John Donne
(1572–1631)
John Donne’s life is usually thought of as having two very different and opposing phases. The first phase is typified in his witty, rakish, intellectually flashy love poems. In the second phase, he became a famous and eloquent preacher.
Born into a wealthy, distinguished Roman Catholic family, Donne was brilliant and well educated. In the early 1590s he went to study law at one of the Inns of Court, the great institutions for legal study in London. The sophisticated young Elizabethans with whom Donne associated at the Inns of Court were notorious for their wild extracurricular activities, and Donne’s early love lyrics and satires, privately circulated among his fellow students, were much admired. Toward the end of the century, Donne began to make his way in the world, establishing a name for himself with his charm and brilliant intellect at the court of Queen Elizabeth. He also proved himself as a soldier and adventurer in expeditions with Sir Walter Raleigh and the Earl of Essex. In 1598 he was appointed private secretary to Sir Thomas Egerton, one of the highest officials in Elizabeth’s government, and his prospects for advancement were bright.
But Donne’s fortunes took a turn for the worse: in 1601 he secretly married the sixteen-year-old Ann More, Lady Egerton’s niece. The marriage was discovered by Ann’s father, who had Donne dismissed from office and imprisoned. This crisis brought on a period of great turmoil and uncertainty for Donne, but it ushered in the second phase of his career, when he became the most famous preacher of his day. As a young man Donne had drifted away from the Roman Catholic Church. But during his troubled middle years, though he became increasingly concerned with religion, he did not join the Anglican Church. King James I recognized Donne’s potential as a religious thinker and preacher, however, and in 1607 declared that if Donne expected any advancement or employment from him, it would have to be in the Church. Thus, partly because of external pressure and partly because of the changes in his own thinking, Donne decided to enter the ministry in 1615. His success was immediate and lasted until the end of his life. From 1621 until his death he was Dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral, the London center of the Church of England. A few weeks before he died he delivered his own funeral sermon, the final public performance of the most theatrical and spellbinding preacher of the age.
The transformation in Donne’s life from clever love poet and courtier to eminent divine is certainly remarkable. But the links and continuities between the two phases are perhaps more significant than the differences. From the outset Donne’s writing shows a mind that was restlessly energetic, highly individualistic, and essentially dramatic. Donne provokes his readers; he seems to challenge our minds to be as agile and as daring as his own. The sense of vivid immediacy in his writing, whether directed toward a resistant mistress in the love lyrics or toward a stern and mysterious God in the Divine Meditations (or Holy Sonnets), derives from his unrivaled ability to enact through language the urgency and complexity of thought and experience.
