The Speaker (John Donne)

While it is generally considered a fallacy to equate a poem's speaker with its author, the epistolary nature of "To Sir Henry Wotton" alerts readers to the fact that the speaker is, in fact, John Donne speaking directly to his friend. This poem is not one that would have ever been published for the public, and indeed the majority of Donne's poetry was published posthumously. Instead, Donne's work mostly circulated in manuscript form among small groups of readers, known as coteries. This historical context actually helps deepen some of the arguments of the verse letter, in which Donne encourages Wotton to remain more private and less detectable among important people at court. Donne himself was never as close to the court as Wotton was under the Earl of Essex, choosing instead to study as a lawyer at Lincoln's Inn before converting to Protestantism and becoming...