The Scrutiny By Richard Lovelace Analysis

This video considers the key messages and methods used by the Cavalier poet Richard Lovelace to portray lust in 'The Scrutiny'

[@josiahshaw7224]

This is a fantastic video, thank you so much for your brilliant analysis and clear annotations. I would like to add that 'dote upon thy face' in stanza two is an exceptionally interesting quote. This is because 'dote' has two meanings - 1) To express extreme love, and 2) To be foolish or weak minded, like a senile old man. It ironically shows Lovelace's simultaneous views of love - it is beautiful and should be celebrated, but it is foolish to think that one should be monogamous.

[@MissHannaLovesGrammar]

Josiah Shaw Thanks and great point! :)

[@tariyabill5607]

The rhyme scheme is actually ABABB all throughout the structure! Hope this is seen as structured criticism and not hate.

[@sailurr]

you are an absolute QUEEN for making videos like this !

[@buttercuppyow]

I feel the ABABB rhyme scheme breaks pattern at the end, reflecting the unexpected ending of their relationship that the speaker inflicts onto his female listener.

[@michaelgillett6775]

pretty sure the rhyme scheme is ABABB the whole way through...?

[@therealsizzler199]

Saved my life and my AS level thanks 🙏

[@MissHannaLovesGrammar]

TheRealSizzler glad it is of help :)

[@hallmarket]

Could you maybe go into more detail about the comedic value? I can't see the humour in it.

[@kaylinport7581]

This is so helpful💓

[@marvfriedenn8052]

I have a different take. Lovelace’s argument, roundly anti-Puritanical, could be that it’s by means of having sex that he hopes to discover moral Beauty. . . might not capitalizing the word allegorize the meaning of beauty? (If I recall correctly, in John Donne’s “Ecstasy” sex also is the means for discovering in that poem even spiritual beauty). Because the poet here assumes that currently his lover is in it for the sex just as much as he is, accordingly the new embrace he doesn’t want to rob her of is that of her next lover. Again, the “treasure in unploughed-up ground” may refer to qualities of character in a woman that transcend social convention but which initially remain inaccessible except to someone sexually intimate with her. These qualities of character gained through affairs with women are the “spoils” then the poet may return with once sated with the superficialities of physical variety.