The Good Morrow Stanza One I wonder by

The Good Morrow

Stanza One I wonder, by my troth, what thou and I Did, till we loved? Were we not weaned till then? But sucked on country pleasures, childishly? Or snorted we in the Seven Sleepers’ den? Pillow talk. Parenthesis, enjambment and caesura create the impression that the speaker cannot believe his luck. the questions do not create the impression of hesitancy or uncertainty that interrogatives usually do – they are more assertive, along the lines of ‘What the hell were we doing before we met? ’

Stanza One I wonder, by my troth, what thou and I Did, till we loved? Were we not weaned till then? But sucked on country pleasures, childishly? Or snorted we in the Seven Sleepers’ den? Progression – babies to children to youth. Wellborn infants were given to wet nurses, often in the country, for breastfeeding.

I wonder, by my troth, what thou and I Did, till we loved? Were we not weaned till then? But sucked on country pleasures, childishly? Or snorted we in the Seven Sleepers’ den? • Allusions to the body abound, and since the couple are just awake. . . • The word choice of ‘weaned’ suggests breast feeding, and ‘sucked’, also relates to erotic acts, and if we take the ambiguity afforded by early modern alphabet, an ‘s’ often looked like an ‘f’. Note the assonance of ‘uh’. The word ‘snorted’ denotes snoring but has connotations of deep breathing, again suggesting erotic activity. Note the sibilant alliteration • While questioning what on earth the lovers did before they were together, the verbs used have an erotic charge. • Reference to wet nurses, often in the country, but the words first syllable suggests another meaning. Also, country = simple • This is an awakening: literally as well as a moment of epiphany. They had been children in the past but no more.

Stanza One (5 -7) ’Twas so; but this, all pleasures fancies be. If ever any beauty I did see, Which I desired, and got, ’twas but a dream of thee. Donne goes on to answer his questions. The answer emphasised through caesura (‘Twas so). Caesura also calls attention to the fact that the lovers, together in bed, is what is real (’but this’). Repetition of ‘pleasure’ underlines what Donne is writing about. The word choice ‘fancies’ – in Elizabethan language – means a dream, something from the imagination. This continued in ‘dream’ two lines down. The word ‘dream’ suggests insubstantial, a shadow of the woman he is addressing. Note the alliteration in line 8 which connects the idea of his previous desire being unreal (‘dream’) Certainty of his reasoning about the relationship emphasised by the rhyme scheme. Quatrain sets up the questions, three lines answers and reflects on the topic. Last word of stanza ‘thee’ which emphasises the audience – the lover.

Stanza One (5 -7) ’Twas so; but this, all pleasures fancies be. If ever any beauty I did see, Which I desired, and got, ’twas but a dream of thee. Reference to earlier womanising by the speaker here, and the fact that he has slept with other women conveyed in the cheeky aside (parenthesis) ‘and got’ makes the audience aware of the fact that the speaker was, to use a modern reference, ‘a player’. Remember the audience that Donne was essentially writing for – impressing other young gentlemen and those at Court.

Stanza Two (8 -11) And now good-morrow to our waking souls, Which watch not one another out of fear; For love, all love of other sights controls, And makes one little room an everywhere. This stanza brings us to the present, rather dramatically with conjunction before ‘now’. We also have the title, a morning greeting, but it has taken on a figurative as well as literal meaning. Before the lovers found each other they were asleep. The idea is it is their very beings ‘souls’ which are awakening.

Stanza Two (8 -11) And now good-morrow to our waking souls, Which watch not one another out of fear; For love, all love of other sights controls, And makes one little room an everywhere. Note the consonance, assonance and alliteration in lines 8 -9. The couple are awake and watch each other not with suspicion in the way some lovers look at each other, frightened that they’ll be left, cheated on etc. It’s pure love. Everything seen is controlled by love and therefore can make a bedroom an entire world (hyperbole).

Stanza Two (12 -15) Let sea-discoverers to new worlds have gone, Let maps to other, worlds on worlds have shown, Let us possess one world, each hath one, and is one. Since the bedroom is their own world, they can ‘let’ others do the early modern era adventurer activities: exploring to find new worlds; pouring over ‘maps’ in order to find these new worlds. Anaphora underlines the message of this triplet which culminates with the return to the idea expressed in 11: the room is the lovers’ world. But this conceit is further developed: each lover is a world, one to be explored and possessed.

Stanza Two (12 -14) Let sea-discoverers to new worlds have gone, Let maps to other, worlds on worlds have shown, Let us possess one world, each hath one, and is one. Anaphora repeats the command/imperative form of the verb which further underlines the idea contained in the lines. Creates an exclamatory, joyous tone. Look too at the repetition of ‘world’ and one’. The lover need not venture outside the door, let alone the country. Each is a new world for exploring. Put the two together and you have all the world. For them.

Stanza Three (15 -18) My face in thine eye, thine in mine appears, And true plain hearts do in the faces rest; Where can we find two better hemispheres, Without sharp north, without declining west? In addition to the idea of the globe, some interpret the lines as being evidence of the cordiform maps of the late Renaissance. A picture of one such map is the title slide to this presentation. There is also the Platonic idea of the ‘soul mate’ - your other half. NB Platonic love usually denotes a pure love, with no sex so, . .

Stanza Three (19 -21) Whatever dies, was not mixed equally; If our two loves be one, or, thou and I Love so alike, that none do slacken, none can die. Triplet begins with the statement of fact (or was accepted by scholars of the time to be fact) about matter being incorruptible only if its parts had balance. Referring back to stanza two, the narrator speaks of the lovers being ‘one’ – remember the hemispheres? Each lover feels an equal amount of love, perfect harmony. Therefore, with this equal amount of emotion coupled with being perfect hemispheres, their love will be eternal

Stanza Three (19 -21) Whatever dies, was not mixed equally; If our two loves be one, or, thou and I Love so alike, that none do slacken, none can die. Sentence structure is important in this triplet. The end of line 19 is end-stopped but the hypothesis contained in the closing lines is enjambed. The ‘or’ of line 20 is in parenthesis, drawing attention to the second part of his reasoning (that the equal love they share) will lead to eternity – ‘none can die’.

The Good Morrow The three verses move from the past (verse one), through to the present (verse two) and then to the future (verse three) with the prospect of eternal love. The harmonious content is reflected in the three-stanza form, its regular rhyme scheme (ababccc) and the rhythm mostly iambic pentameter and iambic hexameter. Look out for where the rhythm changes to hexameter (iambic hexameter is called an alexdrine) and ask why Donne chooses to use this rhythm.