Beauty, defined in the Oxford English Dictionary as ‘such combined flawlessness of signifier and appeal of coloring as affords acute pleasance to the sense of sight ‘ , is a quality that has been awarded an elevated position throughout the ages. It is something which can non be ignored as it demands attending ; gazing us in the face, and we as a race intuitively see it to be a positive property. The intensions of beauty are by no agencies negative as we non merely utilize it to mention to delighting aesthetics, but besides to people good of bosom. Consequently authors active in this period dedicated many words towards the topic, emphasizing the importance of this physical quality. In this essay I am traveling to prosecute the representations of beauty presented by three Renaissance writers ; William Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe and John Donne. We will see, nevertheless, that non all of these authors convey it as a desirable quality, as the effects of possessing it can be rather desperate.
William Shakespeare seems to hold differing positions as to the extent of the desirableness of beauty. Conveyed in many of his sonnets beauty seems to be something which the talker yearns for as the just young person he describes in the first 126 is, though slightly unachievable due to his gender, greatly praised on his physical visual aspect. Whether the two shared a homosexual relationship or a strictly Platonic one, the young person ‘s beauty is clearly really of import to the writer, and to a greater extent than that of the Dark Lady who is the topic of sonnets 127-154. In ‘Sonnet 18: Shall I compare thee to a summer ‘s twenty-four hours? ‘[ 1 ]Shakspere proposes that the young person is ‘more lovely and more temperate ‘ ( l.2 ) than a summer ‘s twenty-four hours and, unlike the season which he considers to be excessively short, the male child will ne’er lose the beauty he possesses. The poet evidently desires the young person ‘s beauty, merely as he thinks others will as he feels that it is something that needs to be shared and claims ‘when in ageless lines to clip thou grow’st ‘ every bit long as there are people alive on this universe. This is the lone making Shakespeare gives and this suggests the desire of the young person ‘s beauty because he is in no uncertainty that if people are alive so they will wish to read about it.
However, in ‘Sonnet 130: My kept woman ‘ eyes are nil like the Sun ‘[ 2 ]Shakspere seems to experience that although beauty is a desirable quality, it is non all important. This verse form is a lampoon of conventional love sonnets, and is intentionally really lurid, possibly conveying his existent ideas on the affair. Rather than puting his kept woman on a base and utilizing other-worldly metaphors to depict her ( as was the tendency at the clip ) Shakspere presents us with a really honorable portraiture of his kept woman that does non include flowery hyperbole. He is non saying that beauty is n’t desirable ; instead he acknowledges it is because most work forces would desire their kept woman to hold eyes like the Sun, white chests and ruddy lips. However he is seeking to convey the sentiment that in a loving relationship beauty is non the property which makes it ‘rare ‘ , and he praises the dark lady regardless of her looking deficiency of good expressions. By comparing his kept woman to many of the things that would be found in a usual love verse form, such as the Sun, coral, snow and roses, he is satirizing those sonnets and in making so portraying a adult female who, though without godly beauty, is still really much desirable to him. As the reasoning pair reveals this quality is non an indispensable ingredient needed to be happy:
‘And yet, by Eden, I think my love as rare
As any belied with false comparison. ‘
By terming his love with this lady ‘rare ‘ he is conveying the amazing value of it, as it is so astonishing and pure that few people have experienced it. Despite the fact that his kept woman is non every bit attractive as the dramatic misss presented in other sonnets, which he believes are misrepresented anyhow, he is enamoured with her and feels that their relationship is unbelievable however. Presumably so Shakespeare believes that although conventional beauty is externally desired, it is other qualities that are required to do a good partnership.
Conversely in The Rape of Lucrece[ 3 ]the chase of beauty is considered so desirable and of import that the ‘Lust-breathed Tarquin ‘ chooses to ravenously prosecute it at the disbursal of an guiltless adult female ‘s honor and even his ain psyche as he recognises he will be everlastingly damned for making so:
‘And by their person mistake brought in subjugation
Her immortality, and made her bondage
To populating decease and hurting pertual, ‘ ( ll. 724-726 )
However he tries to rationalize his evil act by replying his ain inquiry ‘why Hunt I so for coloring material or alibis? / All speechmakers are dense when Beauty pleadeth ‘ ( ll.267-268 ) . This shows how her beauty has consumed him and so he can non halt himself. When he states ‘desire my pilot is, beauty my award: / Who fears droping where such hoarded wealth lies? ‘ ( ll. 279-280 ) we are given an penetration into his province of head which believes that her attraction is so powerful that to prosecute his desire is the right class of action. He has antecedently been ‘madly tossed between desire and apprehension ; ‘ ( l. 171 ) and the fact that he has decided to travel through with his actions shows non merely the enticement of beauty, but besides the failing of his character. The linguistic communication employed throughout is one that resembles a barbarous conquering, as Tarquin ‘battered down her dedicated wall ‘ ( l. 723 ) , therefore conveying how strong his desire is. Her organic structure is what he is beleaguering, and it her celibacy that she wishes to protect. When nothingness of this virtuousness, beauty is no longer desirable to Lucrece, and she ‘desperate, with her nails her flesh doth tear ‘ ( l. 739 ) screening that she values her celibacy more than her beauty, the latter for her being ‘a unsafe thing, talking louder than words of ground and restraint ‘ .[ 4 ]
Furthermore, the ‘poem is structured around a series of blunt absolutes – visible radiation and dark, male and female, guilt and artlessness, pureness and lecherousness, “ Beauty ‘s ruddy and Virtue ‘s white ” ( l.65 ) ‘[ 5 ]and this shows merely how at odds beauty is in itself. Although it is desired in the bulk of instances, we have seen that it can take to both good and bad effects. As beauty in this narrative is identified with ruddy whilst virtuousness is identified with white it suggests that her beauty has the possible to convey her love, but will besides be unsafe and foreshadows the awful events to come for the beautiful Lucrece.
The quality of beauty is unimpeachably conveyed as a desirable property in Christopher Marlowe ‘s love epyllion Hero and Leander[ 6 ], and its dramas a big portion in conveying the two eponymic supporters together. Within the narrative Marlowe places a big accent on the physical visual aspect of the characters as they are infatuated with each other instantly ;
‘And therefore Leander was enamoured.
Rock still he stood, and evermore he gazed, ‘ ( ll. 162-163 )
Although Hero wants to look like she is avoiding his progresss she trembles at his touch, and this prompts the storyteller to province ‘Love deepely grounded, barely is dissembled ‘ ( l. 184 ) . She is introduced as ‘Hero the faire ‘ ( l. 5 ) , on a throne ‘where she would sit for work forces to stare upon ‘ ( l. 8 ) . This first description shows that beauty is a desirable quality as the usage of the term ‘gaze upon ‘ suggests that their expressions are wholly fixed upon her, about entranced. Furthermore Hero ‘s beauty seems to compare to power in this verse form, as ‘all that position ‘d her, were enamour ‘d on her ‘ ( l. 118 ) . She is so beautiful that Cupid even mistakes her for his ain female parent Venus ; ‘As he imagyn ‘d Hero was his female parent. / And frequently into her bosome flew ‘ ( ll. 40-41 ) . Bing mistaken for Venus farther emphasises her beauty as this Roman goddess is ‘identified with the Greek goddess Aphrodite ‘[ 7 ]who is the goddess of ‘love, beauty, and birthrate ‘[ 8 ]and as by definition the goddess of beauty must be the most beautiful, being even compared to her high spots how dramatic Hero must be. Furthermore William Walsh proposes ‘the allusion to Venus points out Hero ‘s great beauty and the Cupid nestled in her weaponries suggests the potency for love that beauty gives her ‘ .[ 9 ]This event hints at her eventual yoke with Leander which was brought about chiefly by their common desire for beauty and, though the text is arguably unfinished, the twosome are left at the terminal in consummate felicity.
Leander excessively is portrayed as an attractive character, though he is described in really emasculate footings and is characterised by ‘his swinging braids that were ne’er shorne ‘ ( l. 54 ) and ‘orient cheeks and lippes ‘ ( l. 73 ) . His beauty is considered so desirable in this transition that work forces would ‘hazard more, than for the aureate Fleece ‘ ( l. 58 ) . Marlowe goes on to compose ‘some swore he was a amah in adult males attire, / For in his lookes were all that work forces desire ‘ ( ll. 83-84 ) and this foreshadows the later titillating brush with Neptune where, like Hero, he excessively is mistaken for person else because of his brilliant expressions. The Roman God of the sea pulls him beneath the moving ridges as he thinks that Leander is the ‘beautiful Trojan prince ‘[ 10 ]Ganymede.
It is interesting to see whether we feel the text is complete or non, because if Marlowe did mean to complete his work after the two became lovers so this would heighten the desirableness of beauty. However if his purpose was to transport on the narrative and finish it in the same manner that Musaeus ‘ myth ends so the desire for Hero ‘s beauty would finally take Leander to his decease as he drowns prosecuting it. Such an stoping would demo the jeopardies of following your desires at all costs.
Marlowe lingers on his descriptions of Leander, supplying us with a really titillating description of him swimming as Neptune admires him:
‘He clapt his plumpe cheeks, with his braids playd,
And smiling wantonly, his love bewrayd.
He watcht his armes, and as they opend broad,
At every stoke, betwixt them he would skid, ‘ ( ll. 665-668 )
The fact that Neptune is confering some much attending on Leander and projecting ‘many a lustfull glaunce ‘ ( 670 ) shows how desirable Leander is as this is their first meeting and so the attractive force is strictly physical ; it can merely be Leander ‘s beauty that has caught Neptune ‘s attending. Again the mention to a God shows the might of his beauty, and as this is an attractive force of the same sex it emphasises Leander ‘s beauty as he is appealing non merely to adult females but work forces excessively. His naA?ve answer to Neptune ; ‘you are deceav ‘d, I am no adult female I ‘ ( l. 676 ) , conveys his sexual ignorance and possibly even a deficiency of consciousness of the influence of his expressions.
Finally we shall turn to John Donne and see that he excessively granted the topic of beauty much of his clip and words. However, within his verse form we see differing positions, with some observing the characteristic and others presenting it a less than blandishing portraiture. The representation of the quality seems to depend on his temper and state of affairs, his verse forms are described as being ‘written by a adult male whose cardinal subject is his ain intense personal temper ‘[ 11 ], and some praise the beauty of adult females whilst some connect it automatically with faithlessness.
In The Good Morrow and Elegy 16: On his kept woman the talkers in the verse forms praise their lovers on their beauty. The former is an aubade, and portrays beauty as a desirable quality as he wishes to reject the former life he led without this spouse. The first rhyming three shows how beautiful he perceives her to be as all the lovers he had before were nil compared to her:
”Twas so ; but this, all pleasances illusions be.
If any beauty I did see,
Which I desired, and got, ‘t was but a dream of thee. ‘ ( ll. 5-7 )
The usage of the word ‘see ‘ besides shows us that that the beauty she has is aesthetic, as it is a physical attraction that he really observes. This three emphasises her matchless beauty and, as with all three of the stanza reasoning lines, the iambic hexameter breaks up the beat so you do n’t acquire excessively comfy and lose what he is seeking to emphasize. She is genuinely the most beautiful adult female he has of all time met.
There is an drawn-out metaphor within this verse form of travel and escapade with lines such as ‘Let sea-discoverers to new universes have gone, Let maps to others, universes on universes have shown, ‘ ( ll. 12-13 ) which suggests that the lovers no longer hold a demand for escapade and child drama as they have all they need and want in each other. The soft jussive moods Donne uses, ‘let ‘ , reenforce this as he proves he is happy for them to travel without him ; he has wholly he desires right here. He even goes on to utilize an even more hideous statement by saying ‘Love so likewise, that none do slacken, none can decease. ‘ This could be mentioning to the fact that the love they portion is so great that they will ne’er lose their sexual power after they consummate, or Donne could be using utmost exaggeration and suggesting that their love is so sophisticated and powerful that is can do them immortal. One could take this verse form to demo that beauty is desirable because the beautiful lover is happy and content with the talker, and he excessively is joyful as he has now awoken into an big universe of pure love now that he has experienced the beauty which he desired.
Despite his old hideous claims about love and beauty in Elegy 16: On his kept woman Donne admits:
‘Thy ( else almighty ) beauty can non travel
Fury from the seas ‘ ( ll. 19-20 )
He does non challenge its desirableness, as he praises her on its impressiveness, but here he acknowledges that it can non assist him as it is non powerful plenty to take the danger from his ocean trip. This echoes the sentiment expressed in ‘sonnet 130 ‘ which suggests that although it is sensible to want beauty, it is non of the topmost importance and will non entirely keep you together. However he does one time once more praise his kept woman on her beauty subsequently on in the verse form, suggesting:
‘Thy organic structure ‘s wont, nor head ‘s ; be non unusual
To thy self merely ; all will descry in thy face
A blushing womanly detecting grace ; ‘ ( ll. 28-30 )
He believes there is no point in her seeking to mask herself as her beauty will unimpeachably reflect through.
It seems that when John Donne is happy in a relationship he views beauty as something that is desirable, as it brings him, and his lover, cloud nine. However, when he has experienced wretchedness at the custodies of a adult female he portrays beauty as a negative quality and associates it with unwanted traits. In Song, Go and catch a falling star Donne portrays beautiful adult females as both unsafe and unfaithful. The intent of the verse form is to carry the audience that it is impossible to happen a adult female who is both ‘true, and carnival ‘ by commanding them to make literally impossible things. The jussive moods he uses, such as ‘Go ‘ , ‘get ‘ and ‘tell ‘ , add to his certainty as he is confident that if a adult female is attractive so she will be inconstant. Possibly this piece of Renaissance literature shows that beauty is a desirable quality for adult females, as he has evidently been seeking for a good looking individual, but it should non be desirable to work forces because they will be hurt if they find one.
Within Song Donne uses a mention to Sirens, ‘teach me to hear mermaids singing ‘ , which exaggerates the danger of a adult female ‘s beauty as it is non possible to hear a Siren ‘s beautiful vocalizing and survive to be able to state the narrative as all that hear it drown, salvage for the Argonauts and Odyseuss ‘ work forces.[ 12 ]The usage of exaggeration continues throughout the verse form as he commands the reader to ‘ride ten thousand yearss and darks ‘ . This shows how cheesed off he is with adult females as he believes that if you went on the biggest geographic expedition possible, which would ensue in age snowing ‘white hairs on thee ‘ , you would return
‘And swear
No where
Lives a adult female true and just ‘
This verse form does non overtly say beauty is non desirable, but it does look to propose that it is useless wanting such a quality because if you manage to obtain it so you are necessarily traveling to acquire hurt because your lover, though just, will surely be ‘false ‘ .
In decision, it would look that Renaissance Literature does chiefly, if non ever, convey beauty as a quality that is desirable. By definition beauty is something that is positive and pleasing, and therefore it would look self-contradictory to propose that it would non be desired. Both work forces and adult females value it, prosecuting lovers who are of an attractive persuasion, and in all the texts mentioned in this essay the quality is presented as a powerful one, hammering relationships both loving and passionate. However, we have besides been shown how it can be unsafe, entraping people and doing injury. Beauty is possibly hence a quality that is superficially sensible to want, but non at the disbursal of all else.
