SOURCE: “John Suckling's Semi-Serious Love Poetry,” in Essays in Literature, Vol. IV, No. 2, Fall, 1977, pp. 152-58.

In the following essay, Markel investigates the irony of Suckling's pose as a nonchalant, Cavalier love poet.

People who write about Sir John Suckling find it almost impossible not to mention the fact that Millamant, in Congreve's The Way of the World, refers to the poet as “Natural, easy Suckling.”¹ The reference to Suckling is brief, and although it tells the play's audience a little about Millamant's taste in literature, it is not necessary for an understanding of her character. The Millamant-Suckling link is mentioned so often by the poet's critics, rather, as a comment on the theatricality of Suckling's carefully wrought public image. Congreve has become, in a sense, Suckling's most influential commentator, for the poet was the type for one of the stock characters of the Restoration stage. In both...