ABSTRACT
Colloquial language is easier to recognize than describe, but we can also point to what kinds of language are not dramatic. It is worth noting how much of the language of drama is exclamatory, interrogative or imperative. The way in which language creates situation and embodies action can be seen in another of John Donne’s poems, The Sun Rising. Marvell’s language is more relaxed than Donne’s; the speakers inhabit the pastoral convention. Eric Bentley, in distinguishing between rhetoric and poetry in drama, makes use of D. W. Harding’s characterization of the language of poetry. The poetic-dramatic language gives the audience the sense of the thought being formed by the character as he speaks, under the pressure of the situation in which he finds himself. The whole action of The Alchemist takes place within a single house, and the rich and varied life of the London outside has to be suggested by the language; the technique resembles Donne’s in some ways.
