The Full Text of “The Flea”
1Mark but this flea, and mark in this,
2How little that which thou deniest me is;
3It sucked me first, and now sucks thee,
4And in this flea our two bloods mingled be;
5Thou know’st that this cannot be said
6A sin, nor shame, nor loss of maidenhead,
7 Yet this enjoys before it woo,
8 And pampered swells with one blood made of two,
9 And this, alas, is more than we would do.
10Oh stay, three lives in one flea spare,
11Where we almost, nay more than married are.
12This flea is you and I, and this
13Our marriage bed, and marriage temple is;
14Though parents grudge, and you, w'are met,
15And cloistered in these living walls of jet.
16 Though use make you apt to kill me,
17 Let not to that, self-murder added be,
18 And sacrilege, three sins in killing three.
19Cruel and sudden, hast thou since
20Purpled thy nail, in blood of innocence?
21Wherein could this flea guilty be,
22Except in that drop which it sucked from thee?
23Yet thou triumph’st, and say'st that thou
24Find’st not thy self, nor me the weaker now;
25 ’Tis true; then learn how false, fears be:
26 Just so much honor, when thou yield’st to me,
27 Will waste, as this flea’s death took life from thee.
The Full Text of “The Flea”
1Mark but this flea, and mark in this,
2How little that which thou deniest me is;
3It sucked me first, and now sucks thee,
4And in this flea our two bloods mingled be;
5Thou know’st that this cannot be said
6A sin, nor shame, nor loss of maidenhead,
7 Yet this enjoys before it woo,
8 And pampered swells with one blood made of two,
9 And this, alas, is more than we would do.
10Oh stay, three lives in one flea spare,
11Where we almost, nay more than married are.
12This flea is you and I, and this
13Our marriage bed, and marriage temple is;
14Though parents grudge, and you, w'are met,
15And cloistered in these living walls of jet.
16 Though use make you apt to kill me,
17 Let not to that, self-murder added be,
18 And sacrilege, three sins in killing three.
19Cruel and sudden, hast thou since
20Purpled thy nail, in blood of innocence?
21Wherein could this flea guilty be,
22Except in that drop which it sucked from thee?
23Yet thou triumph’st, and say'st that thou
24Find’st not thy self, nor me the weaker now;
25 ’Tis true; then learn how false, fears be:
26 Just so much honor, when thou yield’st to me,
27 Will waste, as this flea’s death took life from thee.
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“The Flea” Introduction
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“The Flea” is a poem by the English poet John Donne, most likely written in the 1590s. In “The Flea,” the speaker tries to seduce his mistress with a surprising (and potentially gross) extended metaphor: both he and she have been bitten by the same flea, meaning their separate blood now mingles inside the flea’s body. Having sex is no different, the speaker argues, and no more dishonorable. His mistress should therefore yield to him. Though the metaphor is intentionally pretty crude, maybe even juvenile, the speaker infuses the poem with religious undertones: the union of speaker and mistress in the flea is like the Holy Trinity. In this way, the poem is both serious and silly, elegant and vulgar. It is as much a display of wit and erudition as a serious attempt to seduce the mistress.
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“The Flea” Summary
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Look at this flea and you'll see how small the thing that you deny me really is. It bit me first and now it bites you. In the flea, our two bloods are mingled together. You know that this isn’t sinful or shameful; it’s not a loss of virginity. And yet the flea gets to enjoy your blood without courting you first, and it grows fat digesting our combined blood. And that is more than we are allowed to do.
Wait, don’t kill the flea and kill us with it! In the flea’s body, we are almost, no, more than, married. The flea is you and me. It is our marriage bed, our wedding chapel. Though our parents’ disapprove, we are safe within these dark, living walls. Though you may want to kill me, do not add suicide and sacrilege to your list of sins: three sins will come from killing the flea.
Cruel and unpredictable woman, have you stained your nails purple with the flea’s innocent blood? The flea is guilty of nothing but sucking a drop of blood from you. Yet you exalt in your victory over the flea and say that neither you nor I are weaker for killing it. That’s true enough and you should learn from that how false your fears are. You will lose as much honor when you give your virginity to me as this flea’s death took from you.
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“The Flea” Themes
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Sex and Marriage
“The Flea” is a poem of seduction, but the speaker takes an unusual approach to getting his lady into bed. Instead of praising her beauty or promising her happiness, he instead insists that virginity is unimportant and that its loss will not be a significant source of shame or dishonor. In doing so, he pushes against the values of his society, which prized female virginity and pressured women to preserve it until marriage. “The Flea” thus tries to create a space for sexual pleasure outside the boundaries of marriage.
The speaker begins the poem in frustration, even exasperation, with the implication that his mistress continuously refuses to have sex with him. Though she does not speak in the poem, the reader can guess at her reasons for refusing the speaker based on the arguments the speaker makes to change her mind: she wants to preserve her virginity, and she worries that losing it outside of marriage will result in sin, shame, and dishonor.
The speaker attempts to address these concerns. Playing on the Renaissance belief that during sex the blood of the two partners mingled together, the speaker notes that their blood also mingles in a flea which has bitten both of them. Since it’s not a sin or shameful for their blood to meet in the body of the flea, he argues, it’s not a sin for the same thing to happen during sex.
The speaker’s argument is not entirely convincing: even for a Renaissance reader, it would be surprising, even silly, to think that the most important thing about sex is the mingling of blood between the partners. There is something juvenile and provocative about the poem: some readers may feel that comparing sex to getting bitten by a flea is intended to be funny and gross, rather than seductive.
But underlying the poem’s bawdy humor, the speaker makes a surprising and potentially radical argument. Though he might have more success in seducing his mistress if he played along, promised to marry her and cherish her virginity, the speaker refuses to accept his mistress’s and his society’s values. Instead, he tries to change those values by downplaying the importance of virginity and of marriage itself. In the flea, he notes, he and his mistress are “more than married.” What’s more, he does not seem interested in reconciling their sexual adventures with social values: instead, he imagines that the flea itself offers a kind of refuge from angry “parents.”
The speaker of “The Flea” is thus unusually ambitious. He seeks not only to seduce his mistress, but also to defy—and perhaps remake—social norms around sexuality. You might wonder how sincere the speaker is in advancing this proposal—it is awfully convenient that changing these mores would also fulfill his desires in this moment. Though “The Flea” makes radical proposals about sexuality, questions about the speaker’s sincerity cut down the force of those proposals—and so too does the fact that the mistress kills the flea. She, at least, is unimpressed by the speaker’s arguments.
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Sex and the Church
"The Flea" is a poem about illicit sex. It challenges social norms around sexuality and tries to create space for sexual pleasure beyond the boundaries of marriage. It's surprising, then, how often the poem references Christianity. Though the speaker challenges marriage as an institution, he also uses the authority of the Church to support his arguments. In this way, the poem subtly suggests that sex for pleasure isn’t simply acceptable, but can even be thought of as a holy act.
"The Flea" often alludes to Christian traditions in both its content and form. For instance, the speaker describes the flea as "three lives in one." This is in reference to the fact that the flea contains the blood of the speaker, the mistress, and of the flea itself, but it's also an allusion to the Holy Trinity: the Father (God), the Son (Jesus), and the Holy Ghost. The speaker also compares the mingling of his and his mistress’s blood in the flea to marriage, which during Donne's lifetime would have been solely the province of the church. Though he suggests that they are "more than married," marriage remains his reference point for a meaningful union between people. Indeed, he compares the flea’s body to a "marriage bed, and marriage temple," the word "temple" here again making the church's presence and authority felt in the poem.
The speaker once again uses distinctly religious language when he declares that killing the flea, as the mistress, eventually does, is "sacrilege." In the phrase "three sins in killing three" the "three sins" are murder, suicide, and the destruction of marriage, while the "three" things being "killed" are the speaker, the mistress, and the flea. Once again, though, this emphasis on "three" evokes the Holy Trinity, adding yet another layer to the potential "sacrilege" (the mistress isn't just killing the flea, she's killing a symbol of God!). The speaker basically tries to convince his lover that letting the flea live—essentially consenting to sex—is the only course of action that's not sinful.
When she does kill the flea anyway, the speaker describes the blood on her nail as the "blood of innocence." Though the speaker attempts to push beyond Christian values around sexuality, his thinking remains bound up in Christian reference points. He keeps returning to categories like sin and innocence in order to make his points, which suggests that, for the speaker, there's no escaping them; he tries to work his vision of sex into these ideas of sin and holiness rather than skirt them altogether. Even the structure of the poem itself alludes to these Christian traditions: there are also three stanzas, each of which ends with a tercet (three rhyming lines).
The form and content thus suggest an underlying allegiance to Christian thinking, which lies in opposition to the speaker’s bold attempts to separate sexual pleasure from marriage. Some readers may treat this as opportunistic: the speaker uses these references to impress his mistress and to try to break down her resistance. In this view, the speaker’s beliefs are not particularly sincere; he grabs onto whatever he can find to seduce his mistress. Others may see a more serious claim implicit in these references. Perhaps the speaker is suggesting that, however it is currently interpreted, Christianity is not opposed to the illicit sexual pleasures he describes; in fact, those pleasures can be described in Christian terms.
The poem doesn't offer clear evidence either way, and it's up to the reader to decide how to interpret the speaker’s arguments—determining whether they are silly, serious, or some strange combination of the two.
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Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “The Flea”
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Lines 1-6
Mark but this flea, and mark in this,
How little that which thou deniest me is;
It sucked me first, and now sucks thee,
And in this flea our two bloods mingled be;
Thou know’st that this cannot be said
A sin, nor shame, nor loss of maidenhead,The first six lines of “The Flea” establishes the poem’s conceit. The speaker begins the poem in frustration: his mistress has denied him. She refuses to have sex before marriage. He makes a strange, surprising, and frankly pretty crude argument to try to overcome her opposition.
He begins this argument by asking his mistress to observe a flea, which has bitten both of them; as a result, their blood is “mingled” inside the flea. This, he argues, is just like having sex. It is not sinful or shameful, nor does it count as a loss of virginity, to have their blood mix together inside the flea. Neither, he implies, is sex itself sinful or shameful. In this way, the speaker argues against a prevailing set of cultural values and sexual mores: in the culture of the English Renaissance, a high premium was placed on female virginity and women were encouraged to maintain it until marriage.
However, to modern readers, the poem’s conceit will sound strange, since it relies on a widespread, but incorrect, medical belief. In the Renaissance, doctors believed that during sex the blood of the two partners came into contact with each other and mingled, becoming one blood.
However, even for people in the Renaissance, the mixing of blood was not the only or even the most important part of sex. The speaker wants his mistress to ignore this, to forget that there is anything to sex other than the mixing of bloods. As a result, his argument is likely unconvincing. However, the mistress does not directly speak in the poem. Though she is present, and though the speaker is directly addressing her, he treats her as though she is not there at all. He mostly does not engage with her ideas or objections; he simply tries to overpower her with his argument. In this respect, the poem feels more like apostrophe than conversation. This mistress seems to be excluded from her own seduction.
In lines 1-6, the poem’s complicated formal structure begins to come into view. These lines are all rhyming couplets and they alternate between iambic tetrameter (four poetic feet per line) and iambic pentameter (five feet per line). For example:
Mark but | this flea, | and mark | in this,
How lit- | tle that | which thou | deniest | me is;
It sucked | me first, | and now | sucks thee,
And in | this flea | our two | bloods ming- | led be;The form of the poem suggests the intimacy between the speaker and the mistress: the adhesive force of the rhyme pulls the two lines of each couplet together, creating a sonic embrace. But the discrepancy between the two meters suggests that some discontent lingers in that intimacy: though they are close to each other, difference and resistance persists.
The poem is thus highly structured and highly suggestive: it carefully captures and reproduces the dynamics of the speaker’s relationship with his mistress. But the speaker does not pay attention to the details of his poem's structure. Throughout, the poem’s meter is rough and awkward; even in the first four lines it breaks from iambs, opening forcefully with the double stress of a spondee ("Mark but"), glossing over "deniest" as two syllables, and perhaps containing yet another spondee with "bloods ming-." The speaker also uses weak rhymes, like “this” and “is” in the first two lines. The speaker focuses on the overall dynamics of the poem’s form: he is less interested in the details of those dynamics.
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Lines 7-9
Yet this enjoys before it woo,
And pampered swells with one blood made of two,
And this, alas, is more than we would do. -
Lines 10-15
Oh stay, three lives in one flea spare,
Where we almost, nay more than married are.
This flea is you and I, and this
Our marriage bed, and marriage temple is;
Though parents grudge, and you, w'are met,
And cloistered in these living walls of jet. -
Lines 16-18
Though use make you apt to kill me,
Let not to that, self-murder added be,
And sacrilege, three sins in killing three. -
Lines 19-24
Cruel and sudden, hast thou since
Purpled thy nail, in blood of innocence?
Wherein could this flea guilty be,
Except in that drop which it sucked from thee?
Yet thou triumph’st, and say'st that thou
Find’st not thy self, nor me the weaker now; -
Lines 25-27
’Tis true; then learn how false, fears be:
Just so much honor, when thou yield’st to me,
Will waste, as this flea’s death took life from thee.
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“The Flea” Symbols
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The Flea/Blood
Throughout the poem, the speaker obsessively meditates on the blood inside the flea—blood that started out in two separate bodies and is now “one blood made of two.” If the reader takes the conceit of the poem seriously, this is literally true: the flea does contain two people’s blood. But the speaker is less interested in the literal contents of the flea’s newly engorged body and more in its symbolic possibilities.
First, and most prominently, people in the Renaissance wrongly believed that during sex, the blood of the two people involved mixed together. The blood inside the flea thus serves as a symbol for sex itself. Similarly, because the blood mixes within the flea, the bug itself could be said to be a symbol of sex. Further, since losing one’s virginity often involves bleeding, the blood in the flea and later on the mistress’s nail serves as a symbol for virginity itself.
Intimate relationships between people are also often described in terms of blood: family members, for instance, are often described as having blood ties. The blood that mixes in the flea’s body thus serves as a symbol of the bond between the speaker and his mistress, justifying the speaker’s assertion that they are “almost, nay more than married are.”
Blood thus serves a range of symbolic roles in the poem, all of them associated with sexuality: it symbolizes sex itself, the loss of virginity, and the intimacy that sometimes accompanies sexuality.
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Marriage Bed
When the speaker announces that the flea is a “marriage bed,” he’s not exactly being literal. He doesn’t expect that he and his mistress will somehow shrink down, crawl inside of it, and spend the night after their wedding inside of a bug. Instead, he’s thinking of the things that people do in their marriage beds—that is, they have sex.
In this instance, then, the marriage bed serves as a symbol for the activities that take place inside it: it is a symbol for sex itself (and in this way, is also an example of metonymy). But it is usually a symbol for a specific kind of sex: that which happens within the confines of marriage. This is a strange symbol for the speaker to use, since he is urging his mistress to sleep with him before or outside of marriage. By using the marriage bed as a symbol for sex outside of marriage, the speaker blurs the distinction between the two: he appropriates the authority of marriage (and the church that licenses it) to his own somewhat less pious project.
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Marriage Temple
At the time that John Donne wrote “The Flea,” all marriages happened in religious institutions—churches, chapels, and temples. There were no civil services, administered by the government. When the speaker describes the flea’s body as a “marriage temple,” then, he is invoking the place where marriage happens, and through that place, the religious authorities that sanctioned marriages.
The “marriage temple” is a symbol for marriage itself, and for the power that licenses marriage. There is something intentionally surprising, even provocative in the speaker’s choice of symbol: he seems to be saying that he and his mistress have no need for the traditional spaces where weddings take place and the powers that traditionally authorize them. Indeed he may even be making fun of those spaces and powers: they are superfluous, pretentious. So much so that even the body of a flea will do in their absence.
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Parents Grudge
When the speaker acknowledges that his mistress’ parents hold a “grudge” against him and his potential match with their daughter, he is likely being, in part, literal: the reader is invited to imagine those parents, and their grim disapproval of the showy, silly, and vulgar man courting their daughter. But there is also a symbolic component to the grudge. Since the reader does not learn anything else about these people—for example, the specific grounds for their grudge—they stand in for parental authority itself and, more broadly, for all of the authorities and powers that would constrain sexuality and keep it limited to something that happens only within marriage.
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“The Flea” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language
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Enjambment
“The Flea” uses enjambment irregularly, without a strong or regular pattern. The poem is more often end-stopped, which lends it a meditative feel, whereas the enjambments don't seem to follow a particularly strong rhyme or reason. For instance, the first stanza contains two enjambments, in lines 1 and 5, while the third stanza contains four, in lines 19, 21, 23, and 26. (We've noted line 1 as being enjambed because its full thought spills over onto line 2; despite the comma, you can't grasp the entire meaning of line 1 without the line that follows. The same is true of line 21, and perhaps also line 26.)
The irregularity of the enjambments makes them hard to predict—inserting moments of potential disruption into the speaker's otherwise plodding argument. Where the frequent end-stops make the speaker seem calm and collected—sure of his thoughts—the unpredictable enjambments may feel like cracks in his veneer, moments of him failing to maintain his nonchalance and rushing to convince his mistress of his argument. Note for example the particularly evocative enjambment of line 19: this is right after the mistress has killed the flea, and the speaker's words subsequently tumble out without regards to the line break, spilling over onto the next as the speaker rushes to convince the mistress that she's just sinned.
Of course, on a broader level, the lack of clear pattern in enjambment is not entirely surprising. Although each stanza of “The Flea” has an elaborate—and innovative—formal pattern, the poem is otherwise formally rather sloppy, full of strange and awkward metrical substitutions and arguably weak rhymes. Indeed, during his lifetime, Donne was famous for his carelessness in formal matters: the argument of his poems was more important to him than strict meter or, in this case, a strict pattern of enjambment.
It seems like the speaker uses enjambment when and where it is convenient for him to do so; he does not trouble himself much about building a consistent or clear pattern. This has some advantages for the speaker: it keeps the poem feeling fresh and conversational. Though the poem has an underlying—and highly significant—formal architecture, the speaker is not overbearing or pedantic in his commitment to that form: he lets the reader discover it for him or herself.
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End-Stopped Line
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Caesura
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Alliteration
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Consonance
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Personification
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Apostrophe
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Conceit
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Allusion
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Assonance
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"The Flea" Vocabulary
Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.
- Mark
- Thou
- Deniest
- Mingled
- Maidenhead
- Pampered
- Alas
- Cloistered
- Jet
- Self-Murder
- Sacrilege
- Hast
- Purpled
- Wherein
- Waste
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Observe or examine. The verb is a command: the speaker is directly addressing his mistress here.
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Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “The Flea”
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Form
“The Flea” is made of three stanzas, each of which is nine lines long. The first six lines of each stanza are rhyming couplets; the final three lines are rhyming tercets.
In the first six lines of each stanza, the poem alternates between lines of iambic tetrameter and lines of iambic pentameter. In the final tercet, the first line is in iambic tetrameter and the final two in iambic pentameter. This is an unusual form: 9 line stanzas are rare in English poetry, and the poem’s alternating meters do not follow an established pattern.
Though the form of the poem is unusual, it closely mimics the speaker’s argument. The couplets that open each stanza might be understood to symbolize the two lovers and their fraught, unconsummated bond: even as the rhyme pulls them together, the metrical difference between the lines (four feet in the first line vs. five feet in the second) pushes them apart. They both are and are not joined. From the dynamic push and pull of the couplets, a union appears in the tercet, with its single rhyme: it symbolizes the way speaker and mistress merge together in the flea. The tercet is thus a rich and potent symbol: of sex, of the Holy Trinity, the eucharist, and of marriage itself. (The total number of stanzas in the poem, three, once again echoes this allusion to the trinity).
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Meter
Each stanza of “The Flea” is 9 lines long. Within these stanzas, the meter alternates between iambic pentameter—a dignified meter with a prestigious pedigree in English—and iambic tetrameter—a lighter, looser, more playful meter. (Recall that pentameter has five iambs—da DUM—per line, and tetrameter four.) In the first six lines of the stanza, the meters alternate every other line, a line of iambic tetrameter followed by a line of iambic pentameter. For example, look at lines 3 and 4 (though note that these aren't perfect, as there's a spondee—stressed stressed—in the fourth foot of line 4):
It sucked | me first, | and now | sucks thee,
And in | this flea | our two | bloods ming- | led be;The stanzas then close with one line of iambic tetrameter and two lines of iambic pentameter. The metrical structure of the poem thus closely imitates its content. In the first six lines of the poem, the alternating meters seem to replicate the relationship between the speaker and his mistress: although they are closely bound together, they are slightly out of step. The changing, syncopated rhythm of the poem models both this intimacy and the distance that persists within it.
The final three lines of each stanza reproduce the poem’s conceit: the two become three, joined together in a single rhyming unit. (Though the single line of iambic tetrameter at the start of each tercet suggests that the speaker may have some lingering doubts about this trinity: the mistress’s difference is not cancelled or assuaged, and instead it is simply overwhelmed by the two iambic pentameter lines that close the stanza). The poem’s meter is thus unusually thematically rich, capturing and reproducing the sexual tensions and desires that mark the poem.
The poem’s metrical scheme is highly structured overall, even fastidious. But its meter is somewhat less precise in execution. Though many of the lines are strongly iambic, many are marked by awkward substitutions. For example, line 8, like line 4, contains a spondee in its fourth foot:
And pamp- | ered swells | with one | blood made | of two,
Usually in iambic meters, poets balance a spondee with a pyrrhic foot (unstressed-unstressed): this maintains the correct number of stresses in the line. But Donne doesn’t do so here; instead, the line contains six stresses (and three in a row near the middle of the line). This is awkward and strange; it upsets the rhythm of the line. A similar variation occurs in line 10:
Oh stay, | three lives | in one | flea spare,
You can find other metrical problems all throughout the poem. Indeed, Donne is famous in English literature for his sloppy meter. His contemporary, Ben Jonson noted, “Donne, for not keeping of accent, deserved hanging.” The speaker does not seem particularly concerned with the details of his meter. Much more important is the overall scheme, the broad thematic structure of his poem’s meter.
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Rhyme Scheme
“The Flea” is divided into three 9-line stanzas, each of which has the same rhyme scheme. The first six lines of each stanza contain three rhyming couplets; the final three lines are a single rhyming tercet. The rhyme scheme for each stanza is thus:
AABBCCDDD
Like the poem’s meter, the rhyme scheme closely echoes the poem’s themes. The paired rhymes of the couplets symbolize the relationship between the speaker and his mistress, while the three-fold rhyme of the tercets echo the relationship between speaker, mistress, and the flea (while also referencing Christian symbols and rituals, like the Holy Trinity and the Eucharist).
In considering the form of the poem and the way it echoes the speaker’s argument, it's perhaps best to read the meter and the rhyme together. For instance, the rhyming couplets might symbolize the closeness, the intimacy, between speaker and mistress, while the divergent meters in each line of the couplet (pentameter vs. tetrameter) marks the distance between them.
Like the poem’s meter, its rhymes are casual, even sloppy. The speaker often uses weak rhymes, like “this” and “is” (which appears in lines 1-2 and 12-13). He also uses slant rhyme, in the rhyme on "spare" and "are," in lines 10-11. In both its meter and its rhyme, then, the poem doesn't seem too concerned with the details—and much more interested in the broad, thematic implications of its form.
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“The Flea” Speaker
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The speaker of “The Flea” is an anonymous lover. Since this speaker is addressing a woman, trying to convince her to give up her virginity, most readers assume that the speaker is male, though it's certainly possible to read the poem otherwise. Given the poem’s sometimes obscene or crass jokes, the speaker is also probably young and juvenile. It feels, at times, that the speaker is a kind of adolescent class-clown: more interested in acting out and amusing his friends with his wit and obscenity than in actually seducing someone.
Yet underneath the speaker’s bluster and bravado, there are suggestions of a more serious set of concerns. The speaker, for instance, makes a number of sophisticated references to Christian religious doctrines and traditions. For instance, when the speaker notes in line 10 that there are “three lives in one flea” he seems to be referring to the Holy Trinity of the Father, the Son, and Holy Spirit. He also carefully adapts his poem’s form so that it echos those theological references: the rhyming tercet that closes each stanza might be taken as another glancing allusion to the Trinity. The speaker is not simply an adolescent, juvenile figure: he is also someone who has thought seriously about his culture’s beliefs—and is willing to challenge them.
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“The Flea” Setting
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“The Flea” doesn't give its readers much explicit information about its setting. In the poem, the speaker directly addresses his mistress, trying to convince her to sleep with him. From this, it is reasonable to assume that “The Flea” is part of a larger conversation. There is history between the speaker and his mistress: he has tried before, and failed before, to convince her to sleep with him. In this sense, the poem takes place in the context of this relationship.
More broadly, it's set in the context of the social norms and taboos surrounding sexuality in Renaissance England. In this time period, women were strongly pressured to preserve their virginity until marriage; men felt no corresponding pressure. “The Flea” acknowledges this broader setting in a number of ways: the speaker, for instance, evidently does not worry that his honor will be damaged by having sex before marriage. Furthermore, he argues against the idea that virginity is important and that it should be preserved. In this sense, the forces that constrain women’s sexuality haunt the poem and form its implicit back-drop.
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Literary and Historical Context of “The Flea”
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Literary Context
“The Flea” was likely written in the 1590s, during an explosion of love poetry. Following the publication of Sir Philip Sidney’s Astrophil and Stella in 1590—a sonnet sequence focusing on the unreciprocated love between a male figure (Astrophil) and his beloved (Stella)—similar sonnet sequences became very popular. Several dozen were published in the following years. Love poetry became the most prestigious and exciting kind of poetry for English poets to write. And poets competed with each other to develop more elaborate, more beautiful ways of expressing their love.
“The Flea” arguably emerges from exhaustion—or exasperation—with this kind of love poetry. It is a love poem, a poem of seduction. But it uses an intentionally grotesque conceit to make its case. (In doing so, it draws on a tradition of “flea” poems that stretch back to the Roman poet Ovid). It is almost as though the speaker is making fun of other poets, with their overly sincere, elaborate love poems. He is satirizing their work, pointing out how silly and strange it sounds by producing a poem which is itself self-consciously silly and strange. However, the poem is not simply satire. Donne is a skilled and serious poet: even at his most playful, he is capable of infusing his poems with religious and intellectual complexity. Because of the poem's intellectual complexity and its jaded, satirical relationship with earlier love poems, "The Flea" is often counted as an early example of "metaphysical poetry," a highly artificial, witty, and self-conscious genre of poetry that developed in the 17th century. Like "The Flea" many metaphysical poems are marked by elaborate conceits and strange metaphors—metaphors that test the reader's credulity and taste.
Historical Context
“The Flea” was written during a relatively peaceful decade in English history. In 1589, Queen Elizabeth defeated the Spanish Armada, securing her country from the threat of foreign invasion. She was at the height of her power in the decade that followed—though she was unmarried and therefore had no direct heir, a circumstance that caused considerable political anxiety. However, Elizabeth’s power and her status as an unmarried woman were closely linked together. Indeed, she often used her marital status as a way to license her position as the female ruler of a very patriarchal culture.
Virginity thus occupied an ambiguous position in English culture during the 1590s: it was a source of anxiety and, at the same time, a source of political power. In some ways, it was an obsession for the culture—which makes the speaker’s argument in “The Flea” all the more perverse and playful. He argues that virginity is unimportant, inconsequential at a moment in English political history when virginity was arguably at its most important: not simply as a religious or familial matter, but as something integral to the sovereign’s identity and her strategies for maintaining control.
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More “The Flea” Resources
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External Resources
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"The Flea" Out Loud — A dramatic reading of the poem, complete with costumes.
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A Close Reading of "The Flea" — Literary critic and poet Aviva Dautch close reads "The Flea" for the British Library.
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Biography of John Donne — A detailed biography of Donne, with a close attention to the development of his poetry, from the Poetry Foundation.
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A Brief Guide to the Metaphysical Poets — A brief guide to the group of 17th century poets known as the "metaphysicals"—among whom Donne was a leading figure.
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John Donne and Metaphysical Poetry — Michael Donkor explains why Donne is often counted among the metaphysical poets.
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LitCharts on Other Poems by John Donne
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