Reading Questions:

"The Flea" (handout)

  1. When the speaker says, "Mark but this flea," what is he asking his implied audience to do?
  2. What has the flea done first to the speaker and then to the implied audience?
  3. Why does the speaker say the flea's action is not "a sin, nor shame, nor loss of maidenhead"?What is maidenhead? Why might the flea's action be considered by some as a sin or shame or loss of maidenhead?
  4. At the end of the first stanza, the speaker says, "And this, alas, is more than we would do." What do his words reveal about the speaker's relationship to the implied audience? Who or what is the implied audience and what does the speaker want from her?
  5. In the second stanza, the speaker says, "Oh stay..." What is he asking the speaker to do?
  6. What does the speaker mean when he says, "This flea is you and I."
  7. How is the flea theoretically a marriage bed? A marriage temple?
  8. What does the speaker mean by, "Though parents grudge"? What is it that the parents grudge about the relationship?
  9. Why does the speaker say that killing the flea would be "self-murder" or suicide? Why does he say that killing the flea would be sacrilege? Why would murder, suicide and sacrilege be an even greater sacrilege on top of the previous list?
  10. At the beginning of the third stanza, it seems that the implied audience has taken some sort of abrupt action. What has she done that the speaker calls "cruel and sudden"? When she has "purpled [her] nail in the blood of innocence," what innocent creature has she dispatched?
  11. When the speaker says, "Yet thou triumph'st and say'st that thou / Find not thyself, nor me the weaker now," what does he mean? What is the woman's counter-argument to the speaker's claim that they have been married and have had sex in the stomach of the flea? How, in the final three lines, does the speaker take her counter-argument and twist it to his own advantage?

p 465 in purple textbook

Andrew Marvell: "To His Coy Mistress": What does the word mistress mean in the 17th century and how is it different from the modern meaning of the word? What does the word coy suggest about the speaker's mistress? In line 1, what does the word "had" mean? What does that meaning suggest about the entire first stanza--i.e., are the scenarios the speaker describes realistic according to his argument?

  1. If the speaker had enough world and enough time, what are some of the things he would do to woo his mistress?
  2. lines 5-7: Why do you think the speaker chooses to place his lover at the Ganges and himself at the Humber? What is his argument and his objective?
  3. How long would the speaker love the woman and how long could she refuse his advances, according to the speaker?
  4. How would you describe the speaker’s tone through the first stanza?
  5. In the second stanza, the text begins with what conjunction? What does that conjunction suggest about this stanza in contrast with the "what-if" discussion ("Had we...") that commences the first stanza?
  6. What does the future look like ahead of the two lovers according to the speaker when he looks "yonder all before us"? Why does the poet think of the future as consisting of this sort of terrain?
  7. Where will the speaker's "echoing song" not be heard in the future?
  8. According to the speaker, who or what shall sample the young girl's long-preserved virginity or body after she has died chastely?
  9. According to the speaker, what will her "quaint" honor turn into once she is dead?
  10. To drive the point home in the last two lines of the second stanza, the speaker reminds the mistress that certain activities do not take place in graveyards. What activities does he refer to?
  11. Has the speaker’s tone changed by the end of the second stanza?
  12. In the third stanza, the text begins with what adverb? How does this adverb provide emphasis or urgency to the rest of the stanza?
  13. What sits on the young girl's skin like morning dew?
  14. What transpires from every pore of the young girl's skin?
  15. In lines 37-40, how is the speaker trying to deal with life’s limitations?
  • Vocabulary: carpe diem, cavalier