22 pages • 44 minutes read
A Litany in Time of Plague
A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Helen
During the speaker’s catalogue of the many different types of people who will succumb to mortality despite their personal powers and abilities, the speaker references Helen of Troy. Introduced while the speaker discusses how beauty is fleeting, Helen becomes a representative of the concept of beauty itself. According to traditional mythology, as a demi-god and daughter of the god Zeus and the Spartan queen Leda, Helen was the most beautiful woman in the world, and even as a child she was sought after by suitors. She ultimately married King Menelaus and reigned as the Queen of Sparta alongside him. However, after Aphrodite the goddess of love and lust promised Helen as a prize to the Trojan prince Paris, Paris came to Sparta and took Helen back to Troy with him. Whether they eloped or Paris kidnapped Helen is often left ambiguous. An abandoned and enraged Menelaus then declared war on Troy, initiating a 10-year war between the kingdom of Troy and the alliance of the Achaean or ancient Greek people. The war only came to a close when the city of Troy was destroyed, its soldiers and princes Paris and Hector killed and Helen reclaimed by her embittered husband Menelaus.
Helen and her beauty was the impetus for the war, and in his play Doctor Faustus, Nashe’s colleague Christopher Marlowe famously described her as “the face that launched a thousand ships.” Helen is a significant symbol and performs two functions in Nashe’s poem. First, Helen and her infamous beauty symbolize all beauty that must fade with time. If even the “young and fair” (Line 18) Helen has become corrupted by “dust” (Line 19) and succumbed to the grave, there is no hope for anyone to escape mortality. Furthermore, Helen also acts as a symbol of death. Her beauty doomed the heroes of Greece and Troy and even herself. She becomes responsible for the deaths of heroes like Achilles, Ajax, and Hector, and Paris’ infatuation with her brings about his own ruin as well as the ruin of his city. In The Iliad, Helen’s beauty and the destruction it causes ultimately isolate her and make her a terror to all around her. Not only did her beauty not save her from meeting her own death, Nashe insinuates, but that beauty also caused the deaths of thousands.
Hector
Another figure from the Trojan War, Hector is also invoked as a symbol of human strength in “A Litany in Time of Plague.” One of the chief princes of Troy, Hector was the older brother of Paris and was the strongest warrior in all of Troy. Hector died near the war’s end when he dueled the vengeful Achilles. Like Helen, the invocation of Hector is crucial for two reasons. As one of mythology’s greatest heroes, Hector symbolizes how even the strongest warrior cannot fight against death. His “swords” could not fight his “fate” (Line 24), and he was powerless to stop even worms from feeding on his flesh (Line 23).
However, the death of Hector is also significant because of his response to his imminent death. In The Iliad, when Hector is faced with the oncoming wrath of Achilles, the Greeks’ strongest warrior, his courage leaves him, and he runs around the walled city of Troy, desperately pleading for help from his soldiers. When no help arrives and he finally resigns himself to facing Achilles, Achilles kills him and drags his lifeless corpse behind his chariot. Although Hector tried both to flee from and fight against his death, he was ultimately unsuccessful and died in a manner unbefitting of a great hero. Nashe’s reference to Hector thus serves as a reminder of death’s inevitability as well as its terrifying and unmanning nature.
Death
Death is an important figure throughout the poem, and Nashe uses biblical language to characterize and personify its influence. As in “A Litany in Time of Plague,” the Bible frequently personifies Death as a living being and adversary of mankind. Regarding the Jewish nation, God promises, “I will ransom them from the power of the grave; I will redeem them from death: O death, I will be thy plagues” (Hosea 13:14 KJV), personifying death as an opponent to be plagued or attacked. In the Book of Revelation, the apostle John sees a vision of Death riding a pale horse, “followed” by Hell (Revelation 6:8), language reminiscent of Nashe’s characterization of Death as “Hell’s executioner” (Line 31). Nashe’s reference to Death’s “darts” (Line 5) is also borrowed from Scripture. In a highly metaphorical passage, the apostle Paul urges Christians to adopt the armor of God to protect themselves and makes mention of the “shield of faith” which will “quench all the fiery darts of the wicked” (Ephesians 6:16 KJV) or the Devil. Nashe’s depiction of human mortality as Death’s “darts” or arrows piercing a person’s flesh is thus a metaphor drawn and adapted from the biblical tradition.
Unlock all 22 pages of this Study Guide
Plus, gain access to 9,100+ more expert-written Study Guides.
Including features: