Preview

This Is My Playes Last Scene

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
420 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
This Is My Playes Last Scene
How has Donne used characteristics typical of metaphysical poetry to convey his ideas in “Holy Sonnet: ‘This is my playes last scene’?” This is my playes last scene is one of Donne’s ‘Holy Sonnets’ embodying spiritual pain and struggling faith in Christianity. Numerous biblical allusions and morbid tone that are typical of metaphysical poetry, convey Donne’s fear of death and religious scepticism.
The opening four lines depict the last moments of the speaker’s life through metaphoric comparisons. The comparison “playes last scene” suggests the speaker is searching for an end that is meaningful and fulfilling. Christian imagery in “pilgrimage’s last mile” places this envisioned end in religious context, as a pilgrimage to the site of treasured holy relics is representative of Donne’s path to unfaltering devotion, to God. A paradoxical phrase ‘idly, yet quickly run’ expresses the speaker’s hesitance on the way to achieving this believed end to life. The addition of the comparisons “span’s last inch” and “minute’s latest point” enhances the cumulative listing of comparisons and dramatises the speaker’s fear of death.
The startling personification “gluttonous death” portrays Donne’s morbid paranoia of the brief moment when body and soul become “unjoint”. The speaker’s life is dichotomised; his body shall “sleep a space”, his soul shall “see that face”, a Christian image of God’s omnipotence imparting judgement on the speaker.
The ninth line witnesses a direct confidence in the speaker’s tone “as my soul, to heaven her first seat”. More prominently featured “So, fall my sins”, the immutable tone conveys a false reassurance, whereby the speaker actually pleas helplessly for God’s will and judgement. The imperative voice in “Impute me righteous” forcefully channels the persona’s imploration to receive God’s judgement and have so-called righteousness imputed. The precise word “impute” makes another religious reference to the Christian understanding of attributing

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    This nine page, one-act play explores the afterlife as a group of eight deceased family members ponders their status and the purpose of their existence. Together in their common plot, these characters speak to one another about life beyond the grave. They describe their existence in a way that is sometimes shocking, other times funny, but is always vivid. More than anything else it is this imagery that creates that world and coveys the meaning of the play.…

    • 830 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    hsc essay 33

    • 1176 Words
    • 5 Pages

    “ Let me sit heavy in thy soul tomorrow/I…was washed to death with …wine…Poor Clarence…betrayed to death…fall thy edgeless sword, despair and die”…

    • 1176 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Wit Play Analysis

    • 701 Words
    • 3 Pages

    John Donne is made up of various writing such as strong/sensual style, love poems, religious poems and latin translations, epigrams, elegies, songs, satires, and sermons. John was an author who was very passionate, yet had difficulty expressing and “to prove that glorified bodies in heaven are essentially identical to the bodies possessed on earth” as stated by Professor Ramie Targoff. Donne believes that the union of body and soul is what “makes up the man.” In Targoff’s writing, she is describing John as a very religious human being who aspires to go to heaven and be holy on earth and the afterlife. Ramie explains and describes Donne’s themes for his books, and what he wrote from a different aspect. As stated in the last paragraph of the book review, “Professor Targoff in this book succeeds in her tight and clear focus on a central topic, overt and implied, throughout Donne’s work. Her support for her arguments is generally quite convincing....” However, John’s work mostly consists of the bond between body and soul. He wrote a book taking the title of “Holy Sonnets” which did not consist of his usual writings. The book's content concludes of nineteen poems which were not published until two years after his death, in 1633. “The poems are characterized by innovative rhythm and imagery and constitute a forceful, immediate, personal, and passionate examination of Donne’s love for God, depicting his doubts,…

    • 701 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Mr Zakki

    • 1692 Words
    • 7 Pages

    ‘Present fears are less than horrible imaginings. My thought, whose murder is yet but fantastical, shakes so my single state of man that function is smothered in surmise, and nothing is but what is not.’ (Act 1, Scene 3 147-152)…

    • 1692 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    john donne and w;t

    • 786 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Through the comparative study of John Donne's poetry and Margaret Edson's play W;t we are shown the individual context of both writers and their perspectives on relationships and death. Donne represents his assurance of life after death in his Holy Sonnets. Additional to this in his earlier poetry, his valuing of deep relationship being critical to the human experience is reflected by his renaissance belief. Edson's individual post-modern context is apparent in the appropriation and rewriting of Donne's ideas to reflect her own perspective. This is further emphasized in the choices made by each composer to represent their ideas in different textual forms.…

    • 786 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Wit Play Analysis

    • 945 Words
    • 4 Pages

    The connections shared between Donne’s metaphysical poetry and Edson’s play Wit, occupies more than the adaptation of ideas and form, it represents the relationship between text and context. Wit reshapes Donne’s experiences of agency and self evaluation, thereby rejuvenating the humanistic paradigms…

    • 945 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Change In Edson's Poems

    • 2452 Words
    • 10 Pages

    Donne’s poems are interesting in the way they often present an ongoing thought process, rather than a story with a distinct beginning and end. Donne being from the literary culture; many of his poems reflect this mid-way change of heart, as he is comfortable dealing in ongoing reflection and experience, rather than static facts. One of Donne’s love poems, ‘The Sunne Rising’ centres around Donne, in bed with his lover, annoyed at the sun for disturbing their slumber. “Busie old foole, unruly Sunne” he writes. Donne, in personifying the sun, and describing such a thing in paradox (“unruly sun”), supports the idea that literary culture places more emphasis on emotion and description than logical fact. The structure of ideas throughout the poem thereafter is fluid. Donne is initially annoyed at the sun for its punctuality, saying that a love like his knows no time, and the sun would be better off chastising late schoolboys. As the poem progresses, Donne goes from annoyance, to mocking the sun's supposed power (“Thy beames, so reverend… I could eclipse then with a winke”), to then feeling content, and almost bad for the sun. Donne writes “Thou sunne are halfe as happy’as wee, in that the world’s contracted thus”, in which he is stating that the poor, old sun must have an easier job shining down on him and his lover, as their entire world is confined to each other. It is this notion of fluidity of ideas that further reflects the literary culture of Donne’s poems. He uses his writings, not to record tangible fact and feeling, but to support the idea that both his thoughts, and the subjects of his writing, can easily be written flexibly, as they are both…

    • 2452 Words
    • 10 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Best Essays

    “Everyman” is a metaphorical story that illustrates the value of life and death. The famous medieval play of the 20th century elucidates around the lifetime journey, the sins, family, and the day of reckoning. Death is perceived distinctively in various cultures and tends to impact an individual personally as compared to a group. The journey to death is associated with life’s morals, values, and experiences witnessed in life, but each person’s reactions to death are quite different. Following the brief overview of the “Everyman,” the essay discusses death in several cultures and how individuals treat death with support from scholars.…

    • 2147 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Best Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    In this medieval drama, a man who is known as Everyman, unexpectedly has to face with God. Many characters are classified in the play, one of them is Death whom is sent by God to summon Everyman to his “court” for his pilgrimage, which is his final expedition. Death asks Everyman if he had forgotten his creator, because he is very much implicated with worldly things. When they are about to start his pilgrimage, Death wants him to take his full book of accounts, yet he states it is not even ready; “and also my writing is full unready”1. As Everyman is engrossed with worldly concerns only, and now understands that this pilgrimage will arbitrate whether he is going to hell or heaven, he wails in defeat and asks Death if…

    • 1178 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Meditation XVII (17) was a piece John Donne used to understand death by the same theories that many religious people use today. His thoughts before death were highly connected to god along with his town who dealt with death regularly. Donne’ religious influence is at fault for obscuring the reality of his situation, but it is the only concept that he has a secure grip on during his illness.…

    • 786 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Essay on 'Everyman'

    • 311 Words
    • 1 Page

    This play suggests a means to salvation as Everyman enters the kingdom of heaven by performing good-deeds; and that death comes to everybody. Everyman has to clear his book of reckoning before he can progress to heaven, and one of the things the play considers is how humans will be judged after they have died. God is furious that humans are living a superficial life on earth, focusing on wealth and riches, without worrying about the greater judgment that is to come - and, notably, Everyman's own judgment - his ability to understand his life - becomes gradually more and more enlightened on his…

    • 311 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Apparition Analysis

    • 479 Words
    • 2 Pages

    The speaker conveys several attitudes towards the subject of “The Apparition” throughout the poem including a late shift of attitude between lines 13-14. “The Apparition” is a poem written by Donne about the relationship between a man and woman and how the woman has mistreated and abused the man and revenge is taken on the woman by the man’s ghost. John Donne, as the speaker, develops several attitudes towards the subject in “The Apparition” throughout the use of imagery, as well as by building up suspense and thereby releasing this pressure at the shift of the poem.…

    • 479 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    It is a routine that we go through that who could have thought would come out the way it always does, a routine with an end of which we have often seen with our own eyes, but would also shock the undiscerning. And then the end nears…and we still don’t care. We draw our lot, and it is clean—as if our own souls are, that is—big deal, we put the piece of paper in our pocket and it is immediately forgotten. And then the end springs at us…we look the person who’s drawn the dotted lot—look him as if our own souls are anything but the piece of paper he has picked—with stranger’s eyes. We stone him to death, we forget who he is—friend, family member, father, son, husband…and he dies. We go about our chores again and walk and talk as if our civil hands were clean and leave the slaughtered lamb with a triumphant smile because we have won again, we did not draw the cursed lot, he did. It doesn’t matter who ‘he’ is—as long as it’s not we. Our own eyes have beheld the same old scene, but the heart only remembers—and doesn’t feel. We do not care if it would be we who would die next year, as long as we are left living today. We see not nor expect the time of our own downfall—we caused the downfall of another one today and it’s what matters at the…

    • 721 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Meditation 17

    • 463 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Someone's death, compared to the tolling of the bell, indirectly affects one even though "that he knows not it tolls for him." The ringing of the bell reminds one of death and how close it is. There are no atheists at life's end. We are born dying, and as we realize this, we begin to fear what is beyond the end of life. We become closer to God to seek forgiveness for our sins and try to bargain our way into heaven. Donne explains how "when [the church] baptizes a child" this child is recognized, as is Donne, as one of God's subjects. The child ""¦is connected to the head which is my head to." The child has become a member of the same faction as Donne. That affects him. On the event of someone's death Donne compares them to a chapter in book as simply being "translated into a better language." This "translation" represents the freeing of one's spirit to rise into heaven. Donne explains everyone's unity by how the death of one affects us all. A "Man is a piece of continent." If he dies ""¦a clod be washed away"¦ [and] "¦Europe is the less." This effectively states that "any man's death diminishes [one]" and brings everyone closer together. As the clods of earth are washed away, it brings the erosive ocean closer to us all.…

    • 463 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In John Donne’s poem, The Apparition explores the emotions of a jilted lover, rejected for someone who, in the eyes of the writer, is obviously inferior. For convenience, I will refer to the "I" of the poem as "he" and the subject as "she".…

    • 681 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays