Wit-Margaret Edson

Dr . Donne poems , notably the Holy Sonnets ' and various meditations , Dr . Bearing turned away from the more corporeal writings of the early Donne , including such poems as The Sun Rising (with its rendering of two lovers chiding the sun ) and the overtly sexual The Flea ' This clearly delineated division in Donne 's corpus of work reflects Dr . Bearing 's own divided self . On the one hand a scholar of renown , she is a woman who has essentially turned away from her own body , relegating social life and personal relationships to a place

of minor importance in her life . Without partner , lover , or even close friend , Bearing is , despite her claims to the contrary , negligent in her scholarship , unable and unwilling to even attempt to reconcile Dr . Donne (the spiritual ) with John Donne (the corporeal and sexual . Ironic , too , is the fact that , in the end , the scholarly lover of the intensely spiritual poems is , like all patients in the ward , a prisoner of a body ravaged by cancer , a body that suffers and fails , and a body that can and does overwhelm even the strongest mind and strongest spirit

Despite her fame as a Donne scholar , Dr . Bearing has , ironically achieved tellingly little standing as a person outside the classroom During the entirety of her stay in hospital she is visited by only one person , her mentor and the equally famous , albeit much older and much healthier , Donne scholar Professor E .M . Ashford . And it is in Ashford 's single and final visit that yet another irony makes itself known , for in her final days the great Dr . Bearing cannot herself bear to hear another Donne poem , cannot bear to continue her wanderings through the metaphysical conceits and carefully place commas that she believes have prepared her for her own...