3. Marvell’s poetry has been described as having characteristic ‘doubleness’.

Comment on this ‘doubleness’ with specific reference to at least two poems in the selections.

Marvell as a poet has often been likened to a chameleon in terms of his ambiguous and equivocal
nature, with his poetry often taking on multiple readings, such as in ‘The Nymph Complaining for the
Death of Her Fawn’. Additionally, Marvell withholds resolution in his poem ‘A Dialogue between the Soul
and Body’, and his advancing of both the body’s and soul’s perspective without either one gaining
primacy is an example of his ambiguity. Marvell also exploits the tensions in Christian Neoplatonic
traditions to depict the world as both being corrupt and sinful, and at the same time the beautiful
handiwork of God in ‘A Dialogue between the Resolved Soul and Created Pleasure’ and ‘On a Drop of
Dew’, his duplicity evident in the contrary depictions of earth.

Marvell’s ambiguity and ambivalence is available in poems that resist straightforward readings to take
on multiple meanings, such as in ‘The Nymph Complaining for the Death of Her Fawn’ (‘The Nymph’).
Towards the end of ‘The Nymph’, the poem transcends merely being a poem about a young girl
complaining of the death of her fawn, and takes on religious qualities, with the fawn being elevated to a
Christ-like figure. The blood of the fawn is described as a ‘purple grain’, which is usually associated with
royalty, and the killing of the fawn described as ‘sin’, with ‘not such another in / The world, to offer for
the sin’. Christ, as the Son of God, King of Heaven, would have had purple blood. In addition to the word
‘sin’ has religious connotations, the fawn as an ‘offer’ to the world without another, mirrors God’s
sacrifice of His only Son for the world. Additionally, the fawn inhabits a garden with lilies and roses,
which hold biblical significance. The love between the Nymph and the fawn then can be read as the love
between the church and Christ, and ‘the Nymph’ can be read as a poem mourning Christ’s death. In
addition to this interpretation, the fawn can also be read as Charles I, and the poem one mourning his
death. The word ‘troopers’ is one first used to describe Fairfax’s and Cromwell’s New Model Army, and
the ‘wanton troopers’ in the poem may be those who have shot the innocent Charles. In addition,
‘Heaven’s King / Keeps register of everything: / And nothing may we use in vain’ and the word ‘sin’ used
in association with the act of killing the fawn, denote the moral and religious transgression of killing the
fawn such that Heaven’s King has noted this wrong, with the implied promise of divine retribution. This
corresponds with the Renaissance conception of regicide as sinful due to the killing of the God-
appointed king and going against the king’s divine right to rule. Therefore, such diction with religious
connotations such as ‘sin’ is used to condemn the troopers, with the word ‘wanton’ and ‘Ungentle’
connoting bloodlust and cruelty, in contrast to the Christian virtues of meekness and innocence of the
fawn Charles. The poem ‘The Nymph’ thus has both political and religious readings that exemplify
Marvell’s dexterity with imbuing his poetry with multiple readings.

Marvell’s equivocal nature also often manifests in him advancing two perspectives in his poetry without
cleanly favouring one, creating complexity and dismantling the simple dichotomies favoured by other
Renaissance poets. In ‘A Dialogue Between the Soul and the Body’, the body and soul are in argument,
with the soul complaining of being trapped in the body, while the body feels that it is tyrannised by the
soul. The conflict between the soul and body is made acute with personification of both entities, with
the body and soul using emotionally-charged language and rhetoric in their speech, and making earnest
apostrophes at the beginning of verses 1 and 2 to appeal for deliverance. The soul uses diction related
to confinement and torment such as ‘enslav’d’, ‘fettered’, ‘manacled’ and ‘tortured’ in the first verse to
express its confinement by the various organs and parts of the body. Likewise, the body speaks of the
unbearable pain caused by the soul inhabiting it. The speech of the body answers and apes that of the
soul: the body asks for ‘deliver[ance]’ from the soul in response to the soul’s charge of enslavement, and
similarly speaks of ‘bonds’ and ‘[impalation]’ from the soul in response to the soul’s charge of torture
and confinement by the body. This mirroring of speech underscores the mutual dependency and
intertwined fates of the soul and body, although both despise each other. The mutual dependency of
the body and soul despite their feud is further illustrated in the use of paradox, in which the soul has
made the body ‘live’ to let the body ‘die’, and the body which ‘preserve[s]’ the soul similarly ‘destroys’
him, with antithetical words such as ‘live’ and ‘die’ and ‘preserve’ and ‘destroys’ being used in the same
line to convey their contradictory situation. The argument of the body and the soul ends on an
unresolved note, with the voice of an objective chorus as a form of resolution being conspicuously
absent, and with neither body nor soul having established their case as more legitimate. Through
establishing the mutual dependency of the soul and body without placing primacy in one or the other’s
case, Marvell has exhibited duplicity in advancing both their arguments without showing favour to
either one. This ambiguity is uncommon in Renaissance poets, especially in portrayals of arguments
between body and soul. Most Renaissance poets would favour the soul over the body due to
Neoplatonic conceptions of correspondence of the soul to the pure heavens, and the body to the
corrupt earth. By eschewing such simplistic and essential characterisations, Marvell creates complexity
in his poetry.

Marvell’s duplicity is additionally evinced in him exploiting the tensions in Pastoral and Christian
Neoplatonic tradition to portray earth both as the beautiful creation and handiwork of God, but also as a
place of sin and temptation, and the prison of the soul. In both ‘On a Drop of Dew’ and ‘A Dialogue
between the Resolved Soul and Created Pleasure’, the orient dew and soul respectively reject the earth.
The dew, as a spherical object, is emblematic of the soul, and the process of the dew dissolving into the
‘glories of th’ almighty sun’ is a conceit for the emancipation of the soul back to heaven, with ‘glories’
and ‘almighty’ connoting the greatness of heaven. Diction like ‘careless’, ‘trembling’ lest it grow impure,
‘shuns’, ‘[s]carce touching’ and ‘disdaining’ conveying the disdain of the dew for the corrupt earth. In
contrast, the dew ‘[gazes]’ at the skies, and is ‘in love’ with the heavens, with the juxtaposition
underscoring the preference of the dew for the heavens and the rejection of the earth. Similarly, in the
dialogue poem, the struggle against earthly sin is likened to a constant battle, with epic qualities in the
arming of the soul in stanza 1 with the shield, helmet, and sword. The heroic qualities of rhymed iambic
couplets are also present in the subsequent epigrammatic replies by the soul to pleasure, illustrating its
resolved nature. Throughout the poem, there is a clear pattern of the soul resolutely rejecting the
earthly temptations of Pleasure, and focusing on the rewards of heaven. The soul is focused on
‘sup[ping] above’ and cannot ‘stay / To bait so long upon the way’, speaks of not presuming as
‘heaven’s … perfume’, and praises the Creator’s skill as ‘prized’ while rejecting everything else as ‘earth
disguised’. The imperative of ‘Cease, tempter,’ and the caesura that places emphasis on the soul’s words
also convey the resolve of the soul. The soul’s success of resisting temptation and reaching heaven is
affirmed by the objective Chorus at the end of the poem in the line ‘Triumph, triumph, victorious Soul’,
with the repetition of the word ‘triumph’ and the adjective ‘victorious’ which underscore the main
theme of the soul rejecting the earth for heaven throughout the poem. Therefore in both poems, there
is a portrayal of the earth as a place of sin and temptation.

At the same time, earth is very beautiful and a place of pleasure in both poems, despite being corrupt. In
‘On a Drop of Dew’, adjectives like ‘blowing’ roses, ‘purple’ flow’r, ‘sweet’ leaves, blossoms ‘green’,
paint the earth as being an attractive place with some merit. Similarly, the earthly pleasures offered in
‘A Dialogue between the Resolved Soul and Created Pleasure’ are very sensuous. Pleasure offers many
different temptations of love, wealth and influence. In the stanza ‘On these downy pillows lie, / Whose
soft plumes will thither fly: / On these roses strewn so plain / Lest one leaf thy side should strain.’, the
sibilants throughout the stanza and sensory details of ‘soft’ and ‘downy’ enforce the decadence and
soporific effect of the pillows. Earth being both beautiful and at the same time corrupt is almost a
contradiction offered by Marvell, and is characteristic of his duplicity to resist simple characterisations of
the earth (and nature) as either corrupt or beautiful, and embrace both portrayals of earth in the
Christian Neoplatonic tradition.

Marvell’s ambivalence ultimately does not create contradiction, but complexity and nuance in his
poetry. The many readings of his poems do not compete for pre-eminence but rather coexist
harmoniously as a display of Marvell’s wit and his duplicity. Such is the characteristic ‘doubleness’ in
Marvell’s poetry.