ABSTRACT

This chapter explores the way poets called themselves, and sometimes others, nothing in poetry and drama. First the colloquial, then the religious and economic contexts of the personal nothing metaphor are considered, in relation to a range of authors and texts. Then the question is addressed of whether an increased interest in melancholy in the period might be related to this self-negating trope. The final two sections address the use of the trope by John Donne and Shakespeare. For Donne, it was a metaphor which transitioned from his early lyric poetry through to his later devotional literature and sermons, yet it seemed always partly to issue from a personal fear of poverty or a lack of usefulness to the world. In Shakespeare’s plays, most notably in The Merchant of Venice and King Lear, nothing was a signifier of value that was used to ask questions about the real worth of people, whether economic, social or material