Explain the quotation:
Now lap-dogs give themselves the rousing shake,And sleepless loves, just at twelve, awake.
Answer: These remarkable and conspicuous opening lines have been taken from the Canto-I of “The Rape of the Lock” by Alexander Pope, the great 18th-century poet. Here the poet has exposed the vanities and frivolities of the fashionable ladies of the 184 century.
In the epic poem, Pope humorously satirizes the upper-class ladies of the then society of the 18th century who wake up from sleep at 12 o'clock in the day. Not only the ladies but also the pets he kept, their lap dogs earned the habit of waking up late. It was at twelve o'clock noon when the lap dogs shake their bodies up and got up, from sleep. Through 'sleepless longs', Pope seems to refer to Belinda indirectly along with the other longs who cannot sleep throughout the night out of the pangs of their love. The idea of 'sleepless longs' waking up from sleep sounds paradoxical. The other explanation might be that the lovers devoid of their beauty sleep fall into a sweet siesta in the morning which causes them to wake up late.
To sum up, we may say that Pope here satirizes the fashion of the day that the fashionable ladies loved their lap dogs to sleep with them. At the same time, Pope attacks the fashionable gallants who used to sleep Tate in the morning.
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