Landmark: Andrew Marvell's To His Coy Mistress
Arts & Ideas
BBC
4.2 • 599 Ratings
🗓️ 28 September 2017
⏱️ 44 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Poets Michael Symmons Roberts and Helen Mort and academic Stewart Mottram join Matthew Sweet in Hull to discuss the language of love and the politics underpinning Marvell's poem in a special recording for National Poetry Day. Readings are performed by Matt Sutton. Published posthumously in 1861, the poem has been seen as following traditions of carpe diem love poetry exhorting the female reader to seize the day and respond more quickly to the poet/lover but it has also been argued that the metaphors are ambiguous and the poem can be read as an ironic version of sexual seduction. Many of the phrases and ideas about time in the poem have inspired other authors and been re-used as book titles and lines in films including within A Matter of Life and Death, The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock and the writing of Ursula K Le Guin. Recorded with an audience at the University of Hull as part of the BBC's festival Contains Strong Language. Producer: Fiona McLean.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Welcome back to the home of the oxymoron. Evil genius. He asked the newspaper to print his obituary early so he'd enjoy it. That's like hiding at your own funeral. Yeah, a big, great gig. I'm Russell Kane. Join me to weigh in on whether the biggest players in history are more evil or genius. Becoming that rich, I'd say that is some level of genius. It also helps that it's a long time ago, right? |
| 0:23.3 | It's like the podcast version of telling your kids the ice cream van plays music |
| 0:27.0 | when it's out of ice cream. |
| 0:28.8 | Listen to Evil Genius on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:32.1 | This is the BBC. |
| 0:41.4 | Thank you. B.C. Slippery figure, Andrew Marvel, hard to pin down. |
| 0:45.1 | He was a politician who was also a poet, and a journalist, and a diplomat, and maybe a spy. |
| 0:51.5 | And unlike people who do that kind of multitasking today choose your own examples he |
| 0:57.0 | never seemed to have made any money out of it his world was the turbulent english 17th century |
| 1:03.1 | an age of war of revolution of plague one that perhaps required a bit of flexibility this edition |
| 1:10.2 | of radio three's free thinkinginking comes from Hull College, |
| 1:13.6 | and if all of us in this room now fell back through time to 1659, |
| 1:18.8 | Marvel would be our MP. |
| 1:21.4 | But we might ask, which side would it be on? |
| 1:25.0 | Marvel represented Hull under Oliver Cromwell. But Marvel's political career |
| 1:29.6 | rose even when the monarchy was restored. His work embodies the same ambiguities. During the |
| 1:35.7 | protectorate, he wrote an ode, celebrating Cromwell's bloody campaign in Ireland, which also had some |
| 1:41.9 | gentle words for the executed Charles I. His most celebrated poem |
| 1:46.5 | is about not wasting time in romantic relationships, but Marble seems barely to have had one. |
| 1:53.1 | That poem, to his coy mistress, is the focus of this programme, one that has given so much |
| 1:58.8 | to the language, times winged chariot, vegetable love, |
| 2:02.8 | world enough and time, without really giving much away. But we have a gang of experts here |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.