Both John Donne and William Shakespeare are classical poets of early Modern England, whose works are rightfully considered among the best ever produced by English poetry. This fact makes it all the more interesting to compare the literary works of these two authors in order to identify the similarities and differences in their use of literary devices. Donne’s “Batter My Heart, Three-Person’d God” and Shakespeare’s “My Mistress’ Eyes” both deal with the subject of love, but the love in question is as different in each poem as the approach to portraying it. While Shakespeare utilizes comparison to stress the mundane, entirely sincere nature of human love, Donne uses both comparisons and personalization to emphasize the solemnity of sacred love for God.
Shakespeare organizes the entirety of “My Mistress’ Eyes” based on comparisons, which start from the very first line. The underlying message of these comparisons is that the beauty of the speaker’s mistress, while undeniable, does not merit fancy epithets. In no particular order, the narrator mentions that the woman’s bodily features are not of godlike appearance. Her eyes are “nothing like the sun,” her breasts are “dun,” as compared to the snow’s whiteness, and the speaker remembers “no… roses… in her cheeks” (Shakespeare lines 1, 3, 6). Moreover, the comparisons also stress that the speaker’s mistress does not delight senses other than vision in any extraordinary way either. The speaker openly admits there is “more delight” in some scents than in his mistress’ breath, and that “music hath a far more pleasing sound” than her speech (Shakespeare lines 7, 10). The sonnet sumps up its message in the concluding lines, stressing that the speaker’s love, as compared to the feelings of those who lavish compliments, is “as rare” and genuine (Shakespeare line 13). Thus, Shakespeare uses comparison to show that mundane earthly love, while entirely sincere, does not require exaggerated poetic epithets.
Donne’s sonnet uses comparisons in a different way, corresponding to a different type of love. In Donne’s case, love is not a mundane attraction to a woman but a sacred and intense feeling of religious subjugation of one’s soul to the divine will. In the first line, the speaker urges the Lord to “batter [his] heart,” thus, likening it to the dough and the titular triune God to a craftsman who molds and reshapes it (Donne line 1). This comparison already suggests the power differential absent in Shakespeare’s sonnet: the object of one’s love is not just another human but a being of an infinitely higher order. The same thought is stressed with greater clarity several lines after. The speaker compares himself to “an usurp’d town to another due” and calls for the divine liberation of his soul (Donne line 5). Once again, the comparison demonstrates that the love depicted in the sonnet is not to someone of comparable stature but to an entity that commands respect. Hence, Donne’s use of comparisons emphasizes the sacred nature of the speaker’s love, as opposed to the distinctly worldly attraction of Shakespeare’s poem.
The same is true for Donne’s use of personification, which pursues the identical purpose of stressing the godly rather than mundane direction of the speaker’s love. At one point, when addressing God, the speaker refers to reason as the latter’s “viceroy” within him (Donne line 7). This literary device presents rationality as a person intended to guide the speaker atop the aforementioned comparison between the speaker and the town subjected to harmful governance. By doing so, the author stresses again that the love expressed in the sonnet is not directed at someone on equal footing with the speaker. Instead, the object of the speaker’s love has the authority to appoint a ‘viceroy’ to look after one’s soul. Even though this viceroy may prove “weak or untrue,” the very fact of the appointment reiterates the point that his love is to a being of a higher order (Donne line 8). While Shakespeare’s poem emphasizes that the love it describes is to a mere human woman rather than a goddess, Donne spares no effort in portraying the overwhelming might of the object of his love.
As one can see, the use of literary devices in Donne’s “Batter My Heart, Three-Person’d God” and Shakespeare’s “My Mistress’ Eyes” demonstrates how similar approaches may be used for different artistic purposes. In Shakespeare’s case, comparisons serve to demonstrate that the love in question, while completely sincere, is to a human woman who, for all her merits, hardly deserves comparisons to a goddess. In contrast, Donne’s sonnet speaks of the pious love for God, and the comparisons made in the poem stress a power differential between the Lord and a mere human who strives to love the latter. The use of personification, which further emphasizes the absolute authority that God has over a human soul, drives this point even further. Thus, the comparison between these two poems reveals how authors can use the same literary devices in the discussion of similar subjects to highlight different aspects of the topic.
Works Cited
Donne, J. “Holy Sonnets: Batter My Heart, Three-Person’d God.” Poetry Foundation, Web.
Shakespeare, William. “Sonnet 130: My Mistress’ Eyes Are Nothing Like the Sun.” Poetry Foundation, Web.