Satire 1 is the first in a series of five satires by John Donne. He wrote them in the 1590s, in his twenties, while studying law at the Inns of Court and later seeking employment at the Court. The Satire I opens with the words:
Away thou fondling motley humorist,
Leave mee, and in this standing woodden chest,
Consorted with these few bookes, let me lye
In prison, and here be coffin’d, when I dye.
The satirist compares his study to the ‘standing wooden chest,’ the prison in which he would rather die and ‘be coffined’ than abandon it. There, he is able to confer with ‘grave divines; (…) Nature’s secretary, the Philosopher; [a]nd jolly statesmen.’ They teach him how to ‘tie [t]he sinews of a city’s mystic body’. The metaphor is obviously an exaggeration. If the satirist died and ‘be coffin’d’ in the study as he wishes, he would not be able to escape its confines and to explore the city and court, as he later does in the Satire. Moreover, if the study is a prison to the satirist, it raises the question about the reason of his imprisonment and the nature of the sentence. The line ‘let me lie / In prison, and here be coffin’d, when I die’ implies that the satirist is sentenced for life.
The prospects of escaping the walls of the coffin-like prison, are greatly reduced by the hint of unavoidability of the confinement. Significantly, the satirist states ‘when’, not ‘if’ ‘I die.’ It can only lead to the conclusion that the Inns of Court were not the desired destiny for the satirist, or in fact, Donne himself.
The poet creates juxtaposition between the tranquillity of the study and the busyness of the city, between the ‘constant company’ of the divines and muses and the uncertainty of the company of humourist and the people on the streets. The grave, sepulchre-like image of the study, the ambiguity of the prison metaphor, helps to create the dissonance between the inner world of the scholar-poet and the un-poetic, shallow outside world without which, paradoxically, the poet cannot create. In the ‘wooden chest’ the satirist enjoys the everlasting company of ‘Giddy fantastic poets of each land’ and ‘equitable relationship’ with the Muses. Nevertheless, the true inspiration for writing lies outside the door of the study.
The satirist’s ‘coarse attire’, required by the Inns of Court regulations forbidding the wearing of long hair and swords, distinguishes him from the ‘motley humorist’. It also resembles the clothing of the first man just after the Fall, at the intermittent state between the bliss of paradise and the banishment on sinful earth. The satirist is visibly concerned with the spiritual significance of man’s past and future.
But, after the long protestations, the satirist says: ‘I shut my chamber doore, and come, lets goe’. What happens next is for you to explore. You can do this by reading the whole satire below:
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