Beggar Woman

Authors Avatar

How is love represented in different ways in the poems; The Beggar Woman by William King and Valentine by Carol Ann Duffy ?

    The Beggar Woman was written around 1663 to 1712, by William King. William King worked as a lawyer and judge but wrote poems as a hobby. It can be led to believe that his job may have influenced him to write the Beggar woman, because of some acts of injustice that he may have witnessed.

        Metaphysical and pastoral poetry was quiet a popular style of poetry with the upper class, therefore this is the kind of poetry you may expect from an upper class gentleman. William King, however, chose to write his poem in the style of a Broadside Ballad. Broadside ballads were for the middle classes and for the poor mainly because they were so cheap and the writing used was everyday language. The story within the poem is about a gentleman from the upper class who, whilst he is out hunting, wants to do another kind of 'sport', i.e. looking for a woman to have sex with. He found a woman who was a beggar. He asked her if she wanted to have sex in the woods, and, to his delight, she says yes.  She leads him into the woods and starts to make excuses why she can’t have sex with him whilst the gentleman comes up with solutions to the problems. Finally she has a baby on her back and the gentleman says to put him on the floor. At the end the gentleman ends up tying the baby to his back and is left by the woman. This would appeal to the poor people because it has humor in it and it shows that the people superior than them can be this dumb. Although William King is from the upper class he doesn’t like how the lower classes are treated and pressured into things just because they are disadvantaged.

     The purpose of the poem is to persuade the higher classes to treat the lower classes fairly. It also shows how selfish the upper classes are.

“The gentleman had scarce got time”

    This poem is in rhyming couplets, this is where a word at the end of every 2 lines rhymes e.g.

“A gentleman in hunting road astray

more out of choice then that he lost his way”

King used this choice of rhyme scheme because it gave the poem more of a rhythm and made the poem sound more like a song; this was because poems used to be sung. Also the entire poem is just one big stanza, this also contributed to being be able to sing the poem easily and as one.

Join now!

   

     The language used in the Beggar woman is old fashioned and not modern. It is used to create pictures and jokes. The words used are also very ironic and have double meaning for e.g. the word “trade” is used to describe prostitution when it isn’t a trade. He also uses this in a humorous way for e.g.

‘Cries, sir, good buy aren’t angry that we part,

I trust the child to ye with all my heart,’

This quote shows us a comical picture where the gentleman is left with a baby on his ...

This is a preview of the whole essay