Dirty Minds of English Poets

A dirty mind, or vulgarity, is nothing new, no matter what the censors may say. It is present in many old texts, from “Canterbury Tales” to Shakespeare’s plays. English poets were not necessarily the romantics that the general population of people today believes them to be. Sure there was “Romeo and Juliet”, but there were also the Shakespearean sonnets and the poems of John Donne. It is easy to be deceived by the poetic and flowery language of the poems written by these authors. They both speak of the beauty of the human body, but they also both speak of the same body in what today’s society would call vulgar tones. They write about love, yet they also write about sex and lust. However, there are important, because they focus on the sexual identity of the speaker, differences in the way Shakespeare and Donne portray these concepts: Donne talks about a mistress and the speaker. Shakespeare talks about a love triangle between two men and a woman.

Shakespeare is a household word, unlike Donne and when someone speaks about his poetry, someone in the room always remembers his sonnets and how “wonderfully romantic and beautiful” they are. Those people are only looking at the language. The language can be very confusing at first glance to make a reader belive the author is saying one thing when he really means another: “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? / Thou art more lovely and more temperate” (1-2). The metaphor here is quite compelling. “You are lovelier than a summer’s day.” What the reader normally believes is that this sonnet is written to a woman. Students of Shakespeare know better. Similarly, while Donne may not be as well known as Shakespeare to the general population of today, he was also an important English poet who used flowery words, such as this line from “The Sun Rising”: “Thou, sun, art half as happy as we” (25). He tells the sun in the sky that even with all of its happiness, since the sun is an image of light and bright times, it’s only half as happy as him and the woman with him. Of course, in the previous stanza, it’s mentioned they are in bed together.

Using the language previously discussed, Shakespeare can easily paint a beautiful picture of a person’s body. In sonnet 18, the reader sees more beauty: “A woman’s face with Nature’s own hand painted / Hast thou” (1-2). He speaks about how this man has just as beautiful a face as a woman, and how it looks as if it was painted by Mother Nature herself. This is one of the nicer portions of the sonnets that speaks of part of a human body. Donne does the same thing in “Elegy 19” when he writes: “Off with that girdle, like heaven’s zone glistering, / But a far fairer world encompassing” (5-6). The speaker asks a woman to remove her belt that contains a much nicer body than heaven itself. Donne uses the flowery language of the time to present a beautiful woman to the reader. But in this line, he also hints at the next concept: vulgarity.

Speaking of below the belt, to prove the vulgarity evident in English poetry, here’s a line from Shakespeare’s sonnet 20: “But since she prick’d thee out for women’s pleasure” (13). From the context of the poem, it is rather evident that the speaker is talking about how this person has male genitalia which makes it impossible for the speaker to love him, since he is a man. Reference to such a body part in today’s world is considered quite vulgar, no matter how natural it may be. Sonnet 144 gets even darker with its references to the genitalia: “Yet this shall I ne’er know, but live in doubt, / Till my bad angel fire my good one out” (13-14). As most readers know, the good angel is the young man and the bad angel is the dark lady. The speaker is saying that the only way he’ll have proved the dark lady has cheated on him with the young man will be if he finds that the young man has caught a venereal disease, or “fire”, from the dark lady. This reference is yet another vulgar mentioning of genitals, yet it goes even further by giving those genitals a disease. Likewise, Donne goes further than asking the woman to remove her belt in “Elegy 19”: “Off with that happy busk, which I envy” (5). Here he’s asking the woman to remove her bodice or corset, or in more modern terms, her bra. He envies the bra because it holds her breasts. So, to be more to the point, he’s saying: “Take it off baby, I want to see your breasts.” Romantic? No. Vulgar? A typical woman would think so.

To be fair, Shakespeare does speak of love in his poetry. In sonnet 130 he talks about how even though the dark lady is just a woman and not a goddess of immense beauty, like other poets spoke of at the time, he still loves her: “And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare / As any she belied with false compare” (13-14). However, unlike Donne, he also shows love for the young man in sonnet 20, when he says he is not as fickle as a woman but has the same heart a woman has, and that if it weren’t for him being a man, he’d love him as more than a friend. (3-4, 13-14). Love is evident in Donne’s poetry also, or at least an appearance of love is, as noted in “The Sun Rising”: “Love, all alike, no season knows nor clime, / Nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time” However, in Donne’s poetry there is less talk of love than there is in Shakespeare’s poetry. Donne seems quite content in portraying lust and sex.

Shakespeare also shows signs of sex and lust, but the sex he talks about is darker, like the venereal disease mentioned earlier, or the fact that since the speaker can’t have sex with a person with a “prick”, then he just can’t love him the right way. He also talks about betrayal in sexual situations when Donne does not, such as in sonnet 130: “When my love swears that she is made of truth / I do believe her, though I know she lies” (1-2). On the other hand, Donne’s poetry is more about happy, joyful, pleasurable sex. The speaker’s lust is glaring in the poem, “The Flea”: “Mark but this flea, and mark in this, / How little that which thou deniest me is” (1-2). The speaker stoops to comparing his mistress’s innocence to the amount of blood taken from her by a flea. “The sex I want is but a little thing like this flea.” Sexual longing is even more evident in the poem, “Elegy 19”, as he constantly asks his mistress to remove more and more clothing, as evidenced earlier, for his viewing pleasure, and then ends with the following two lines: “To teach thee, I am naked first; why then / What need’st thou have more covering than a man?” (47-48). He ends with what sounds like a corny pick-up line at the local single’s bar. “Want a cheap bath robe? I only cost a penny.” It’s easy to visualize the wink after that statement. Whereas Shakespeare almost frowns when he writes about sex, Donne seems to be grinning from ear to ear as he writes to a mistress.

Shakespeare’s presentation of the concepts of sex and lust is much darker than Donne’s and also quite odd. His speaker is a man in love with a man and a woman. But since he can’t have sex with the man, his lover of choice is the woman. But she has an affair with the young man. It’s very much like a soap opera, but with an interesting mention of unused homosexuality. Donne, however, has a straightforward love affair going on between the speaker and a mistress. He likes to look at her body and he’s constantly trying to talk her into having sex. He is very reminiscent of the typical college male in today’s fraternities, or at least how they are portrayed on television.

As proven above, both poets have a flowery language that at first glance could be construed as romantic and caring poetry. They both speak about the beauty of the human body, although Shakespeare mostly talks about a male in such ways, and calls the female just a normal female, while Donne just likes to look at the beauty of his mistress. They both speak of love, although Shakespeare’s speaker loves a man and a woman, and the love he shares with the woman is an oddity, while Donne speaks only of the speakers love of a woman. However, when the poetry is read deeper and multiple times, you find out that, sure, they speak of the beauty of the human body, but Shakespeare refers to a man’s genitalia and venereal diseases, and Donne undresses his woman with his eyes and does wolf calls at the sight of her breasts. And, sure, they both speak of love, but Shakespeare’s speaker’s only true love is for a man he cannot have sex with, and the love he has for a woman is tainted by the fact she sleeps around on him, while Donne only uses the emotion of love to try to coerce a woman into the act of love.

In conclusion, although the general population of people today believes the English poets were some of the most romantic men in the world, those men are only typical males like the ones of today’s time. They speak of body parts that are normally taboo in polite society, they mention venereal diseases, they try to sweet talk women into bed, they cheat on their women, they go gaga over women’s breasts and other various body parts, and they speak in vulgar terms, only disguised in poetic language. English poets had dirty minds just like the men of today, and although they presented them differently, the only way they are different from today’s men, is they knew how to say it better.