Variations of Love in Marvell's "To His Coy Mistress" and Shakespeare's "Sonnet 116" Anonymous

In Octavio Paz's book The Double Flame, he describes three different categories of love that can arise between partners: sexuality, eroticism, and Love. The first category, sexuality, refers to the biological and instinctive urge to reproduce, whereas eroticism descibes the pleasure and desire of the sexual act. The third category, Love, refers to an attraction to the person as a whole, and encompasses an equal sharing of love between the body and the soul. While Andrew Marvell's "To His Coy Mistress" and William Shakespeare's "Sonnet 116" both pursue the theme of love, each poem describes a kind of love that is different from the other. "To His Coy Mistress" seems to conform to Paz's second type of love, eroticism; however, "Sonnet 116" posits an alternative to all three of Paz's types.

The speaker in Marvell's "To His Coy Mistress" longs for a woman whom he attempts to persuade to go to bed with him. Because they will not live for eternity, the speaker argues, he and his mistress should then "tear [their] Pleasures with rough strife" (43) as soon as possible, while they still have the chance. The speaker's focus is on attaining pleasure...