short-lived and there is no record of her after 1679.

     Anne Wentworth provides a powerful critique of hypocritical patriarchal authority in her own life which she regarded not as a private injustice but as indicative of a public spiritual crisis which made necessary the publication of her experiences. It was these experiences that led Wentworth to cry out to God, and receive her revelation of the coming battle between the ‘true seed of God’ and the ‘hypocrites and formalists’ revealed to be morally equivalent to the openly ‘wicked and prophane.’ Having been physically and emotionally worn down by her husband and then spiritually broken down and reformed by God, Wentworth’s prophetic self is fashioned and speaks with power and authority. Ultimately, however, the intensely personal nature of her writing and the absence of prescriptive programme seem to have prevented her from obtaining any significant public support.

Bibliography

Primary Sources

Wentworth. A. (1676) A True Account of Anne Wentworth. London. Wing W1355A. (Jisc Historical Books)  

Wentworth. A. (1677)  A Vindication of A. W.  London. Wing W1356 (Jisc Historical Books)

Wentworth. A. (1679) Englands Spiritual Pill.   In Freeman. C  A Company of Women Preachers:  Baptist Prophetesses in Seventeenth Century England (2011) London. Baylor University Press.

Wentworth. A (1679) The Revelation of Jesus Christ (1679.) London. Wing 1355 (Jisc Historical Books)

Secondary Sources

Adcock. R (2015) Baptist Women’s Writing in Revolutionary Culture, 1640-80. Ashgate

Crawford. P.  (1993) ‘Public Duty, Conscience, and Women in Early Modern England’ in Morrill et al (1993) Public Duty and Private Conscience.  Oxford University Press.

Greenblatt. S.  (1980) Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare. University of Chicago Press.

Gillespie. K. ( 2004) Domesticity and Dissent in the Seventeenth Century. Cambridge. Cambridge University Press.

Hickerson, M.( 2004) “Gospelling Sisters "Goinge up and Downe": John Foxe and Disorderly Women”. The Sixteenth Century Journal 35 (4). 1035–51. Available at Stable URL: http://0-www.jstor.org.catalogue.ulrls.lon.ac.uk/stable/20477139

Hinds. H. (1996) God’s Englishwomen: Seventeenth Century Radical Sectarian Writing and Feminist Criticism. Manchester. Manchester University Press.

Longfellow. E. (2006) ‘Public, Private and the Household in Early Seventeenth‐Century England’ Journal of British Studies.45(2)pp 313-334 Available at http://www.jtor.orsg/stable/10.1086/499790 Accessed: 26-02-2016.

Mack. P. (1982) “Women as Prophets During the English Civil War”. Feminist Studies 8.1 (1982): 19–45. Available at: Stable URL: http://0-www.jstor.org.catalogue.ulrls.lon.ac.uk/stable/3177578

Searle. A. (2014) ‘Women, Marriage and Agency in Restoration Dissent.” In Apetrei.S & Smith.H Religion and Women in Britain, C. 1660-1760 Surrey. Ashgate Publishing.

Schwoerer. L.  (1998) “Women’s Public Political Voice in England 1640-1740” in Smith. H.  (ed)  Women Writers and the Early Modern British Political Tradition. Cambridge University Press.

Taft. V.  & Wentworth. A. (2005) The Revelation of Jesus Christ by Anne Wentworth; An Electronic Edition. Emory Women Writers’ Resource Project.  Available at: http://womenwriters.library.emory.edu/content.php?level=div&id=went_001&document=went

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[1] In England’s Spiritual Pill,  the anonymous supporter A.B says that one of Wentworth’s detractors, Hanserd Knollys, once “Gave such a character of her, from her child-hood, for her nature humility, modesty and Christianity, that I never heard a better of any creature” (p760)

[2] All italics and capitalisations in the text quotes are present in the primary source.

[3] Luke 12.2.3

[4] Zion is Jerusalem, the true Church of God and Babylon the corrupt kingdom destroyed by God at the Apocalypse.

[5] In Matthew 18:17. Jesus said “if he neglect to hear the church, let him be unto thee as an heathen man and a publican (a tax-collector.)”

[6] Revelation, pp 4,5,7, 12, 15, 17

[7]  Account p 14 Revelation pp 1, 5, 13. Pill p 732, 755

[8] This is to be found in the critical section entitled ‘Wentworth’s Goal in The Revelation.’

[9]   Vindication – pp 1, 11.  Pill – pp 732, 750, 755.

[10] Account- pp 8, 15, 17. Vindication – pp 1, 2, 11, 21. Revelation, pp 1,8, 11,13, 17 –pp 729, 730, 733, 739, 740,745, 749, 750, 751, 756, 771.

[11] Account p3. Vindication p6 . Pill p 765.

[12] In ‘Wentworth’s Goal in The Revelation.’

Fantasies of Death in John Donne's 'The Apparition' and Shakespeare's 'No Longer Mourn for Me."

      ‘The Apparition’ by John Donne and ‘Sonnet 71’ or ‘No Longer Mourn for Me’ by William Shakespeare are poems in which each speaker imagines his own death and its effect on an addressee. Donne’s speaker regards his own death with satisfaction and aims to evoke a supernatural fear in a woman. He creates an eerie, bitter tone with an irregular meter and rhyme scheme. Shakespeare, in contrast, uses the regular meter and rhyme scheme of the English sonnet to portray his death in stark, gloomy tones and declare a simple love with the intention of inducing remorse and renewed affection in the addressee.

     In ‘The Apparition’ Donne exhibits the death wish which Roberts describes as a ‘permanent element in his psychic life’(1947 p959.) On this occasion the satisfaction the speaker foresees in death takes the form of a revenge fantasy in which he haunts a woman who has rejected him. The woman is directly addressed in tones of bitter resentment.

  
   Despite its seventeen lines, varied meter and irregular rhyme scheme, the poem is sonnet-like with an argument in three distinct parts and concluding rhyming triplet. The irregularities are used by Donne to create a disconcerting arrhythmia which complements the bitter and eerie mood of his words.

      The first five lines encapsulate the subject of the poem. It begins in iambic pentameter but the expected pattern is immediately broken by the short second and third lines. The alliteration of ‘that thou thinks thee free’ in line three make of the phrase a sinister whisper accentuated by the sibilant hiss of ‘solicitation ’in line four before a return to iambic stress in tetrameter for the fourth line. This foregrounds the rhyming lines one and four as the subject of the poem. ‘When by thy Scorn, O Murd’ress, I am dead…Then shall my ghost come to thy bed.’ The fifth line shows contempt for the woman, ‘feign’d vestal,’ and the man, ‘worse arms.’

     The next five lines of the poem focus on the woman in bed with her lover and the approach of the ghost. Donne uses monosyllabic words and an alternating rhyme in iambic pentameter for lines six to eight, creating a rapid rhythm much like a fearful, rapidly beating heart but then breaks it abruptly with the four syllables of line nine ‘Thou call’st for more.’ The shock of this break emphasises the sexual jealousy at the root of the speaker’s bitterness. Line ten then appears to stand alone gloating ‘and in false sleep will from thee shrink’’

      The gloating tone continues in the next section of four lines and slows with the breaks in line eleven ‘And then, poor aspen wretch, neglected thou.’ The  phrase ‘quicksilver sweat’ in line twelve is argued by Douds to be typical of Donne’s tendency to insert an conflicting ‘category’ of word into a poem to create dissonance (1937 p1055 -6.) The geological term used metaphorically in a poem about spirits, sex and death may seem incongruous and yet mercury was believed to have supernatural properties, treat venereal disease and known to be poisonous which suit the themes perfectly.

     The short line thirteen again creates a pause emphasising the words ‘A verier ghost than I.’ The speaker finally has the woman’s full attention as she lies terrified into a death-like state but line fourteen denies her any resolution. ‘What I will say, I will not tell thee now/ lest that preserve thee.’

    This takes the poem into the concluding rhyming triplet and a caesura. After this pause the speaker announces that his love is spent but immediately seems to contradict himself by implying there is still time to ‘painfully repent’ and to accept his advances. The final rhyming words of the triplet ‘spent’, ‘repent’ and ‘innocent’ have a quasi-religious tone. As Donne warned in several of his sermons, death can come unexpectedly and one can find oneself suddenly facing the wrath of God or in this case, the speaker, with all ones sins upon one.

     In ‘The Apparition’ the speaker is first a martyr, then a vengeful spirit and finally god-like in his judgement.  Roberts argues that ‘Donne’s model and avatar was the early Christian saint and martyr’ and relates his ‘death-wish’ to this self-ideation (1947.pp690-691.) Shakespeare too uses the image of death in a direct address but I would argue, in a very different way. Donne portrays death as a transition to a higher more powerful state and wishes to induce supernatural fear and submission. Shakespeare portrays death as an end, dwells upon the physical and psychological aspects of it and hopes to induce remorse and renewed affection.

     Kirby Farrel argues that feigned death is used frequently by Shakespeare in his plays to enable characters lower down in the social hierarchy to protest against a superior and ‘move love in a hard heart’ (1983. pp76 -77.) The speaker in ‘Sonnet 71’ is not feigning death but attempting to make the addressee experience his death through the imagery and language of the poem. The plaintive tone, simple declarations of love and imagery of death create a reproach in just such an attempt to ‘move love in a hard heart.’

     John Kerrigan argues that the sonnets must be read in sequence or ‘trains of meaning’ which ‘imply a narrative’ are lost (2001 p 74.) In this way ‘Sonnet 71’ is likely to be addressed to a young male patron whom succeeding sonnets will accuse of bestowing his affection and patronage on a rival.  However William Nelles (2009 p 135) argues passionately against reading the sonnets this way and accepting Shakespeare as speaker partly because so many lines reappear in his plays spoken by women. For the purpose of this essay I shall consider ‘Sonnet 71’ alone. The poem is in English sonnet form in iambic pentameter and has the three quatrains and a rhyming couplet of that form.

     In the first quatrain the speaker introduces the subject of his death and the first line ‘No longer mourn for me when I am dead’ brings us at once to the subject of the poem, - the speaker’s death and the addressee’s reaction to it. The iambic pentameter and regular rhyme scheme are established here and this rhythm and the enjambment of the whole quatrain accompanied by Shakespeare’s use of alliteration in line two with ‘surly, sullen bell’ create a sense of the inexorable tolling of that bell. The ‘l’ sounds are continued into lines three and four with the words ‘fled’ and dwell’ and in line four the rather difficult phrase ‘vile world and vilest worms’ forces the reader to slow down for this disturbing image of earthly death and decay.

     The second quatrain begins by answering ‘Nay’ to an unspoken protest and the addressee is urged to forget the speaker although this is immediately made impossible by line six. The image of the ‘hand’ is symbolic of bonds of loyalty between men and of marriage between men and women and the caesura  draws attention to the following simple words ‘I love you so’ completing the sense of an ‘honest’ loving bond which cannot so easily be forgotten. Lines seven and eight still contain the words ‘I’ and ‘me’ even whilst insisting the speaker ‘be forgot’ ‘if thinking on me then should make you woe.’ De Grazia argues that Shakespeare frequently used long Latinate words to indicate affectation and short Saxon ones to show sincerity (2001 p55.)The use of so many short Saxon words for this poem is significant and most obvious in this quatrain which includes ‘Nay’,’ hand’, ‘writ’ ‘love’ and ‘woe.’

     
Another exclamation, ‘O’, begins the third quatrain and is followed by ‘if, I say,’ indicating the emphatic reiteration which will follow. In line ten there is further imagery of decomposition with ‘compounded am with clay’ and in line eleven the paradoxical command to forget the speaker by obeying him. ‘Do not so much as my poor name rehearse.’ In line twelve it is significant that the speaker says ‘let your love with my life decay,’ rather than ‘body’.  The impression is of an ending with no suggestion of a spiritual reunion in an afterlife. This life is the one which matters.

     The ‘wise world’ which would ‘mock’ a display of grief can be understood to have no close relationship with the speaker but be in a position to hear and ‘look into’ the ‘moan’ of the addressee. The word ‘wise’ is almost certainly used ironically and therefore suggests a form of ‘wisdom’ despised by the speaker. Perhaps this is a worldly wisdom which fails to appreciate the relationship between a poet and his muse or lover or patron and the speaker would like the addressee to value that relationship a little more? Having focused upon such large emotive issues in the first three quatrains, to then imply it is all to avoid the derision of a person or persons in the addressee’s life strongly suggests that this is a reproach that such people occupy so privileged a position.

     Both Donne and Shakespeare have used their own deaths as a way to effect change in the attitude of their addressees but whilst Donne takes satisfaction in the idea of haunting a woman who has scorned him and aims to produce fear in her, Shakespeare presents death as an end and uses imagery of decay and the language of love with the intention of inducing remorse and the renewal of affection.

Bibliography

Douds.J . (1937) ‘Donne’s Technique of Dissonance’ PMLA 52(4) pp 1051-1061 JSTOR Available at: http://www.jstor.org/stable/458501 (Accessed on: 18th Oct 2012)

Farrell K.  (1983) ‘Self--Effacement and Autonomy in Shakespeare.’ Shakespeare Studies 16(75) EBSCOhost   Available at: http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=7166159&site=ehost-live (Accessed on: October 17th 2012.)

de Grazia (2001) ‘ Shakespeare and the Craft of Language’ in de Grazia and Wells The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare. Cambridge. Cambridge University Press [2001]

Kerrigan.J. (2001) ‘Shakespeare’s Poems’ in de Grazia and Wells The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare. Cambridge. Cambridge University Press [2001]

Nelles W. (2009) ‘Sexing Shakespeare's Sonnets: Reading Beyond Sonnet 20’. English Literary Renaissance ;39(1) p128-140. EBSCOhost. Available at: http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=36880385&site=ehost-live (Accessed on October 19th 2012)

Roberts.D. (1947) ‘The Death Wish of John Donne’ PMLA 62(4) pp 958-976 JSTOR

Available at: http://www.jstor.org/stable/459141 (Accessed on: 18th Oct 2012)