literally literary

Some years ago, a friend asked me to devise a puzzle based on English literature for his daughter. The requirement was that it would require some research. If you find yourself with nothing better to do on the eve of 2017, or you want to numb your brain with something other than alcohol in order to forget the horrors of 2016, you might like to try this literary puzzle:

What is the connection between the following five clues? And on this basis, which is the odd one out?
•  Behaviour described by Gaveston in Act the first, Scene I of Edward the Second by Christopher Marlowe.
•  The last speech by Miranda in The Tempest by William Shakespeare.
•  A line from Samson Agonistes by John Milton.
•  The advice provided in Meditation XVII by John Donne.
•  A definition of ‘the infinite’ from The Marriage of Heaven and Hell by William Blake.

All the relevant material is available online, if required.

If you would prefer something that doesn’t involve research, then you might like to try An English Question or Out of Order #2, the first of which has not had a correct solution submitted to date.