The Scrutiny Literary Elements

The speaker of the poem is a male lover who holds the view that a man should not settle down until he has had relationships with many other women.

The form of the poem is that it has four stanzas with five lines each.

The speaker uses a simile in the following line, '
But I must search the blank and faire
Like skilfull Minerallist’s that sound
For Treasure in un-plow’d-up ground.'

The simile has likened the speaker's search for a lover to a miner searching for treasure. The simile illustrates how determined the speaker is in his search.

Alliteration is used in the following line, 'A tedious twelve houres space?' The words, 'twelve' and 'tedious' are alliterated.

It is ironic for the speaker to claim that he had been fair to his lady by being with her for only twelve hours. He told the lady that, once he had dated a lot more women, he would return to her.

Dramatic poetry

The setting of the poem is an unnamed medieval place at a time when the speaker was being unfaithful to his lover.

The tone of the poem is farcical because the speaker says that he would return to his lover once he had sampled all other women.

The protagonist of the poem is the jilted lady lover who expected that her one night stand would result in commitment whereas the antagonist is the speaker who is a womanizer and unfaithful.

The major conflict of the poem is the speaker's unfaithfulness to his lady love.

The climax of the poem is reached when the speaker promises his lover that he would no doubt return to her once he had had other women and she stood out from them.

The speaker foreshadows that he will no doubt continue to be unfaithful until he has been with a lot of women and one of his conquests stands out from the rest.

The line, 'With spoyles of meaner Beauties crown’d,' is an understatement of the speaker's intent to be with many women. He intends to have very many lovers.

The poem alludes to historical events in the line on treasure mining. It alludes to the gold standard time when miners would look for gold tirelessly because it was a form of currency in the world at the time.

In the poem, the speaker says that his lover did not sate him enough to keep him from dating other women. This is a synecdoche because the lover represents all aspects of life that human beings are not sated by, and they keep hustling for more such as wealth, happiness, love, and beauty.

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It is hyperbole for the speaker to make a ridiculous claim that his infidelity is not a negative thing just that he is looking for an extraordinary woman and his jilted lover should not be angered by that.

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