John Donne's strategies for discreet preaching

Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900, Wntr, 2004 by Marla Hoffman Lunderberg

In a January 1614 letter to Sir Robert Ker, John Donne acknowledges his reluctance to write an epithalamium in honor of the scandalous Somerset-Howard marriage: "If my Muse were onely out of fashion, and but wounded and maimed like Free will in the Roman Church, I should adventure to put her to an Epithalamion. But since she is dead ... I have not so much Muse left as to lament her losse. Perchance this businesse may produce occasions, wherein I may expresse my opinion of it, in a more serious manner. Which I speake neither upon any apparent conjecture, nor upon any overvaluing of my abilities, but out of a generall readinesse and alacrity to be serviceable and gratefull in any kinde." (1) This letter highlights one difficulty faced by suitors in the Jacobean patronage system: tension between pragmatic service and the poetic Muse. Service to patrons was necessary in the search for court preferment, and a suitor could feel that his free will was completely suppressed in his search for a patron's approval. Donne himself indicates as much here by comparing his Muse to free will and declaring that his Muse is dead. Yet this letter also points toward a space where free will is not fully silenced. While reluctant to produce an epithalamium, Donne offers an alternative "more serious manner" in which he can serve on his own terms--probably by employing his legal and secretarial background in a defense of the Essex-Howard marriage annulment. (2) When he finally does produce an epithalamium for Somerset, he writes the poem on his own terms as well as his patron's: he writes it after the wedding instead of presenting it before or at the occasion, and in it he mixes oblique criticism of the couple with extravagant praise. (3)

Donne's analysis of the events surrounding the Somerset epithalamium is paradigmatic of much of his experience in his search for patronage: throughout the years during which he seeks secular and ecclesiastical patronage, Donne negotiates constantly between dutiful service and freely chosen methods of serving, using what I call a rhetoric of discretion. Donne uses the term "discretion" and its derivatives frequently to indicate how a person speaks or behaves in contrast to what that person says or does. Although Donne never outlines a complete rhetoric of discretion, it is possible to discover in his writings certain discretionary principles that he regularly follows. As he negotiates the multiple demands of seventeenth-century court life, he combines fulsome praise with honest commentary and mingles necessary obedience with specific criticism. Donne is willing to criticize--even his patron or his king--but presents his criticism in the manner he believes most likely to receive a positive reception and a listening ear. Donne sometimes uses praise as a method of giving advice. He also sometimes presents an ideal which is aligned--for the most part--with a patron's ideals, voicing his own stance by adding to the patron's model something outside of the patron's ideal. Finally, Donne frequently incorporates brief critiques within the framework of an acceptable sermon topic, not dwelling on a critique once he makes it, but quickly changing course to return to a less dangerous topic.

My understanding of Donne counters the received opinions of critics as diverse as John Carey, Arthur Marotti, and Jonathan Goldberg, yet draws upon the recent scholarship of both Richard Strier and Jeanne Shami. (4) At first glance, Strier and Shami seem at loggerheads in their very different analyses of Donne's writing and his politics. Strier, in agreement with Carey, R. C. Bald, and Debora K. Shuger, finds Donne an absolutist in his politics and reads his poetry and sermons accordingly. Shami, aligning herself instead with David Norbrook and Annabel Patterson, sees Donne engaging in a somewhat oppositional politics. (5) The two positions seem irreconcilable--and perhaps in the end they are, but more on that in a moment--yet it is vital to an understanding of Donne not to allow their differences to mask their very important similarities.

First and foremost, both Strier and Shami find in Donne the expression of a principled loyalty (the phrase is Strier's); Strier's emphasis is on "loyalty," and Shami's is on "principle," yet both sides of the coin are important to both critics. When Strier suggests that the young Donne is neither "merely orthodox [n]or merely 'political' in a very restricted, anti-ideological sense," he presents a Donne to whom deeply felt "ideas" are more important than the political position they might represent. (6) When Strier argues that the Devotions displays the later Donne's support of William Laud's Arminian ecclesiology, he still criticizes the key assumption that "the only alternative to careerism and toadying is criticism or opposition," asking, "But what of the possibility of principled loyalty to the established church and state?" (7) In a surprisingly similar vein, Shami argues, "Donne's obedience, in the end, is not the 'blind' obedience which he himself disparaged as the practice of the 'Church of Rome' ([Sermons,] 2:105), but an active challenge to both King and congregation to resolve grievances openly, charitably, and flexibly--within the law." (8)