Modern Love

1. Meredith was best known as a novelist, and Modern Love is often seen as a novel in verse. Some of the sonnets are narrated, but most are spoken in full or in part by a male speaker. The "she" or Madam of the sequence is his wife; the "Lady" is the woman with whom he has an affair in response to his wife's indiscretions. Can you trace the (rather complicated) plot of the sequence?
2. What is the male speaker's view of "modern love"? How does he compare in his view of women to the speaker of Dante Rossetti's "Jenny"?
3. The sequence contains many references to acting, games, particular plays, etc. Why does Meredith load the poem with such references? Pick one and explain how it functions, both in the sonnet in which it appears and in the sequence as a whole.
4. The sequence also contains many references to corpses, skeletons, tombs, death, etc. Why is this appropriate? Explicate these references in sonnets 1 and 17.