1. The Collar – George Herbert
DO NOW:
What function do these different collars perform? Who would wear them? What are their connotations?
Choler - One of the four humors of ancient and medieval physiology, thought to cause anger and bad temper when present in excess; yellow bile.

2. I struck the board, and cried, “No more.
Meaning
The speaker explores his relationship with God, considering his life of submission to God’s will. The poem opens with an account of an outburst of rebellion by the poet:
I struck the board, and cried, “No more.
I will abroad!
What follows is a venting of anger and frustration - an cry for freedom, a complaint against the life of devotion out of which the poet intends to break, leading to a boastful challenge to what the poet views as the seriousness and paralysing timidity of the life he currently lives. However, as the poet raves, growing “more fierce and wild/At every word”, he hears God calling him and, instantly, knows his place and admits God's authority.
Why do you think the poem is called ‘The Collar’?

3. The Collar BY GEORGE HERBERT Starter: Get into the mood…
I struck the board, and cried, "No more; I will abroad! What? shall I ever sigh and pine? My lines and life are free, free as the road, Loose as the wind, as large as store.
It’s hard to imagine this because priests seem so different to us. Instead, re-write from the point of a view of either:
A young single mother, feeling trapped by her baby
A middle aged woman, trapped in a loveless marriage
A 45 year old man, trapped in a soulless job he hates.

4. Form and Structure: rhyme; metre; versification; narrative perspective.
Work in pairs.
Person One – count the syllables in each line and record them at the end of the line
Person Two – use colours to highlight the rhyme scheme (all words that sound the same should be coloured the same)
You have 10 minutes

5. How can you describe the metre and rhyme scheme of the poem
How can you describe the metre and rhyme scheme of the poem? How does it reflect the speaker’s state of mind? Are the last four lines any different?

6. Form and Structure
The poem is in the iambic (unstressed/stressed) metre, but the lines are of varied length and there are no divisions into stanzas. The apparent randomness of form serves a dual purpose:
Firstly, it exaggerates the conversational tone - we can imagine the poet really speaking these lines. From “No more” in the first line to: “He that forbears/To suit and serve his need,/Deserves his load” the poem reads like a very histrionic soliloquy.
Secondly, it reflects the chaotic indiscipline of the rebellious spirit, which is both cause and consequence of the rebellion. The argument is heated and passionate but unconvincing. As it proceeds, the reader has the sense that the reasoning has not been premeditated and pondered, but is impulsive, spoken in heat. It seems like boastful showing off, even before the poem's conclusion.
With the poem's conclusion the speaker’s words are made to look ridiculous. In justifying his rebellion against the Divine yoke (collar) Herbert talks of religious prescriptions as a “cage” or “rope of sands” which is only made to seem “good cable” by the poet's own “pettie thoughts”. Yet, as he admits God as Lord, Herbert makes it clear that it is the attempt to rebel which is like “sand” and that the true “pettie thoughts” are those he has just asserted so bombastically.

7. Grammar and Syntax: Sentence moods
Identify one example of the exclamative, declarative and interrogative mood.
What is the effect of each?

8. The Collar BY GEORGE HERBERT: Analysis of Opening Lines
First person perspective
Dynamic verb ‘struck’
‘board’ – concrete noun – altar
Vern ‘cried’
Exclamative tone – future tense
Rhetorical interrogatives – frustration
Repetition of ‘free’
Three similes to emphasise the freedom that could/should be his.
Assonance – heavy and plodding ‘or’ sound changes to whining ‘igh’ sound
I struck the board, and cried, "No more;
I will abroad!
What? shall I ever sigh and pine?
My lines and life are free, free as the road,
Loose as the wind, as large as store.

9. Connotations: What does ‘thorn’ make your think of in terms of Christianity?
In suit – conforming to/controlled by
Religious Metaphor of sacrifice:
The only reward (harvest) he gets for his life of sacrifice is pain and suffering (thorn), and even after that, he gets no wine (pleasure/comfort/relief from his faith)
   Shall I be still in suit?
Have I no harvest but a thorn
To let me blood, and not restore
What I have lost with cordial fruit?

10. Making sense of Metaphors
   Shall I be still in suit?
Have I no harvest but a thorn
To let me blood, and not restore
What I have lost with cordial fruit?
Model Analysis
Herbert’s speaker describes his faith as providing ‘no harvest’.
Harvest is associated with plenty and well-being. Farmers bring in the fruits of their hard labour and use it to provide for themselves and their families over the winter months.
However, the speaker’s faith provides him with ‘no harvest’ – perhaps implying he feels he is getting nothing back in return for all of the hard work and dedication he has put in.
Instead of a ‘harvest’ he gets a ‘thorn’.
The concrete noun reminds the reader of pain and suffering, implying that the speaker feels pain as a result of his faith.
This could also reference Christ’s crown of thorns on the cross, dying as he made the ultimate sacrifice for his faith.
However, whilst Christ was willing to sacrifice his actual life, the speaker does not seem to be willing to put up with his own personal sacrifices, possibly encouraging the reader to view him as something of a whiner when you consider he has actually chosen this religious life.

11. Adjectives suggest death and failure.
He used to feel satisfied (wine and corn) but no he feels mournful and lost (sigh/tears). His faith and his joy in his faith is lost to him. The harvest (his faith) is lost and spoilt – the flowers and garlands are ‘blasted’ and ‘wasted’ – just as, he questions, his faith is withered.
Sure there was wine
Before my sighs did dry it; there was corn
    Before my tears did drown it.
      Is the year only lost to me?
          Have I no bays to crown it,
No flowers, no garlands gay? All blasted?
                  All wasted?
Not so, my heart;
The speaker is arguing with himself – using the interrogative mood to ask rhetorical questions and then answering them.

12. There is pleasure to be had – AWAY from religion
-the speaker reflect that escape is an option.
Pleasures because a) they are pleasurable b) they are rebellious
but there is fruit,
            And thou hast hands.
Recover all thy sigh-blown age
On double pleasures: leave thy cold dispute
Of what is fit and not.
The interrogatives of the previous slide are answered with imperatives – commands. What is the speaker telling himself to do?

13. What does this metaphor imply about the feelings of entrapment that the speaker is experiencing? Imagine being tied up by a ‘rope of sand’.
abandon
Forsake thy cage,
             Thy rope of sands,
Which petty thoughts have made, and made to thee
Good cable, to enforce and draw,
          And be thy law,
While thou didst wink and wouldst not see.
How does the speaker feel about his current existence?
sleep
The imperative mood continues

14. Exclamative
Imperative
Repetition
Sibliants
Human skull image – a symbol of mortality. Basically the speaker is saying ‘Stop moaning that your life is over – do something about it!’
Away! take heed;
          I will abroad.
Call in thy death's-head there; tie up thy fears;
          He that forbears
         To suit and serve his need
          Deserves his load."
The person that gives up and devotes his life to service deserves all that he gets.

15. Foregrounded conjunction ‘But’ – the turning point
Adjectives ‘fierce and wild’ chaotic/out of control/ animalistic
‘child!’ the vocative suggests protection and compassione and forgiveness
Foregrounded conjunction ‘And’ – implies a sense of causation.
‘Vocative ‘My Lord’ – servitude, honour, subservience
possessive pronoun, closeness
But as I raved and grew more fierce and wild
          At every word,
Methought I heard one calling, Child!
          And I replied My Lord.

16. Explaining Metaphors:
Model Analysis Herbert’s speaker describes his faith as providing ‘no harvest’. Harvest is associated with plenty and well-being. Farmers bring in the fruits of their hard labour and use it to provide for themselves and their families over the winter months. However, the speaker’s faith provides him with ‘no harvest’ – perhaps implying he feels he is getting nothing back in return for all of the hard work and dedication he has put in. Instead of a ‘harvest’ he gets a ‘thorn’. The concrete noun reminds the reader of pain and suffering, implying that the speaker feels pain as a result of his faith. This could also reference Christ’s crown of thorns on the cross, dying as he made the ultimate sacrifice for his faith. However, whilst Christ was willing to sacrifice his actual life, the speaker does not seem to be willing to put up with his own personal sacrifices, possibly encouraging the reader to view him as something of a whiner when you consider he has actually chosen this religious life.