Wit Themes

Wit demonstrates that words, despite their ability to define, describe, teach, inform, and comfort, often fall short. Vivian Bearing has devoted her life to the study of the written word. She is a scholar of John Donne’s metaphysical poetry, which is famous for its complicated vocabulary and mind-boggling examinations of life’s “big questions” (e.g., God, love, death). She has lived her whole life under the impression that her rigorous study of Donne’s language has the…

In Wit, Vivian is concerned with mortality—both the mortality of her physical body and of her body of scholarly work. Even as her health is failing her, she thinks of how her work will survive her, since she will be remembered for her contributions to the field of seventeenth-century poetry. However, as her death looms nearer, she must confront the fact that she has failed to make meaningful personal connections in her life, and…

Wit is partly a critique of the medical profession and academia, as both pursuits encourage a focus on a narrow specialty at the expense of big-picture concerns and individual relationships. Vivian’s studies focus entirely on language and the mind, while her doctors’ work focuses entirely on the body, and the play argues that in their pursuit of knowledge, both Vivian and her doctors neglect the personal and emotional needs of those around them, remaining…

Wit deliberately does not come to an easy conclusion. Echoing John Donne, the play suggests that death, like life, love, and God, cannot be rationally understood—there is no “answer” to the big questions of life. Instead of trying to find an answer to death, Donne intentionally puzzled over it in his work, as if he were doing a Rubik’s cube with no intention of solving it. Vivian has achieved great acclaim in her field by…