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Overstatement

Marvell uses overstatement to great effect in “To His Coy Mistress.” Also known by the term hyperbole (hi-PER-buh-lee), overstatement refers to examples of extravagant exaggeration, often used to comedic effect. Two examples of overstatement appear in the poem’s opening stanza. First, in lines 7–10, the speaker says: “I would / Love you ten years before the Flood, / And you should, if you please, refuse, / Till the conversion of the Jews.” Here, the speaker claims that his love is enduring enough to last all of time, from before the great Flood of the Old Testament to the conversion of the Jews just before the Last Judgment. The hyperbolic inflation of time is amusing when contrasted with the immediacy of the speaker’s sexual desire. Another example of overstatement follows immediately, in lines 11–12: “My vegetable love should grow / Vaster than empires, and more slow.” Here, the speaker makes a joke about the size of his genitalia, both to impress his mistress and to convince her of the intensity of his desire. He implies that she so arouses him that his “vegetable love” (i.e., his erect penis) will grow to an absurdly enormous size: “vaster than empires.”

Understatement

In “To His Coy Mistress,” Marvell uses a specific form of understatement that is typically known by its Greek name, litotes (lie-TOE-teez). Litotes refers to an ironic use of understatement that emphasizes a point through negation. A common example of litotes in everyday speech is the phrase, “You won’t be sorry.” The phrase actually means, “You will be pleased,” but the use of negation is meant to emphasize the point and thereby assuage the other person’s doubt. This is exactly what happens at the end of the second stanza, when the speaker tells his mistress: “The grave’s a fine and private place, / But none, I think, do there embrace” (lines 31–32). The speaker’s sentiment here is that the grave is not a great place to have sex, which really means that it’s a terrible place to have sex. As in the above example, the speaker uses negation (i.e., “none, I think, do there embrace”) to place humorous emphasis on the fact that you cannot have sex when you are dead. He intends his ironic use of understatement to help diminish his mistress’s reluctance and convince her to give in to passion.

Allusions

Marvell makes several allusions in his poem to humorous effect, giving his argument a sense of grandness and authority. For instance, in line 8 the speaker imagines falling in love with his mistress before “the Flood.” This line alludes to the story told in the Old Testament of the Bible, in which God punished humanity by flooding the earth. An allusion in line 10 also calls on Biblical authority. There the speaker implies that his love will endure “Till the conversion of the Jews.” According to Christian tradition, the Jewish people would eventually convert to Christianity. When they did so, their conversion would signal the approach of the Last Judgement and the end of earthly time. These Biblical allusions lend the speaker’s love a comedically grand air. Other allusions in “To His Coy Mistress” may seem less obvious to modern readers. For instance, Marvell draws at several points from the science of alchemy. The most obvious example is the speaker’s reference to “amorous birds of prey” (line 38), which is an alchemical emblem that symbolizes the sexual union of a man and a woman. In this case, the allusion implies that their love has a quasi-mystical significance.

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