A Second View of "The Antiplatonick"

I’m not sure that Cleveland’s “The Antiplatonick” is quite uncontestable by Hobbes… I thought, while reading the poem, of the hunt for love – that is the power struggle between lovers which is illustrated within the poem. The imagery of hunting within “Cupid’s Dart / as a King hunting dubs a Hart” (221) and the double use of the word “quarry” is very reminiscent of the importance of power and dominance present within Leviathan. While the “Magnetick girl” could be seen in a romantic light, embracing the entirety of the man of iron, it can also be viewed as an individual with less power attempting to gain the protection of one with more power.

Also, with Love (or desire) afforded warlike qualities, as seen in stanza five, and with the use of all those phallic images, the Hobbesian mode is once again evoked. While “love is portrayed as the remedy to these restrictive, hierarchical roles”, the “dame of stone” imagery and the “Nunne of the Platonick Quarry” succumbing to the temptation of love represents the way in which love (which seems closer to wanton lust and desire) needs to be contained by the state or the church in order to avoid a collapse into the savagery which exists without the state.

That is to say that this alternative portrayal of love within “The Antiplatonick” depicts love in more of an animalistic or base light – a quality which needs to be contained by the commonwealth. Or else, all that free will and unrestricted love will mean everyone can have unrestricted love… and it could be your love another person wants! And then you’ll have Hobbes’ “Of Man” all over again. So, while Cleveland’s “The Antiplatonick” is certainly more “within the boundaries of what we-can-see”, what one sees within this poem is not the type of love which “can overcome the confines of the state and the church” but rather a portrayal of love which, in its corruptive, tempting and wanton state advocates for the order of the commonwealth.