What the Early Seventeenth Century Leaves

The idea

The early seventeenth century, from James the First to the Civil War, gave English poetry two distinct manners and English prose some of its foundations. The politics were turbulent: James's divine right, Charles's quarrel with Parliament, war, the king's execution in sixteen forty-nine and Cromwell's Commonwealth until the Restoration. Donne made the metaphysical manner, arguing in poems through extravagant conceits that yoke unlike things together: two lovers as a compass's legs in "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning," Death belittled in Holy Sonnet ten, and in prose the reminder that no man is an island. Herbert brought the same wit to gentle devotion in The Temple, shaping "Easter Wings" on the page, and Marvell argued his "Coy Mistress" toward pleasure in three movements. Jonson led the other side, a classical poet and playwright of humours whose Alchemist exposes greed and whose followers, the Sons of Ben, included the Cavalier poets, Royalist singers of polished lyrics, among them Herrick, whose "Gather ye rose-buds" is the period's carpe diem in one line. Aemilia Lanyer and Margaret Cavendish published as women in a man's market, Lanyer defending Eve and Cavendish writing in nearly every genre. Bacon's Essays made prose compact and quotable, the King James Bible of sixteen eleven gave English its most echoed prose, and Webster's Duchess of Malfi darkened the stage. To read the period, sort its poems by method: an argument built on a surprising conceit is metaphysical, a polished song on love and time is Cavalier, and both may urge the reader to seize the day.