Sarcasm in Renaissance Poetry

For all of the sonnets praising a lover's beauty or hailing love as immortal as the rhymes that describe it, there are works of poetry whose themes stray in a completely opposite direction. Andrew Marvell's famous poem "To His Coy Mistress" takes the latter approach, satirizing love poetry in a compelling and dark portrait of the futility of remaining chaste for too long. While following poetic conventions like rhyme scheme and the structure of the verses, the content of Marvell's poem explores a darker side of courtship that is not often touched on in poems from this era.

Using a logical structure in three stanzas, Marvell creates a compelling, if not disturbing argument as to why his lover's remaining chaste for too long will result in pragmatic unhappiness for both parties. Marvell's use of sarcasm begins in the first stanza of the poem in which he introduces his argument. While maintaining the poetic conventions of the time for praising the beauty of a lover, Marvell's idealizing here speaks to the sarcastic tone of the stanza. He says that if time were no object, he would spend ages adoring different parts of her body. He says, "An hundred years should go to praise/Thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze;/Two hundred to adore each breast;/But thirty thousand to the rest" (Lines 13-16). The preposterous amount of time he should spend on these minute aspects of his lover's appearance speaks to the parody with which he writes these lines.

It is in the second stanza that Marvell begins to explain the dire consequences of the coquettish nature of this chaste lover. He begins with the famous couplet, "But at my back I always hear/Time's winged chariot hurrying near;" (Lines 21-22). While in the first stanza he proposes the hypothetical scenario in which time is of no consequence, he moved on to a more realistic argument in which he divines that this waiting will bear no contentment either for him, or for this coy mistress. He says, "worms shall try/That long preserved virginity" (Lines 27-28), a macabre reference to the in tact hymen with which is mistress lay buried which now only worms can enjoy.

Marvell's use of sarcasm in this poem speaks to the frustration that many men must have felt toward puritan and prudish social conventions. Using language that should be meant to proclaim the pure divinity of the beauty of his mistress, Marvell instead uses this same language in a sarcastic tone that chastises the archaic practices of a woman's affected coy nature.

The Power and Immortality of Beauty

Using a strict form and following the structure that he himself created, William Shakespeare's sonnets have proven to have withstood the test of the ages. Much like the themes of some of his poetry, Shakespeare's sonnets have shown themselves to be timeless and universal, much like the themes that comprise them. In his famous "Sonnet 18", Shakespeare compares the beauty of a person, often thought to be an anonymous young man, to a "summer's day" (Line 1). This young man proves to be more beautiful than even the most temperate of all the seasons in addition to being more static and unchanging. The poem concludes with the famous couplet, "So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, So long lives this, and this gives life to thee" (Lines 13-14). While brief, this poem explores a multitude of themes which include, beauty, Nature, aging and immortality. Indeed, this poem brings about the age old fascination of eternal beauty, but does not evoke this theme in the same fashion as "Sonnet 55", whose speaker alludes to the immortality of his rhyme (his art). The fortunate, eternal beauty of the person to whom "Sonnet 18" is addressed is simply rife with a beauty more powerful and beautiful than Nature and time together. He or she does not have to work for this distinction, and its truth is an aspect to which all men can attest simply by bearing witness to its veracity. Not only is this beauty natural, but it is also extremely powerful. The addressee has the power to be more stable than the summer sun, never too hot, and his or her "eternal summer" (Line 9) can outshine even death himself. Normally, when confronted with beauty and perfection so extreme, one would wonder, but at what cost? Shakespeare makes no allusion to any negative consequence that this beauty might conjure, and its objective truth is given such unanimous praise that even men and "eternal lines to time" can do nothing but bow before it as auspicious spectators. Beauty is a theme as timeless as poetry and its power is as strong as the subjects that it so often evokes. Shakespeare's sonnets are rife with allusions toward immortality and timeless beauty, but "Sonnet 18" is one whose famous lines have withstood the test of time, much like the fortunate person to whom the verses are addressed.