There are continuous insults made about the mistress; he describes her chastity as being a crime, and describes her “quaint honour”, which when we hear that the word “quaint” was pronounced “cunt” becomes provocatively insulting. These vicious remarks about the mistress suggest he knows she has the power in the relationship and he dislikes it. Marvell describes his mistress’ chastity as a crime that she is performing against him. This is intended to give the woman a sense of guilt and turn himself into a victim, thus persuading her what she is doing (remaining coy) is immoral and hurtful to him. This idea of threat is repeated at the end of the poem where time is personified as a powerful person that they must run away from, “Thus though we can not make our sun stand still, yet we can make him run” giving this abstract noun a strong concrete from.
It is hard to tell what tone this poem is written in; the abrupt changes of lexis and imagery cause the reader to go off at tangents. It sounds obsessive, and yet the argumentative structure makes it seem clinical. The thesis/antithesis/ synthesis device seems emotionless, yet he uses a great amount of emotive flattery. The disgusting image of worms eating their way inside the woman would not lead to a very seductive effect, and yet we are led to believe this is the aim of the poem; therefore this poem may be a sarcastic joke, and thus we can not look too seriously on this poem as a text of seduction. The overall message of the poem, (that sex before marriage is good), contrasts with the poet’s Puritanism, making it difficult to certify a meaning. However the threat, personification of time, and argumentative structure makes the poem successful as a “carpe diem” poem.
King Richard III, a highly formulaic, early Shakespearian history was published circa 1594. The play is about a power-hungry self-obsessed man, Richard, who must eliminate even members of his own family in order to get what he wants, Kingship. The section in focus shows Richard persuading Lady Anne to forgive him for the murder of her husband and her father-in-law, and proposing marriage to her, over her husband’s grave. This could be staged extremely sinisterly and thus we have an immediate link with the disturbing second stanza of Marvell’s poem, “Then worms shall try that long preserved virginity”.
This play is obviously highly condensed and rearranged in order to make the period of about forty years accessible to an audience and to create intensity and heighten drama. It also has a straightforward iambic pentameter and classical form typical of early Shakespeare.
Richard gives a very eloquent and emotive speech, in order to seduce Lady Anne. He uses the recurring connotations of light as good and dark as bad: “When black-facd Clifford shook his sword at him”, flattery: “Teach not thy lip such scorn for it was made for kissing lady not for such contempt”, a very emotive diction (“remorseful”, “Wept”, “sob”) and the oxymoron “living death”. The way in which this speech crams all these techniques into a few lines is very effective. However, Richard’s long speech monopolising the dialogue may begin to make Anne feel as if she has no respect from him and is allowed no personal opinion (a clear link to the Marvell poem). To counterbalance this Shakespeare uses a technique called stichomythia, which is a short change of words in equal balance: “I would I knew thy heart”/”Tis figured in my tongue”/”I fear me both are false”. Thus the graphology of this seduction is extremely skilful and persuasive.
In this section Richard can be seen to be implicitly making Lady Anne feel guilty, and thus forcing her to return his feelings. In the beginning Richard declares “For now they (Anne’s eyes) kill me with a living death” blaming Lady Anne for his supposed emotional demise. This has the effect of placing Richard as the victim, and Lady Anne as the plaintiff, the same technique that is used in To His Coy Mistress. However, Shakespeare uses this technique more effectively than Marvell by simply reiterating the idea. In “To His Coy Mistress” the idea of the mistress as being wrong is mentioned only once, is understated and at the very beginning, “This coyness lady were no crime”. This can be missed easily where as nobody can read past “Twas I that stabbed young Edward but tw’as thy heavenly face that set me on”.
Shakespeare uses flattery to try to counterbalance the extreme guilt by saying that Lady Anne is the only one who has ever made Richard feel anything. He talks about how he couldn’t cry at his father’s death even though others were like “trees bedashed with rain” but “Thy beauty has made them blind with weeping”. He also says that she has taught him how to be kind “My tongue could never learn sweet smoothing word; but now thy beauty is propos’d my fee”, which is a great act considering Richard’s notorious reputation. This flattery is coupled with alliteration to lull Anne into forgiving him; “Sweet”/“smoothing”, the use of the alliteration on S helps the soothing effect. This is similar to “To His Coy Mistress” as alliteration is used most strongly when the most flattery is used, “Thou by the Indian Ganges Side Shoulds’t rubies find”
Death is obviously a very common theme in this play and it is in fact Richard’s ultimate sacrifice, offering to kill himself, (coupled with his eloquent speech) that begins to change Anne’s mind. This links in with the memento mori theme of Marvell’s poem he uses their looming death as the main way of persuading his mistress.
A great deal of deception appears in this play. There are many differences between a character’s soliloquies and their public speeches, there are many hypocritical postures, sworn oaths and outright falsehoods. The most chameleon-like character in the play is Richard himself, and it is shown very clearly in this scene when even he himself cannot believe that he has managed to seduce Lady Anne. He utters in a soliloquy “Was ever a woman in this humour woo’d?”. As this shows how untrue Richard was being in this scene it is hard to judge how persuasive his actual words were. Even Lady Anne’s agreement, may have been, in part at least, due to the fact that Shakespearian women need to be allied with powerful men in order for themselves to have power. Lady Anne’s need to survive means that we cannot make a judgement on how truly successful Richard’s speech has been, just as we cannot make judgements on the tone of Marvell’s poem.
A woman wrote the first “personal ad” on the 21st of August 1695, in an edition of “How To Improve Your Economy And Trade”. Today, 308 years later, most media formats have taken it on and mobile phones, television programmes, the internet, and of course newspapers all include this form of seduction. It has become so well known, in fact, that the conventions and colloquial abbreviations mentioned in these have passed into daily usage, “desperately seeking” for example.
It has been proven that successful adverts rely heavily on the socio-economic status and education of that person, rather than their looks and beauty. For example a person saying “head of dept law teacher” instead of “blonde, blue eyed female 5’5” very easy on the eye” would gain more responses. This seems to be totally contradictory to most fictional texts of seduction, as these tend to rely heavily on the person’s look. Take Shakespeare’s classic “Sonnet 12”; not once is his mistress’ socio-economic status mentioned but her beauty is compared to The darling buds of may constantly, and Richard III talked about Lady Anne’s “Beauty”.
Individuals also ask for their respondents to have “GSOH”, some without even stating their own class. For example, “Slim, stunning, attractive feminine would like to meet young wealthy gentleman”. This though would probably have less success than say “head of dept law lecturer”, because the importance is on the respondent’s money, thus their “selling power” rather than the individuals.
The respondents selling-power can be hinted at humorously, which would be effective as the public generally correlate a good sense of humour with a fun person; for example “situation vacant for positive gent with SOH (sense of humour), fun, adventure”. The first two words of this post sets a very light hearted tone.
Another way of promoting humour is by using metaphors for the respondents, and even themselves, for example “Great catch surfing Irish artist, 33, can’t find any fish in the Cornish sea”. This extended metaphor of fish not only shows humour but shows a favourite hobby of this person, and because people are likely to respond to people with similar interests, acts as a second method of seduction. Humour is of course used in “To His Coy Mistress”, but because this is a form of seduction, rather than insults made about the mistress it must be more accessible.
Lady Anne is predominantly persuaded by the eloquence of Richard, and this contrasts with the limitations of personal ads. Because you pay for a restricted space colloquial phrases like “SOH” and “WLTM” (would like to meet) are essential and the adverts therefore lack the sort of emotive language which Richard is able to use. However one individual overcame this by writing “Tide and time don’t wait but this ….. brunette 40, awaits gentle funny M”, this brief yet poetic (and Shakespearian) allusion gives the ad both a philosophical and literary eloquence. It is also very interesting to note that the conventions and abbreviations of personal ads have passed into daily language.
Because of the limited space available, and the fact that these individuals are not known to their respondents, it is impossible to use physical attraction. Personal ads are therefore the least effective form of seduction available. Physical attraction or “chemistry” is needed in order to create sexual persuasion and this is necessarily missing in an anonymous printed text. One psychologist once said “In real life people look at each other attentively first and only then the desire to designate mutual interest arises”, and thus that personal ads were “An obvious interruption of the natural order of human communication”. We talk of “love at first sight” but not of “love at first text”. Also, like the false persona Richard puts on to woo Lady Anne, the individuals here may be using hyperbole for themselves or even down right lies, so it is impossible to work out the selling power of each individual.
The use of paralinguistic features in seduction can not be underestimated. However, in the three texts studied the observer has greatly differing views of body language and tone of voice. The clearest can be seen in Richard III, presented as a play, we have the words and body language of the seducer and seducee. In To His Coy mistress we only have the words of the “cavalier” and must imagine for ourselves the mistress’ response. Lastly in the personal ads the person addressed is unknown even to the seducer.
This essay shows that the language of seduction is reliant on flattery and emotive language, such as Marvell’s “An hundred years should go to praise Thine eyes”; and it is also important for the seducer to flatter their partner’s needs, shown in the emphasis on money and intellect in the personal ads. Humour is a recurrent device in the language of seduction: “My vegetable love should grow Vaster than empires, and more slow”; and in one personal ad “In urgent need of male companionship to stop her working so hard”. Both Marvell and Shakespeare used guilt to try and win their partners. This could be effective as the woman is supposed to feel blameworthy for not succumbing to the seducer; however, if this is not counterbalanced with flattery it could simply cause the mistress to become hostile and insulted. The graphology and grammar of speech is also shown to be important. Marvell diminished the effect of his seduction by using a highly formulaic structure, which creates a clinical, detached effect; on the other hand Shakespeare uses an important technique of stichomythia after Richard’s long speech to ensure Lady Anne felt her opinion was respected. However, as all or one of these texts may be completely deceptive, it is important to show honest and open paralinguistic features.
Both the Marvell and Shakespeare texts I have studied here use allusions and connotations of language dating back to Ancient Greek and Latin, they use metaphors and similes, “Like trees bedashed with rain” and alliteration “We”/”Would” “Long”/”Loves”. Their forms of poetry include highly formulaic graphology and the lexis and syntax are formal, despite the informal positioning of the first line of Marvell’s poem. This contrasts with the colloquial language and grammar of the 2003 personal ads. These differences do point to a disparity between literary and non literary texts, the more informal text being non literary; however they also show a modern inclination to informal syntax and colloquial speech.