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Keats'S 'Presider': The Influence Of Shakespeare On Keats

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Keats'S 'Presider': The Influence Of Shakespeare On Keats

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Content Copyright by George Claybum Gross 1963 KEATS*S "PRESIDER": THE INFLUENCE OF SHAKESPEARE ON KEATS by George Clayburn Gross A Dissertation Presented to the FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY (English) January, 1963 UNIVERSITY O F SO U T H E R N CALIFORNIA GRADUATE SC HOOL UNIVERSITY PARK LOS ANGELES 7, CALIFORNIA This dissertation, written by ........George.C .•Gross............. under the direction of AJUSL ..Dissertation Com mittee, and approved by all its members, has been presented to and accepted by the Graduate School, in partial fulfillment of requirements for the degree of D O C T O R OF P H I L O S O P H Y w ' D ean Date. u .DISSERTATION COMMJ,TT£E L > natrmarr TABLE OF CONTENTS I. INTRODUCTION ................................. 1 II. THE BEGINNINGS (TO APRIL, 1817)............... ll| III. ENDYM ION AND THE SHAKESPEAREAN SPRING (APRIL, 1817, TO JULY, 1818)......................... 32 IV. THE PERIOD OF HYPERION (AUGUST, l8l8, TO APRIL, 1819) 112 V. THE PERIOD OF THE ODES (MAY TO DECEMBER, 1819) 155 VI. THE LAST LETTERS: 1820 ....................... 223 BIBLIOGRAPHY.......... 255 CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION That John Keats was strongly Influenced In his poetry and his thought by the study of Shakespeare has long been a commonplace in critical writing. Even suoh contempo raries as John Hamilton Reynolds and Richard Woodhouse instinctively compared their friend with Shakespeare. Voodhouse believed that if his Endymlon be compared with Shakspeare's earliest work (his Venus & Adonis) written about the same age, Keats1s poem will be found to contain more beauties, more poetry (and that of a higher order) less conceit & bad taste and In a word much more promise of excellence than are to be found In Shakspeare's work.1 And Reynolds, writing to Rlohard Monckton Milnes (later Lord Houghton) before the publication of Milnes* biography of Keats, said, "He had the greatest power of poetry in him, of any one slnoe Shakesperel"2 jn Milnea* Life.3 the • ^ - The Letters of John Keats. I8lii-l821. ed. Hyder Edward ko11ins (Cambridge, Mass., 195B), I, 383. All references to the letters of Keats will be to this edition, hereafter referred to as Letters. Here, as throughout this paper, vagaries of spelling and punctuation have been retained, but no attempt has been made to reproduce the marked-out words, the Interpolations, and other peculiar ities indicated by Rollins but not germane to this study. ^The Keats Circle: Letters and Papers. 1816-1878. ed. Hyder Edward Rollins (Cambridge, Mass., 194&), II, 173. ^Llfe. Letters, and Literary Remains of John Keats, 2 vols., London, lbl+ft; 1-voi. complete ed., New York, 18lj.o. The one-volume edition is cited in this paper. 2 first real biography of Keats, there Is anq>le evidence of the powerful effect of Shakespeare, though Milnes made very little use of the evidence he presented. The first real impetus to the study of the Keats-Shakespeare relationship cane in 1880, in Matthew Arnold's famous essay on Keats written for Ward's English Poets.^ Arnold begins by deploring the side of Keats revealed by the recently pub lished Letters to Fanny Brawns, calling them the work of an "apprentice-surgeon." But he quickly turns from that aspect to Keats's "yearning passion for the Beautiful," and finds there a close kinship with Shakespeare: No one else in English poetry, save Shakespeare, has in expression quite the fascinating felicity of Keats, his perfection of loveliness. "I think," he said humbly, "I shall be among the English poets after my death.” He is; he is with Shakespeare, (p. I 4 . 3) Though Arnold immediately takes him to task for his weak ness in "the second half of poetic interpretation, . . . that faculty of moral interpretation which is in Shakespeare" (p. lj.3), the praise alone is remembered, and the coupling with Shakespeare is today a standard element of critical commentary on Keats. Every biography or ^-"John Keats," in Thomas Humphrey Ward, ed., The English Poets: Selections, with Critical Introductions by Various Writers and a feeneral Introduction bv Matthew Arnolcl (London, Ibboi. IV. k^7-L.37« The essay also appears in Arnold* s Essays in Criticism: The Study of Poetry: John Keats: Wordsworin. ed. Susan &. Sheridan (Boston and Chicago, c. 1896), pp. 32-1+3, from which it is quoted here. biographic sketch Includes some oomment on the Importance of Shakespeare in the development of Keats*s poetic char acter, and such investigators as Claude Lee Finney-’ and John Middleton Murry^ have made the consideration of Shakespeare*s influence a major part of their studies of Keats. What purpose, then, can be served by yet another discussion of suoh well-worked material? The answer lies in the way the material has been worked: it seems to me that no one has yet presented a thorough and objective study of the extent and nature of Shakespeare*s Influence on the thought and practice of Keats as revealed in his letters and poetry. Matthew Arnold delivered opinions but presented little specific evidence; and since he saw Keats through the moral blinders of the Victorian era, he failed to see him clearly. Such biographers as Lord Houghton and Sir Sidney Colvin, who gave us in 1917 what is still the standard Life.7 though they presented much material for a thorough study of the ^The Evolution of Keats*s Poetry. 2 vols., Cambridge, Mass., I93&. ^Keats and Shakespeare: A Study of Keats* Poetic Life from lBlb to London. 1925: see also bis Studies In fceais. London. 1430: Studies in Keats. Old and Hew, tondon. 1939; and The Mystery oflteats. London. 19ii9. 7jphn Keats: His Life and Poetry. His Friends. Critics, and After-frame. 1st ed.. London and flew York. 19lYi ;Jrcl ed., London, 1920. The latter edition is cited in this study. influence of Shakespeare, negleoted that vital influence in their critical discussions. Erneat de Sellnoourt pointed to the need and presented some of the raw materials for such a critical discussion in his thoroughly annotated editions of the poems, beginning in 1905.® He presented in his Preface a few of the many Shakespearean references in the letters, which, with his careful tracing of echoes in the poetry, bolster his contention that The lnfluenoe of other poets in turn grew and waned, but the genius of Shakespeare opened out a new world before his eyes, and the life which he saw in the pages of Shakespeare became as it were a part of his inner ex perience. And as his own life*s tragedy drew to its close he turned, naturally, in his agony of mind to the majestic tranquility of Shakespeare, (pp. xxxiv-xxxv) But though his thorough study of the poems provides the basis for much later work, his task was not to explore thoroughly the critical and biographical implications of Keats*s study of Shakespeare. Murry, building a life*s work on the succinct com ments of de Sellnoourt, presented his major work, Keats and Shakespeare, to the scholarly world in 1925, Just before the appearance of another important work of a very different sort, Amy Lowell*s massive two-volume critical- impressionistic biography.^ Murry*s purpose is "to ^Poems of John Keats. 1st ed., London, 1905; 5th ed., London, 19^6. The 5tk ed. is cited in this study. 9John Keats. 2 vols„, Boston and New York, 1925* vindicate more completely than it has been vindicated before Matthew Arnold*s sentence concerning Keats," to show how "it was inevitable that Keats should be *wlth Shakespeare*w because "there was nobody else for him to be with" (pp. 219-220). He was, Murry believes, a "pure poet," second only to Shakespeare (p. 70); he wrote, like Shakespeare, with intensity; and he had, like Shakespeare, the supreme poetic gift of Negative Capability. And he learned from Shakespeare not only poetic technique but a way of life, a Christ-like way which Murry calls "Acceptance" (p. I 4 . 8). Indeed, before he has finished, Murry invests Keats with the soul of Shakespeare and both poets with the nobility of Christ. Murry takes literally Keats*s phrase that "a Man's life of any worth is a con tinual allegory" (Letters. II, 67) and believes that the life of Keats has "the sense of revelation, of the unutter able being uttered through it" (Mystery, p. 9). Murry shows very well that Keats understood Shakespeare and was himself— often with conscious effort— the same sort of poet; but when he goes a step further and attempts to prove that because the two wrote the same sort of poetry and looked at life in the same way, they were therefore in some mystic way acting out an "allegory" imposed upon them by a mysterious power in the universe (Mystery, p. 7)» and when he tries to show that by understanding what life-foroes motivated Keats to write certain poems we can also understand the specific Influences on the production of Hamlet (Keats and Shakespeare, pp. 215-216), we cannot follow him. Murry thus provides some well-documented arguments for the relationship, arguments and evidence to which this study is Indebted, but he falls to present pre- olse and objectively-reached limits for the Influence. By the nature of his discussion, also, he negleota much of the evidence from the poems and presents only that evidence from the letters which supports his preconceptions. Murry*s failure to deal thoroughly with the poetry, however, Is more than compensated for by the labors of Finney, who subjects each poem of Keats to minute scrutiny for possible echoes and Influences. His efforts, added to those of Amy Lowell, have almost exhausted the possibil ities for source-hunting in the poetry. The result Is Inevitably to present Keats as a piece-work poet who patched together his brilliant fabrics from scraps of lines garnered mainly from Shakespeare. Any study of Shakespeare*s Influence on Keats must owe a great deal to Finney, but a main purpose of this paper is to correct the false Impression left by his work. Another Important work In any such study is the most Informative Keats*a Shakespeare. - * - 0 in which Caroline F. E. 10Keats*a Shakespeare: A Descriptive Study Based on New Material, iai eci. . London. l9^B: 2nd ed. . rev.. 19^9• The latter edition is cited here. 7 Spurgeon makes available the results of a fortunate scholarly accident: In 1927, during a stay In the country side near Nev York, she came upon the seven-volume set of the "Johnson and Steevens" Shakespeare11 which Keats took with him to the Isle of Wight In April, 1817, and marked copiously In his first serious study of Shakespeare. In It Miss Spurgeon discusses the evidence indicating which plays were most read, reproduces much of the marking for us, and concludes with a comparison of passages from Endvmlon (on which Keats was working at the time he read and marked that set of Shakespeare) with passages from the plays which he had marked. Her book Is Invaluable and will be referred to often In this study. The work of W. J. Bate, first in the ninety-page mono graph Negative Capability1^ and later, In much expanded form, in his scholarly The Stylistic Development of Keats.13 is also Important to an understanding of the relationship. The monograph disousses the meaning and Implications of the term "Negative Capability": a detached trust in Imagination rather than reason alone, the ability 11The Dramatic Works of William Shakespeare. 7 vols., Chiswick, &nglan&, l&ilj.. 12Negatlve Capability: The Intuitive Approaoh in Keats. Cambridge, Mass., 1939. ^New York, 19^5• of the poet to lose his aelf-identity "through a sympa thetic identification of himself with his subject" (p. 32) and an implicit faith in empirical experience which leads directly into the element of Intensity. The subjeot of Intensity is further discussed in Bate1a later work; in both he is concerned mainly with one sort of intensity, concrete epithets which are physically Intense and which often take the form of past participles. Though both his conception of Negative Capability and his dlsoussion of intensity seem inadequate, he does great service in point ing out in specific, statistical studies the changes which came about in Keats*s style as a result of his study of Shakespeare. Particularly useful is his discussion of the sonnet, in which he builds upon an earlier suggestion by H. W. Garrod.^J- These are the works of major importance to the study of the relationship of Keats and Shakespeare. Though all have been useful in this investigation, all are, in my opinion, Inadequate in presenting an objective but thor ough study of the relationship. The range of my disagree ment with particular sources will be apparent in the pages which follow, as will my debt to each of them. Several tygeats. Oxford, 1926. Garrod*s edition of The Poetical Works of John Keats. Oxford, 1939, is usecl for variant readings of the poems. further debts may be mentioned here. I have taken advan tage of the most recent scholarly studies of the letters of Keats; all quotations from them are as printed by Rollins, whose careful and objective editing and pains taking annotations have proved Invaluable In this study. The poetry Is quoted as It appears In the scholarly and readable edition by Harold Edgar Briggs,unless some problem of variant reading requires the use of Garrod, or a problem of sources necessitates calling upon de Selincourt. All dating of poems follows Briggs. All quotations from Shakespeare, unless otherwise noted, are from Hardin Craig*s edition of The Complete Works of Shakespeare.1^ which Is based on the Globe text and uses the Globe line numbers. Finally, though Colvin, Murry, and Lowell have all been consulted for biographical materials, the recent life by Dorothy Hewlett,1? which, though of little critical worth In disousslng the poetry, Is a care ful compilation of day-by-day events In the poet*s life, has been used as the basic source for biographical data. ^ The Complete Poetry and Selected Prose of John Keats, toew Yowc, c. ^Chic ago, c. 1961. ^ Adonals; A Life of John Keats. 1st ed., London, 1937; 2nd ed., rev., Sew York, 1^56. Citations In this study are to the 2nd ed., whloh drops from the title the word "Adonals." 10 Many other sources have proved useful at various points; the debt Is acknowledged In each oase by footnotes, and a list of such sources makes up the bibliography of this lfl paper. The chronological study of the appearances of Shakespeare In the letters and poetry of Keats reveals several Interesting facts which have not been adequately stressed before. Both the poetry and the letters show very little Influence of Shakespeare before April, 1817, when Keats began to study and mark his seven-volume set. As many Investigators have pointed out, that April marks a turning point, after which the Influence of Shakespeare Is the overriding one In Keats's poetic development. This study makes an attempt to show more precisely than has been done exactly what that turning-point meant to Keats. Through a study of the letters, one can see a regularly maturing reaction to Shakespeare, growing from an excited discovery of his genius to a deepening philosophical under standing of his world-view. The letters of 1817 end early 1818 are filled with quotations and allusions, which taper off In the latter part of 1818 and 1819 and become a deeply personal way of expressing— and often, of hiding— his iQpor a thorough, though now somewhat outdated, treatment of bibliography In the study of Keats, see J. R. MacGllllvray, Keats: A Bibliography and Reference Guide. Toronto, 19U9. 11 Inmost thoughts on Fanny Brawns. They reveal a knowledge of the plays which grows ever deeper and wider as the study continues. Another kind of growth is seen in the particular plays referred to or quoted: though The Tempest and A Midsummer Night's Dream fill the early letters, it is the tragedies, particularly King Lear. Hamlet, and Trollus and Cresslda. which appeal most in the later letters. And the evidence of the poetry is of the same sort: early influences are seen in deliberate echoes of Shakespeare's lines, but later poems contain far fewer echoes and many more subtle Influences of Shakespeare. The element of intensity is discussed in the letters and revealed more and more in the poetry. The conoept of Negative Capability— a muoh more involved concept than has been noted in previous studies— also comes directly from Keats's study of Shakespeare, and its development in all its facets may be traced in the letters as he mulls over his reactions to Shakespeare. More Important, Negative Capability may be seen illustrated in the poetry of his mature growth— the odes of 1819• Another poetic element which he drew from Shakespeare can be traced in the letters and discovered in the poetry of the later period, an element which aocounts in large part for the feeling of artistic completion we receive from the odes— the management of Imagery which he discusses in his poetic "axioms." Finally, his belief that the creation of beauty through poetry could help not only the reader but the poet himself to accept the truths of life, however harsh they might be, Is tragically Illus trated In his final letters, written when he could no longer work out his griefs In great poetry. Those letters use references to Shakespeare In powerfully connotatlve ways to Intensify the dying poetts expressions of his bitterness. To Illustrate those points, the remainder of this paper Is divided Into five more chapters, arranged chrono logically. Chapter II discusses the few (and conventional) appearances of Shakespeare In the letters and poems up to April, 1817* Chapter III presents the excitement of Keats as he discovered the greatness of his predecessor and took Shakespeare as his npreslder.n Covering the period from April, 1817, to July, 1818, It shows the uses of Shakespeare In Endymlon. the shift from Italian to Shakespearean sonnets, the deeper Influences of Shakespeare on the poetry, Important shifts In the uses of Shakespeare In the letters, and the development of vital crltloal and philosophic statements from the study of Shakespeare, Chapter IV, beginning after a three-month hiatus In the appearances of Shakespeare In the letters, shows continuing growth In the poetts understanding of his wpreslderw and presents evidence for a far greater Shakespearean element *n Hyperion than la usually realized. It covers the months from August, 1818, to April, 1819. Chapter V presents the period of the odes, from May, 1819, to the writing of "To Autumn" In September. Here, finally, the concepts of intensity and movement of Imagery which Keats developed from his study of Shakespeare come to fruition, and the complex Idea of Negative Capability finds exact expression In the odes. That chapter also deals with his last few poems, particularly the elements of allegory In "The Eve of St. Agnes," "Lamia," and "La Belle Dame sans Mercl," and the many elements of Shakespeare In the two dramatlo works, Otho the Great and the fragment King Stephen. The final ohapter discusses the last letters of Keats and shows how, In 1820, when the poetic voice was silenced by illness, he used Shakespeare to present In tragically powerful ways his bitterness at his fate. Those last rebellious outories Illustrate even more forcefully than the earlier statements and the poems the meaning of Negative Capability, and are, again, another indication of the great debt of Keats to his "presider." CHAPTER II: THE BEGINNINGS (TO APRIL, l8l7) Though Keats studied Shakespeare at the Clarke School and must have had a conventional knowledge of the plays before the "Shakespearean Spring" of 1817, there Is very little apparent influence In the letters or poems before that climactic period. As a boy, he evidently knew Macbeth, for a schoolmate, Edward Holmes, remembers his comment that "No one would dare to read Macbeth alone in a house at two o*clock in the morning" (Keats Circle. II, 161;); and the few references or remlnlsoenoes in the early poems indicate a conventional knowledge, at least, of A Midsummer Night*s Dream. The Tempest, and possibly a few other plays. The great poetic influence on the early Keata, however, was not Shakespeare but Spenser. "It was the *Faery Queen,*" Charles Brown tells us, "that awakened his genius. In Spenser*s fairy land he was enohanted, breathed in a new world, and became another being" (Keata Circle. II, 55). Charles Cowden Clarke describes for us Keats*s strong reaction to the phrase "sea-shouldering whale," and tells us that "What appeared most to delight him in Spenser (after the gorgeousness of the Imagery) was the uncommon force and felicity of his epithets" (Keats Circle. II, llj.9). So profound was the 15 effect of Spenser that it drew forth the "Imitation of Spenser,n Keats* s first extant poem, written in early I8U4 . , in whloh he tried with Indifferent suooess to oapture some of the romanoe and magic phrasing of his first poetic hero. His "Ode to Apollo," written a few months later, in February, 1815, shows us what delighted him in Spenser: A silver trumpet Spenser blows, And, as its martial notes to silence flee, From a virgin chorus flows A hymn in praise of spotless Chastity. *Tls still! Wild warblings from the Aeolian lyre Enchantment softly breathe, and tremblingly expire. Besides the visions of romance which naturally appealed to the imaginative youth, he was entranced by the epithets and Imagery in Spenser, as Clarke tells us and we can learn for ourselves in the copy of Book I of The Faery Queen which Keats marked--if Amy Lowell is right in her conjec ture (II, 5l|5). The book belonged to George Keats, but Miss Lowell believes, since the one note in the book is in John Keats*s handwriting and since the underlinings are forceful, like John's, rather than light, like George's, that the poet made most of the marks in the book. In her reproduction we see underlined such striking epithets as "uncouth light," a "grudging Ghost" which at the moment of death strives with "the frail Flesh," a "dragon fierce" that makes its way "though wildest air," "direful Dames" who drive a "mournful Chariot," and a man's "reverent hairs and holy Gravity." Keats's Interest in such phrases 16 continued for the remainder of his life, particularly In the epithets and Imagery of Shakespeare, as we can see In the markings of his seven-volume set of Shakespeare*s works• But that interest In the language of Shakespeare did not come until the spring of 181?, when he began to study Shakespeare seriously for the first time, though he ex hibits a conventional veneration much earlier. The first certain appearance of Shakespeare in the poetry, in February, 1815, gives Shakespeare only a place in the ranks among several other poets. In the same "Ode to Apollo" in which Spenser is lauded, along with Milton, Homer, Maro, and Tasso, appears this stanza on Shakespeare: Thou biddest Shakespeare wave his hand, And qulokly forward spring The Passions— a terrific band— And each vibrates the string That with its tyrant temper best accords, While from their Master*s lips pour forth the inspiring words. Thus far Keats thought of Shakespeare mainly as a poet of the passions and breathing humanity, in contrast to the Spenser of fairies and romance. The first reference to Shakespeare in the letters as presented by Rollins appears in the second entry, the poetic epistle to George Felton Mathew, a young poetaster whose Influence on the developing poet was luckily short lived. Writing in November, l8l£, Keats sings the 17 pleasures of the "brotherhood in song" which the two poets enjoyed; he hopes that they can find a plaoe to "sit, and rhyme and think on Chatterton;/ And that warm-hearted Shakespeare sent to meet him / Four laurell*d spirits • . • " (I, 102). Here Shakespeare Is only one of many Inspiring masters, Including Milton, Burns, Alfred the Great, and William Tell— and, of course, the romantic youth Chatterton, for whom Keats hopes the spirit of Shakespeare has provided an august escort. The next reference to Shakespeare In the letters comes almost a year later, on October 9, 1816. (There are, how ever, only a few letters In this period; Rollins numbers this entry No. 7, with only four, including one by George Keats, Intervening between it and the first reference to Shakespeare.) In this second reference, Keats tells Charles Cowden Clarke that he looks forward to meeting Leigh Hunt and becoming "acquainted with Men who In their admiration of Poetry do not jumble together Shakspeare and Darwin" (I, 113). The "Darwin" here is Erasmus Darwin, physician and author of The Botanic Garden. Keats Is evidently rebelling against the lack of critical Insight among his friends (Is he thinking of Mathew?) and looking forward to more perceptive companions. The comment shows some knowledge of Shakespeare but not, as yet, any dis criminating appreciation. 18 The other four appearances of Shakespeare In the letters before April, 1817, Indicate that Keats had read several plays well enough to quote or adapt lines from them, but there Is no evidence of any deep study. Two are simply used quotations: he ends a letter to Clarke on October 31, 1816 (1,115), with the phrase "God *ield you," from Hamlet (IV.v.lj.1), and another to Clarke the following month (1,116) with "I rest your Hermit," a slight adapta- tion from Macbeth (I.vii.20). In a letter to John Hamilton Reynolds on March 17, 1817, shortly before his trip to the Isle of Wight, he adapts I Henry IV in a discussion of health: Banish money— Banish sofas— Banish Wine— Banish Music— But right Jack Health-honest Jack Health, true Jack Health— banish health and banish all the world. (I, 125) These phrases are a parody of Palstaff1s defense of himself in the mock-trial he and Prince Hal hold In I Henry IV: No, my good lord; banish Peto, banish Bardolph, banish Polns; but for sweet Jaok Falstaff, kind Jaok Falstaff, true Jack Falstaff, valiant Jaok Falstaff, and therefore more valiant, being, as he is, old Jaok Falstaff, banish not him thy Harry*a company, banish not him thy Harry*s company: banish plump Jack, and banish all the world. (II.lv.520-527) The fact that Keats omits the most effective phrasing here, the Intensification of Falstaff*s valiance by oontrast with his age, leads one to believe that he either was quoting from memory or was not yet the perceptive reader he was to become. The quotation does, however, prove a ready knowl edge of the play. Finally, in a letter to Clarke a week 19 later, March 2$, 1817, Keats asks: When shall we see each other again? In Heaven or In Hell, or In deep Places? In crooked Lane are we to meet or on Salisbury Plain? (I, 126) Rollins compares the opening lines of Macbeth, as the First Witch says, "When shall we three meet again? / In thunder, lightning, or In rain?" If Keats*s words are an echo, he has not been very Imaginative In his use of Shakespeare here. Thus, in the fifteen letters written before April 15, 1817, we have only six weak appearances of Shakespeare. But the first two letters Keats wrote after beginning his study of Shakespeare on the Isle of Wight contain sixteen references or quotations— each one is more filled with Shakespeare than all fifteen of the previous letters covering a span of seventeen months. From April to the end of 1817, sixty suoh references appear in sixteen dif ferent letters; In 1818, twenty-four letters have some fifty-three references. But forty-three of those appear between January and July, followed by a three-month hiatus, with eight references In October and two In December. It Is evident, then, that the greatest Influx of Shakespearean references Into the letters comes during the writing and revision of Bndvmlon. from April, 1817, through July, 1818, the period covered In the next chapter of this study. During those fourteen months, 113 references, quotations, or allusions appear. Before there had been only seven; in the twenty-sIx months In which Keats could still write letters afterward, from July, I8l8, to November, 1820, there are seventy-two— a considerable number, but nothing like the many appearances of Shakespeare during the Endymlon period. These figures Include mere quotations or echoes as well as great philosophical utterances formulated from the study of Shakespeare. Since, as the next chapter will Indicate, most of those philosophical comments also oame In the Endymlon period, It Is obvious that the evldenoe of the letters Indicates how vital to Keats's poetic development was his "Shakespearean spring." The evidence of the poems shows the same trends: before April, 1817* Shakespeare had little Influence on the poet. De Sellnoourt lists only six references to or echoes of Shakespeare before April, l8l7. Finney finds sixteen others, but many of his we must dlsoount. Murry and Miss Lowell mention four other passages which may show an Influence of Shakespeare. If we allow all of these (which we cannot), they make a total of twenty-six echoes In fifty-eight poems, all of them slight, surface things, unimportant to the development of Keats and of little value poetically. But In April, In the mist of his excited study of Shakespeare, comes the sonnet "On the Sea," inspired directly by a reading of King Lear: and Endymlon. 21 which follows, shows both many eohoes from Shakespeare and other more vital Influences— influences which pervade the poetry from that time on. Before we come to that great turning-point in the poetic development of Keats, however, we must survey the Shakespearean elements in the poetry up to that time. The two appearances of Shakespeare*s name, in the "Ode to Apollo" and the epistle "To George Felton Mathew," are, of course, certain references, but they show only an awareness of Shakespeare and little more. There are, how ever, echoes or allusions which show that Keats may have known King Lear. A Midsummer Night*a Dream. As You Like It. Romeo and Juliet. Trollus and Cresslda. and the sonnets. Certain doubtful echoes presented by Finney would add Cymbellne. The Merchant of Venloe. Julius Caesar. Pericles. Romeo and Juliet, and The Rape of Luorece to the list. The first Shakespearean reference appears in the first extant poem of Keats, the slight "Imitation of Spenser," written in early l8llj., in which he says that if he had enough poetic power, he could "rob from aged Lear his bitter teen"— which is an interesting early statement of the power of poetry to relieve sorrow. Since the poem is modeled after Spenser, the reference to Lear may come, as Finney (I, 31) points out, from Book II of The Faery Queen, but it is likely to be from the more memorable version of 22 Lear*8 story by Shakespeare. The casual phrase, regardless of Its source, shows no profound reaction to Shakespeare. In the poem "To Hope," written In February, 1815, he speaks of the Elizabethan habit of writing love sonnets: 0 let me think It Is not quite In vain To sigh out sonnets to the midnight alrt Finney (1,61) believes these lines are a reminiscence of the sonnets Orlando wrote to Rosalind In As You Like It. because they remind him of Corln* s words to the aged Sllvlus: Though In thy youth thou waat as true a lover As ever slgh*d upon a midnight pillow. . . . (II.lv.26-27) Except that both mention the sighing of the lover, there Is little to remind one of Shakespeare In Keats*s lines; the citation Is an example of Finney*s over-zealousness In finding parallels. Since Keats was writing about Elizabethan sonneteers, he did not need to remember Orlando*s efforts, and the only words the two sets of lines have In common are "midnight" and varying forms of "sigh." Throughout this paper, I have used the following criteria, none of which this "echo" meets, In attempting to decide what parallels seem valid: (1) the lines must have phrasing In oommon, with at least two words used In the same way, and preferably In the same phrase; (2) unless they are unusual or are used In an unusual and striking way, more than two words In common are required for an 23 "echo"; (3) the phrasing must not be so commonplace that It can be found more readily at hand than In Shakespeare— that Is, It must not be a part of the common word stock; or ( l { . ) there must be involved a common conceit or image which is unusual. A fifth criterion, that there be some evidence that the borrower has read the original lines, can seldom be applied here, for Keats may have read all of Shakespeare before April, 1817, and probably did read most of his works shortly thereafter. Using such criteria, we can allow as a reminiscence Finney*s comparison (1,98) of the image "Hybla* s honied roses" in "Had I a Man*a Fair Form" with Julius Caesar (V.1.3U-35): But for your words, they rob the Hybla bees, And leave them honeyless. Here the repetitions of "Hybla" and "honey" make the echo probable. But Finney (I, 127), supported by Lowell (I, 183) and de Sellncourt (p. 566), also sees a debt in the sonnet "On First Looking into Chapman*a Homer," as "stout Cortez" and his men Look*d at each other with a wild surmise— Silent, upon a peak in Darien. He quotes for comparison "The Rape of Lucrece" (11. 83-8I 4. ) with key words italicized in the source-hunter*s favorite method of "proving" his point: Enchanted Tarquin answers with surmise In silent wonder of still-gazing eyes. 2k "Surmise” and "silent” are there, but is "gazing" the same as "Look*d"? If this is a debt, it is the only one to this poem in the entire letters and poetry of Keats; and there is no evidence anywhere that he read the poem, though he may well have. In addition, the visual picture is different, and neither the image used nor the words repeated seem compelling. Similarly doubtful are such "reminiscences" as the following. De Sellnoourt (p. 391) compares the expression from "Calldore," "a dimpled hand,/ Fair as some wonder out of fairy land" (11.93-91*), with Romeo and Juliet (Ill.iii. 36): "the white wonder of dear Juliet*s hand." Another physioal image, "hid in the fringes of your eyelids white," from the sonnet "On an Engraved Gem of Leander," is taken, Finney believes (I, 193)» from a fusion of a line in The Tempest. "The fringed curtains of thine eye advance" (I.ii.l*08), and Pericles: Her eyelids, cases to those heavenly jewels,... Begin to part their fringes of bright gold. (III.ii.99-101) And the line describing Leander "Sinking away to his young spirit's night," Finney thinks, comes from Shakespeare*a simile of the death of Cassius in Julius Caesar: 0 setting sun, As in thy red rays thou dost sink to night, So in his red blood Cassius* day is set. (V.ill.60-62) Finney (1,171*) also tells us that the line "I stood tip-toe upon a little hill" in the poem "I Stood Tip-toe" is reminiscent of Romeo and Juliet (III.v.9-10): "Jocund day/ Stands tip-toe on the misty mountain-tops." In the description of the fairy revels in the "Epistle to George Felton Mathew," (11. 25-31), in the reference to "King Oberon" and "lovely Titania" in "On Receiving a Shell from Some Ladles," in the phrase "the wand that Queen Titania wields" in "To a Friend Who Sent Me Some Roses," and in the "revels" of Cynthia in the sonnet "To My Brother George," Finney sees reminiscences of A Midsummer Night*s Dream, although they may have been drawn merely from the public stock of fairy lore (see de Selincourt, p. 165). In any case, neither they nor the other doubtful echoes here listed represent any exceptional interest in or knowledge of Shakespeare. Several echoes, however, seem more certain. In "To Mary Frogley," written February II4 ., 1816, appears the conoelt that if the girl had lived in antiquity, she would have made the muses ten instead of nine, which, as Finney (I, 95) points out, is also used in Shakespeare’s Sonnet XXXVIII. And in "How Many Bards," written in March, 1816, Keats speaks of "the food/Of my delighted fancy," which echoes As You Like It (IV.ill.102): "food of sweet and bitter fancy." "I Stood Tip-toe" contains the lines, In the calm grandeur of a sober line, We see the waving of the mountain pine. (11.127-128) 26 Both Finney (I, 17^) and Lowell (I, II4 . 7—II+8) telieve that these lines may eoho either Cvmbellne (IV.i 1.1714.-175), ", . • the rud'st wind/ That by the top doth take the mountain pine," or The Merchant of Venloe (IV.i.75-77): You may as well forbid the mountain pines To wag their high tops and to make no noise, When they are fretted with the gusts of heaven. These are possible eohoes, though they may have oome from other sources than Shakespeare. "I Stood Tip-toe" does have a olear echo of Shakespeare, however, and a most unfortunate one: Keats describes "hurrying freshets" which "aye preach/ A natural sermon o*er their pebbly beds" (11. 70-71), which echoes the passage in As You Like It in which the Duke describes his country pleasures: And this our life exempt from publlo haunt Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, Sermons in stones and good in every thing. (II.i.15-17) De Selincourt calls this a "crude reminiscence" (p. 388), and Lowell becomes indignant: "How could he lug in Shakespeare so crudelyl" (I, II4 . 5). More apt borrowings of imagery appear in some of the sonnets. In "On Seeing the Elgin Marbles for the First Time," Keats's concern with mortality mingles with his feeling of Time's eroding power when he sees the marbles; they bring a "dizzy pain," That mingles Grecian grandeur with the rude Wasting of old Time— with a billowy main, A sun, a shadow of a magnitude. 27 Finney (I, 189) cites the phrase "wastes of time" from Shakespeare18 Sonnet XII and the following lines from Sonnet LXIV: When I have seen by Time1s fell hand defaoed The rich proud cost of outworn burled age; When sometime lofty towers I see down-razed And brass eternal slave to mortal rage. . . . He ooncludes with two lines from Sonnet LXV: Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless sea, But sad mortality o^r-swaya their power. . . . He might also have added the phrase "watery main" from Sonnet LXIV. These parallels in thought and phrase seem conclusive: Keats must here have been Influenced by a recent rereading of Shakespeare1a sonnets, which we know he had read several times before November, 1817, when he says that he has "neer found so many beauties in the sonnets" (Letters. I, 188). Bate (Stylistic Development, pp. 8-19) points out that there is more resemblance between the structure of the early sonnets of Keats and those of Shakespeare than has heretofore been noted, particularly in simple parallelism of phrases and the use of feminine endings, both uncommon among Keats(s contemporaries. Batefs considerable scholarship, which will be discussed in detail in Chapter IV as the development of the sonnets and odes is taken up, is added evidence here that Keats had been reading the sonnets. Murry finds echoes in two sonnets, "On Leaving Some 28 Friends at an Early Hour,” written in November, 1816, and the second sonnet to Haydon, written the same month. Both, Murry says (Keats and Shakespeare, pp. 15-16), are filled with "the very voice of Shakespeare"; but the only evidence he can point to is the startling "Shakespearean" Image: And other spirits there are standing apart Upon the forehead of the age to come. Lowell (II, 209) presents parallels in Lycldas (1. 171) and Trollus and Cresslda: So rich advantage of a promised glory As smiles upon the forehead of this action. (II. ii. 201^-205) Borrowing from this metaphor, typical of the worst mixing of images in Shakespeare, does not show a very discrim inating appreciation as yet in Keats. Finally, Finney believes that the following lines from A Midsummer Night*s Dream Influenced two of Keats*s poems: The poet*s eye, In a fine frenzy rolling, Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven; And as imagination bodies forth The forms of things unknown, the poet*s pen Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing A local habitation and a name. (V.i.12-17) In the "Epistle to George," a similar trance appears: It has been said, dear George, and true I hold it, (For knightly Spenser to Llbertas told it,) That when a Poet is in such a trance, In air he sees white coursers paw, and prance, Bestridden of gay knights, in gay apparel. (11. 23-27) Keats goes on for forty-three lines, describing the poet*s 29 visions, which may, as Finney believes (I, 116-117), owe something to the vivid description by Shakespeare. But it should be noted that Keats specifically attributes the vision to "knightly Spenser," and certainly the chivalrous scene is much more Spenserian than Shakespearean. The lines about the poet*s frenzy, however, would undoubtedly appeal to Keats, and he has another passage very similar to Shakespeare*s in his long "Sleep and Poetry," in which he uses a charioteer as a symbol for the poetic imagination: I see afar, 0*ersalllng the blue cragginess, a car And steeds with streamy manes— the charioteer Looks out upon the winds with glorious fear: And now the numerous trampllngs quiver lightly Along a huge cloud*s ridge; and now with sprightly Wheel downward come they into fresher skies, Tipt round with silver from the sun*s bright eyes. Still downward with capacious whirl they glide; And now I see them on the green-hill*s side In breezy rest among the nodding stalks. The charioteer with wond*rous gesture talks To the trees and mountains; and there soon appear Shapes of delight, of mystery, and fear. . • . The driver of those steeds is forward bent, And seems to listen: 0 that I might know All that he writes with such a hurrying glow. (11. 125-151|.) Ian Jack*- has shown that the "charioteer" and his steeds on "a huge cloud*s ridge" are from Nicolas Poussin*s picture, "*The Realm of Flora* in Keats and Poussin," Times Literary Supplement. April 10, 1959, p. 212. See also p. ^Ol for a reproduction of Poussin*s picture. "L*Emplre de Flore,” but the movement from heaven to earth of the poet*s glance In Shakespeare*s lines and the charioteer In Keats*s and the creation of ”shapes” from nothing In both passages bolster Finney*s contention that Shakespeare Is also a souroe here. Added evidence of the debt Is Keats*s attaok upon the "rocking-horse” of the Eighteenth Century poets In contrast to the Pegasus repre senting the "fervid choir" of the Elizabethans, In addition to the reference to "delicious Avon" in line 2Uj., which none of the commentators seem to have caught. These are the elements of Shakespeare In the poetry of Keats up to the fateful April when he began his study of his "presider," What do they amount to? What real love and understanding of Shakespeare do they exhibit? We have two allusions to Shakespeare by name, a reference to Lear, and the term "delioious Avon" to show that the young Keats felt a conventional veneration for Shakespeare. The numerous references to Cynthia, Oberon, and Titania show that Keats knew mythology and fairy lore and may have ob tained some of it from A Midsummer Night*s Dream. The early definite borrowing from As You Like It in the "hurrying freshets" of "I Stood Tip-toe" shows little understanding of the poetic skill of Shakespeare. We also have the probable remlniscenoe of three sonnets In the image of tlme*s wasting power in "On the Elgin Marbles," 31 and slight Influences on the form and language of early sonnets. Scholars have pointed to eight other possible— many quite doubtful— echoes In the early poems; and Murry, Lowell, and Finney have detected the "voice of Shakespeare" where no one else can. Such doubtful echoes have been Included here only to point up one fact: even If we were to Include all the supposed Influences of Shakespeare on the poetry of Keats before April, 1817, so little do they add up to that one can safely say that up to this point Shakespeare counted for little In the life or poetry of Keats. But in April, Keats went off to the Isle of Wight to begin Endymlon: he took with him a new set of Shakespeare, and when he opened that set, the whole course of his poetlo development was changed. CHAPTER III: ENDYMION AND THE SHAKESPEAREAN SPRING (APRIL, 1817, TO JULY, 1818) Though Shakespeare had been no more than a respected name to Keats in his first poetic period, in April, 1817, having published his first book of poems the previous month, he went to the Isle of Wight to begin both his second book, Endymlon. and the study of Shakespeare. Prom Southampton, on April 15, he wrote his brothers: "I felt rather lonely this Morning at breakfast so I went and unbox*d a Shakspeare— *There*s my Comfort*" (Letters. I, 128). The quotation from The Tempest (II.ii.l|7* 57) is one of seven similarly used quotations or adaptations of Shakespeare in this letter— more than in all the letters to date. His next letter, written two days later to John Hamilton Reynolds, has nine references or quotations; and for the next sixteen months, his letters are crammed with Shakespeare. His uses of Shakespeare in the letters change, and the plays he cites change, but the fact of Shakespeare is vital in his life from this point on. It is of little value to discuss or quote every phrase from the letters which may show an echo, a quotation, a reference, or some other debt to Shakespeare; there are, after all, some 192 such candidates for our attention. But for the purposes of this study, some order can be imposed on that mass of material. First, we can divide the refer ences into four types according to the use made of Shakespeare: (1) general references to Shakespeare, particular plays, or characters, whioh indicate a growing and continuing Interest in him and his work; (2) quotations or adaptations used either as an aid in communication or as an adornment to the language; (3) references to characters or incidents (sometimes by quotations) which convey by allusion a stronger thought than Keats's words alone could do— and sometimes serve to hide his depth of thought from his reader; and (I4 . ) critical comments on the plays, on lines from the plays, and on the playwright himself which lead directly to (and include) the vital critical formu lations of Keats on the nature of poets and poetry, on life, and on the ideal human being. Type 3, the allusive uses— particularly those which obscure his private thoughts— are found in greatest number in the letters to Fanny Brawne in 1820, but all three of the others are found most profusely during this first period of excited study of Shakespeare. Interestingly enough, however, though most of the critical statements and philosophical formulations are made during this period, their most effective use in the poetry is not found until a year later, in the great odes of 1819. Next, we can observe the plays from which the refer ences come and draw some conclusions about the type of reading closest to him at various times. The quotations In the first part of this period are mainly to four plays: there are eleven references to King Lear and The Tempest, nine to A Midsummer Night*s Dream, and eight to Hamlet In the period from April, 1817, to July, 1818. But all but one of the references to Dream and three to Tempest are in the earlier part of the period, in 1817; only three of the eight Hamlet and five of the eleven Lear references are In those months, the rest coming In 1818. And after July, 1818, each of the lighter plays appears only once in the letters; but Lear continues with four references in 1819, and Hamlet with one late reference in 1818, seven In 1819, and two in 1820. Furthermore, the late references to Hamlet, as we shall see, are among the most Important In the letters, for they show most closely the kinship Keats feels for Shakespeare. We see very early, therefore, a trend which Is carried through the remainder of the letters: though The Tempest and A Midsummer Night*a Dream are most Important to Keats in his early study, as he continues his reading, the great tragedies and what they reveal of Shakespeare and of life become Increasingly Important to him. Of his early interest In the two comedies, however, 35 there can be no doubt, and though we cannot be certain about the reasons, we can make a good conjecture. Miss Spurgeon, In her study of Keats*s markings In his seven- volume edition, comes to some Interesting conclusions. First, judging from the wear of the pages as well as by the number of markings (though the wear could have been pro duced by other hands), she concludes that The Tempest and A Midsummer Night*s Dream were "by far the most read” (p. f>). Second, Keats was reading— and marking— in Shakespeare the same things he had found In Spenser; he looked, says Miss Spurgeon, "chiefly for poetry of the more * romantic* kind, and was particularly attracted . . . by epithets and Imagery" (p. 6). She proves her point well by reproducing the markings of the four plays she deems most read: The Tempest. A Midsummer Night*s Dream. Measure for Measure, and Antony and Cleopatra. In The Tempest we see marked the same kind of epithets and phrases that caught his fancy in the Faery Queen: "our sea-sorrow," "ebbing men" who "near the bottom run," Prospero*s "beating mind," Miranda*s "crying self," "cloud-capped towers," and "a most auspicious star." His main concern seems to be with the powerful but compact expression, the condensed use of language which he later calls "intensity," which quickly becomes a major element In his poetic craft. Finally, Miss Spurgeon discusses his "sensitive 36 appreciation of the elaborate and peculiarly beautiful stage directions” In The Tempest: he has underlined most of them, particularly those concerned with Ariel, In whom he appears to have an "Intense Interest." He has also under lined all of Prosperots epithets describing Ariel, and "Caliban also attracts him greatly--his nature, his curses, his language" (pp. 8-9). Proof of his close study of Caliban*s language, and his reasons for it, may be found in a letter to his brothers written seven months later, on January 23, 1818, in which he comments on Leigh Hunt*s criticism of Endymlon; He says the conversation is unnatural & too high-flown for the Brother & Sister. Says it should be simple forgetting do ye mind, that they are both overshadowed by a Supernatural Power, & of force could not speak like Franchesca in the Rimini. He must first prove that Caliban*s poetry is unnatural.— This with me com pletely overturns his Objections. (I, 213-211*.) Similarly, in A Midsummer Night* s Dream he is especially interested in the fairies and supernatural sights and sounds. From these two plays, which he was reading and marking during the writing of Endymlon. he evidently ob tained much of his lore of the supernatural, as will be apparent in the discussion of Endymlon. Later chapters, particularly that dealing with Hyperion, will show that he often looked to Shakespeare for such information. We can conjecture, therefore, that he began to study Shakespeare deliberately, as an aid in the writing of Endymlon. and that he planned to study A Midsummer Night1s Dream and The Tempest first because he knew they would be of the most help to him In his presentation of the super natural In Endymlon, We can also conjecture, though we cannot prove, that It was Benjamin Haydon who suggested that study to him, for his letter of May 10-11 and follow ing letters clearly Indicate that Haydon was at that time encouraging him to read Shakespeare, and later letters between the two, as we shall see, show Haydon*s almost religious veneration of Shakespeare--a veneration which he attempted to pass on to Seats. Whatever the reason for beginning the study, it had an immediate effect on Keats. We can follow his reactions closely in the letters he wrote to his brothers and friends during the week on the Isle of Wight and thereafter. Writing to Reynolds on April 17, two days after the letter to his brothers from Southampton, he describes a portentous occurrence during his settling In for his stay: Even since I wrote to my Brothers from Southampton I have been In a taking, and at this moment I am about to become settled, for I have unpacked my books, put them into a snug oorner— pinned up Haydon— Mary Queen of Scotts, and Milton with his daughters in a row. In the passage I found a head of Shakspeare which I had not seen before— It Is most likely the same that George spoke so well of; for I like It extremely— Well— this head I have hung over my Books, just above the three In a row, having first discarded a french Ambassador— Now this alone Is a good morning*s work. (I, 130) How Important that find was to the Impressionable young 38 poet la made clear a little over three weeks later, on May 10, when he writes to Haydon: Thank God! I do begin arduously where I leave off, notwithstanding oooasional depressions: and I hope for the support of a High Power while I clime this little eminence and especially in my Years of more momentous Labor. I remember your saying that you had notions of a good Genius presiding over you— I have of late had the same thought, for things which I do half at Random are afterwards confirmed by my judgment In a dozen features of Propriety— Is It too daring to Fancy Shakspeare this Preslder? When In the Isle of Wight I met with a Shakspeare In the Passage of the House at which I lodged— it comes nearer to my Idea of him than any I have seen--I was there but a Week yet the old Woman made me take it with me though I went off In a hurry— Do you not think this Is ominous of good? (I, II4 .I-II4 . 2) In three weeks of concentrated study, therefore, along with his composition of Endymlon. he had been so affected by Shakespeare that he took the Elizabethan as his "preslder," or guide and teacher In the study of poetry. His week on the Isle of Wight was profoundly affecting; he became so wrapped up in poetry— his own and Shakespeare13— that It, coupled with his loneliness, so worked upon him that he fled precipitately back to the mainland, continuing his work at Margate (Letters. I, 183). Though Miss Spurgeon believes Keats studied The Tempest and A Midsummer Might*s Dream most during this time, King Lear evidently had a more profound effect on him, for it was Lear especially that so wrought him up on the Isle of Wight. In the letter of April 17 to Reynolds, he says, "From want of regular rest, I have been rather 39 narvue--and the passage in Lear— *Do you not hear the Sea?* has haunted me Intensely. " ■ * ■ He follows that statement Immediately with the sonnet which that haunting Induced, the evocative "On the Sea.n His study of Shakespeare was evidently deep and rewarding, for he suggests to Reynolds In the same letter on the next day: 1*11 tell you what— On the 23rd was Shakespeare born— now If I should receive a Letter from you and another from my Brothers on that day *twould be a parlous good thing--Whenever you write say a Word or two on some Passage in Shakespeare that may have come rather new to you; which must be continually happening, notwith standing that we read the same Play forty times. (I, 133) He then quotes two passages of special interest to him (which will be discussed In a moment) and continues: I find that I cannot exist without poetry— without eternal poetry— half the day will not do— the whole of It— I began with a little, but habit has made me a Leviathan— I had beoome all In a Tremble from not having written anything of late— the Sonnet over leaf did me some good. (I, 133) The "Sonnet over leaf" Is, of course, "On the Sea," in spired by King Lear, and evidently written out of necessity before any work on Endymlon could proceed. That Lear was still haunting Keats in May when he took Shakespeare for his preslder Is shown by the fact that he describes his choice of professions and his task In allusions to and quotations from that play. He tells Haydon In the "preslder" letter: 1I, 132. Keats slightly misquotes Lear (IV.vl.l4 .): "Do you hear the sea?" 1 + 0 I am none that gathers Samphire dreadful trade" the Cliff of Poesy Towers above me--yet when, Tom who meets with some of Pope's Homer in Plutarch's Lives reads some of those to me they seem like Mice to mine, (I, 341) The "samphire" image is from Lear (IV.vi.15>)* * pert of the soene which evoked the sonnet "On the Sea," and Rollins (I, llj.1 n.) points out that the simile of the mice is probably from two lines later: "The fishermen. . ./ Appear like mice." And six months later Lear inspired another sonnet as Keats reread it. In a letter of January 23, 1818, to Bailey, he says: I sat down to read King Lear yesterday, and felt the greatness of the thing up to the writing of a Sonnet preparatory thereto— in my next you shall have it. (I, 212) Writing at the same time to his brothers (I, 21I 4 .-215), he describes the same compulsion and then copies out for them the forceful and climactic "On Sitting Down to Read King Lear Once Again," In which he bids adieu to "golden tongued romanoe" in order to "burn through" once more "the fierce dispute,/ Betwixt Hell torment^ St impassioned Clay," and he prays to Shakespeare to give him "new Phoenix-wlngs" from out that fire so that he may fulfill his own poetic ambitions— a clear statement of his feeling that through ^Thus in the letter in both Rollins and Milnes (p* 73)* The MS. version printed by H. B. Forman and followed by Briggs, Oarrod, and de Selinoourt has "damnation" for "Hell torment," among other slight varia tlons. See below, p. 67 and de Selinoourt, p. 542. his study of Shakespeare his own best talents In poetry will be released. We have seen how Important Shakespeare became to Keats at the very beginning of his serious study. How Important Shakespeare remained to him may be seen In the first type of Shakespearean usage in the letters— the general refer ence. In the "preslder" letter to Haydon (May 10, 1817), In which Shakespeare appears ten times, Keats tells Haydon that, though Endymlon is not going so well as expected, still, "I never quite despair and I read Shakspeare— indeed— I shall I think never read any other Book much"; he agrees with Hazlltt that "Shakspeare Is enough for us" (I, 1H-3). And he concludes the letter by sanctifying the name of his "preslder": "So now in the Name of Shakespeare Raphael and all our Saints I commend you to the care of heaven!" (I, ll+f?). So well did he study his newly-chosen preslder that he could tell the publisher John Taylor a few months later, on February 27, 1818, "I have great reason to be content, for thank God I can read and perhaps understand Shakspeare to his depths" (I, 239). That he did read Shakespeare widely is evident from the many quotations and allusions throughout the letters; that he understood him is dear from the critical and philosophical comments he began to make shortly and continued throughout the letters. Shakespeare, as we can tell from the general b2 references, never seemed far from his thoughts. Several of his letters, Rollins tells us, are sealed with a ring oarrylng a "Tassle*s head of Shakespeare";3 they are a letter to Haydon, September 28, 1817 (I, 167-168); one to Benjamin Bailey, November 3, 1817 (I, 178); another to Bailey, January 23, 1818 (I, 209); and one to John Taylor, August 31, 1819 (II, 153)* His family, too, used such a seal; in a letter to his sister Fanny, written December 20, l8l9, he speaks of a letter from his brother George to George*s mother-in-law, a letter "sealed with a Tassl*s Shakspeare such as I gave you" (II, 238). In March, 1818, Keats and Haydon beoame excited about a ring found at Stratford, with a "W-S" and a loveknot--surely Shakespeare*st Haydon announoes the discovery abruptly on March l+: My dear Keats/ I shall certainly go madj — In a field at Stratford upon Avon, In a field that belonged to Shakespeare; they have found a gold ring and seal with the initial thus— a true WS Lover*a Knot between: If this Is not Shakespeare who is it? — a true lovers KnotttI— I saw an impression to day, and am to have one as soon as possible— As sure as you breathe, & that he was the first of beings the Seal belonged to him— Oh Lord!— B.R. Haydon (I, 239-21+0) 3James Tassl (1735-1799) and his nephew William Taasl (1777-1860) made and sold paste imitations of antique gem engravings often used for letter seals. Among them were the picture of Leander which inspired Keats*a sonnet "On an Engraved Head of Leander," and the portrait of Shakespeare. See Hewlett, p. 93, and "James Tassl," Encyclopedia Brltannlca. 1959 ad., XXI, 830. U3 Keats's response Is less hysterical but still almost Idola trous; his delay of over two weeks in answering, however, may Indicate reservations about the validity of the find. On March 23, he replies: In sooth, I hope you are not too sanguine about that seal— In sooth I hope It Is not Brumidgeum— in double sooth I hope It Is his--and In trlpple sooth I hope I shall have an Impression. (I, 2I 4 . 8) And that idol-worshiping tendenoy to collect mementoes of Shakespeare continued. The picture he carried with him from the Isle of Wight, for example, is mentioned In two of the letters to George and Georgiana Keats, In which he thanks Georgians for some "silk tassels" she gave him to hang it with; they provide "as much pleasure as the face of the Poet itself" (II, 62) and serve as "a continual memento" of Georgiana (II, 2I 4 . 2) • The high regard in which he held Shakespeare is also apparent in the second category of Shakespearean reference in the letters: quotations or near-quotations used to convey or reinforce meaning. Some, as in the quotations cited above from the period before the Shakespearean spring, are used quite artificially, in an atteiqpt to parade his reading before his friends. Examples appear in the letter of May 10-11 to Haydon, as Keats looks forward to a more successful time than the present: "I am extremely glad that a time must come when every thing will leave not a wrack behind," in which he is quoting "leave not a wrack behind” from The Tempest (IV.1.156), a phrase which he marked In his copy of Shakespeare at about the same time (Spurgeon, p. 81); and he speaks of the Duke of Wellington In the same letter: nI wish he had a little more taste— and did not in that respect *deal in Lieutenantry*" (I, 11*4), a quotation from Antony and Cleopatra (III.xi.38-39). Neither is a compelling use of language, such as we get in later quotations, and neither has a context which adds to the meaning of Keats1s state ments. A similar use comes a month later, on June 10, 1817, when he asks his publishers Taylor and Hessey for a loan of thirty pounds: A Couple of Duns that I thought would be silent till the beginning, at least, of next Month (when I am certain to be on my lees for certain sure) have opened upon me with a cry most "untunable" never did you hear such un "gallant chiding.” (I, 11*7) And a moment later he speaks of the bills as "Pelican duns." The first two echoes are from Act IV, scene 1 of A Midsummer Night1s Dream, one an adaptation of "Such gallant chiding” (1.128) and the other of "A cry more tuneable" (1.119); the context of neither Is apropos, and the negative use of each is rather ostentatiously clever. His twist of Lear*s epithet, "Those pelican daughters I" (III.lv.77) does not fit well, either; the Image in Lear is appropriate because of the belief that pelicans fed on the flesh of their mothers (Craig, p. 1001 n.), but how does it fit duns? The references to these two plays at this time, however, reinforce our other evidence that they were of special interest to Keats in the spring of 1817* Other examples of witty uses of quotations, this time with more communicative value, are found in the letter which marks his new Interest in Shakespeare, as he adapts a phrase from The Tempest (I.i.70) to describe "long heath broom furze” and one from The Two Gentlemen of Verona (II.iii.22-23) to present a picture of a wood ”with trees look you like Launce*s Sister *as white as a Lily and as small as a Wand*” (I, 128). Such witty uses of Shakespeare are generally confined to the earlier letters of this period, though an example may be found as late as September, 1819 (II, 189), as he rambles on to his brother and sister-in-law about the prospects of having a niece and brings himself up short with the wryly humorous use of a line from Hamlet (II.ii.l88): "Still harping on my daughter.” Most of Keats*s uses of quotations after his first excited reactions to Shakespeare serve a much more precise and effective communicative purpose, either by the force of the immediate expression or by the power of the cluster of circumstances called up by the expression from the play in which it appears. A prosaic example of a quotation which, though apt, has little connotatlve force is the way he concludes a poetic epistle to Reynolds on March 25, l8l8: Of bad lines a Gentalne dose Is sure enough— and so "here follows prose." The letter ends with a short note In prose form. The quotation Is from Malvollo’s reading of the false letter In Twelfth Night (II.v.151*)— a scene which fits Keats*s light mood, as the literal meaning of the phrase also fits his purpose. A more serious use of a quotation to convey meaning comes on November 3, 1817, as he borrows without quotation marks a line from Hamlet*s most famous soliloquy (III.1.71)• Commiserating with his cleric friend Bailey on his failure to obtain ordination In the face of opposi tion from the Bishop of Lincoln, Keats inveighs against the Bishop’s "importinence" but says that, after all, "we must bear (and my Spleen is mad at the thought thereof) the Proud Mans Contumely" (I, 179). Here, recalling the passage from which the quotation is taken may enrich the meaning, but It is not vital to his thought; the words themselves convey precisely what he wants to say. Most of his later quotations are aptly enough chosen that the alert reader may enjoy recalling the context In Shakespeare and will find that context reinforcing and complementing Keats’s meaning, but such quotations do not depend upon allusiveness for their basic communication of meaning. Some of his quotations, however, along with many references to characters and scenes in Shakespeare, were obviously chosen for that very quality of allusiveness, often vital to the communication of his idea. Some, par ticularly in the late letters of 1820 to Fanny Brawne, seem to be used to hide from her (and perhaps from his own conscious mind) the total Import of his comment, as Chapter VI will show. Most such allusive uses, however, pay the reader the compliment of expecting him to know the plays referred to and therefore to understand and enjoy the subtle enrichment of meaning which the references give. A delightful sample of the humorous use of such a quotation is found in a letter to Reynolds on March l l j . , 1818, in which Keats describes an Incident at the theater: I went to the Theatre here the other night, which I forgot to tell George, and got Insulted, which I ought to remember to forget to tell any Body; for I did not fight, and as yet have had no redress— "lie thou there, sweetheartl" (I, 2ij.5-21j.6) Remembering the pugnacious boy of Enfield School (Hewlett, pp. 28-29) and the young man who fought and defeated a cruel bully who outweighed him considerably (Lowell, I, 257), we may wonder, as Keats seems to, at his pacifism here. His use of the slightly misquoted line from 2 Henry IV (II.iv.l97)» taken from the mouth of the ranting Ancient Pistol, who talks loudly but is an arrant coward, is Keatsfs sly comment on his former pugnacity compared with his present failure to gain "redress." He could be certain that Reynolds would recognize the quotation and understand the aliusion--without which the quotation is, of oourse, nonsense. Most such allusive quotations and references, however, appear later, after Keats has become more fully acquainted with Shakespeare; and most of them are much more serious, as the later uses in letters to Fanny Brawne (see Chapter VI) will indicate. An Impressive example of such a serious use, however, occurs at the very end of the period now under study, on his walking-tour with Brown, as he writes to Reynolds on July 11-13, 1818, detailing his reactions to the dreary Burns country and the thoughts that dreariness invokes: One song of Burns*s is of more worth to you than all I could think for a whole year in his native country--His misery is a dead weight upon the nimbleness of one*s quill— I tried to forget it— to drink Toddy without any Care— to write a merry Sonnet— it wont do--he talked with Bitches— he drank with Blackguards, he was miserable— We can see horribly clear in the works of such a man his whole life, as if we were God*s spies. (I, 325) How deeply he sees the tragedy of Burns*s life, and how much he resents the embarrassing and all-too-clear pictures we get of that life, is revealed by the context of his allusion from the final act of King Lear, as Lear and Cordelia, in defeat, are being led off to prison, and the old King says: 1 + 9 Come, let's away to prison: We two alone will sing like birds i* the cage: When thou dost ask me blessing, 1*11 kneel down And ask of thee forgiveness: so we'll live, And pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh At gilded butterflies, and hear poor rogues Talk of court news; and we*11 talk with them too. Who loses and who wins, who's in, who's out; And take upon *s the mystery of things, As if we were God's spies. (V.iii.Q-17) The thought of Burns singing like a bird "i» the oage'1 of his sordid environment, a strong distaste for the insin cerity of court life and gossip, and an awareness of the presuraptuousness of taking upon ourselves "the mystery of things"--all these may be implied by the rich allusion to "God's spies." Though the allusive uses of Shakespeare indicate a considerable growth in understanding over the early, some times pedantic, uses of quotations, the greatest growth is shown in the critical and philosophical comments Keats makes about Shakespeare, poetry, poets, and life itself. It is an interesting and important fact that almost all of his deep comments about his art and about life seem to have sprung from his study of Shakespeare. An obviously related fact is that almost all of those comments come in this first period of study. Here, again, however, there is growth: the first critical comments seem to be fumbling toward the concept of intensity, which is not clearly stated until after eight months of intensive study of Shakespeare, In December, 1817. In the same letter appears the vital statement of the poet*s Negative Capability, a complex concept for which five elements have been distin guished in this study. In February, 1818, comes the state ment of Keats*s poetic axioms, including the vital concept of movement of the imagery in poetry. A part of the dis cussion of intensity involves the theory of unconscious creation, and mixed with the statements on Intensity and Negative Capability are several comments on their relation ship to beauty and truth, and on the oneness of those two abstractions. All these major concepts come after months of study, all are related to Shakespeare, and all come within this first major period of Shakespearean influence. Only one important concept appears after this period: the statement on the Life of Allegory, which was made in February, 1819, and is illustrated both in the odes of 1819 and the letters of 1820. Since the concepts were not formulated until the revision of Endymion was completed (March, 1818), it is no surprise to find that Endymion does not illustrate them consistently or well. We must wait for the later poetry to reveal the results in practice of the theories Keats built from his study of Shakespeare. To avoid tedious repetition of quotations, the con cepts presented in this period will be discussed in a generally ohronological order as they appear in the 51 letters. Such an organisation allows us to see more closely the orderly development of the concepts and shows vividly their lnter-relatedness In the mind of Keats. We have seen how the very first letters he wrote after beginning his study of Shakespeare are filled with excited reactions to his discoveries. In his letter to Reynolds on April 17-18, 1817, after discussing the fact that passages In Shakespeare must strike us as continually new, no matter how many times we read them, he Illustrates his point: . . . for Instance, the following, from the Tempest, never struck me so forcibly as at present, "Urchins Shall, for that vast of Night that they may work. All exercise on thee--1 * ’ T ^ ^ How can I help bringing to your mind the Line— In the dark backward and abysm of time-- I find that I oannot exist without poetry. . . . (I, 133) Since the passages which here strike Keats so forcibly are both from the first act of The Tempest (1.11.326-328 and 1.11.50), we may conjecture that he had probably just begun his rereading of the play. Rollins (I, 133 n.) tells us that besides the underlining Indicated above, "vast" has a heavy second line and "Night" a lighter one. In Miss Spurgeon's reproduction of Keats's markings, both passages are underlined, and the first has, In addition, a side marking. Since It is a part of Prospero's threats to 52 Caliban, It may have been aide-marked by Keata aa a part of hla atudy of the aupernatural elementa of the play In preparation for the writing of Endymion. Both pa8aage8 may also have had a peraonal appeal to Keata at the moment, becauae he too had been feeling "urchins" working on him In the "vast of night" and with Lear and hla own Endymion waa exploring the "dark backward and abyam of time." The "urchins" were the vast Ideas and moiled reactions which his reading and his plans for Endymion stirred up In him, ao upsetting that he fled the scene only a week later (Letters, I, 138). Most Important, however, seems to be Keats*s concern with the Intensity of the lines (though he had not yet formulated the concept), for both passages are remarkable for their ability to focus strong reactions in a single word or phrase. The forceful monosyllable "vast,"^ with Its connotations of immeasurable space, when tied to "Night," gives us an intense reaction of horror at the urchins which may work upon Caliban during that Inter minable time of darkness, so that the connotations go far beyond the literal meaning of "long hours" (Craig, p. 1251^ n.). Similarly, In the second passage, Prospero's Image ^The use of adjectives as nouns here ("vast" and "backward") must also have Impressed Keats, for In Endymion (11^ 120) he speaks of "the hollow vast." See below, for Miranda's act of remembering seven years back to the time of terror she has almost forgotten presents In one phrase both the act of forgetting— the "abysm" or abyss— and the act of forcing the mind reluctantly backward through the darkness of the past. The connotations of "dark" and "abysm" also add a note of fearfulness to that whioh is to be remembered. Thus both expressions are packed with effective connotations far beyond their literal meaning; both are, therefore, examples of intensity. Intensity is found not only in the compression of much meaning into a word or phrase but also in a similar com paction of meaning and emotion into a whole passage or scene, so that it Invokes an intense emotional reaction in the reader. Keats shows us such a passage in the same letter to Reynolds as he describes a "passage in Lear" whioh "has haunted me intensely" (I, 132), so intensely that he was forced to stop and write the sonnet "On the Sea" to gain relief. The line which he quotes— or slightly misquotes— Is not Intense of itself; but it serves as a summary of that famous passage in which Edgar, faithful son of blinded Gloucester, conjures up the sea for his father. So evocative is the description which Edgar imagines for his father that the unhappy old man leaps from the supposed cliff and, in his "miraculous" salvation from harm, is actually released from his melancholia. The passage is 5k filled with aenauoua detail: Come on, sir; here's the plaoe: stand still. How fearful And dizzy 'tls, to oast one's eyes so lowt The orows and choughs that wing the midway air Show scarce so gross as beetles: half way down Hangs one that gathers samphire, dreadful tradel Methinks he seems no bigger than his head: The fishermen, that walk upon the beach, Appear like mice; and yond tall anchoring bark, Diminish'd to her cock; her cook, a buoy Almost too small for sight: the murmuring surge, That on the unnuraber'd Idle pebbles chafes, Cannot be heard so high. I'll look no more; Lest my brain turn, and the deficient sight Topple down headlong. (IV.vl.ll-2lj.) Such specific and vivid description of an imaginary soene by a character in a play Is a flight of fancy equalled by the similar one In Keats's own "Ode on a Grecian Urn," when the poet describes the "little town" which he Imagines the characters on the imaginary vase have left deserted. Sdgar's description of the sea almost certainly is the passage Keats had In mind when he cited the phrase "Do you hear the sea?" which oocurs In the play seven lines earlier. That he was profoundly impressed at this moment by the passage is shown In his letter to Haydon three weeks later In which he took Shakespeare for his "preslder" and described his poetic profession In quotations and refer ences from Edgar's vivid description. The effect of the passage Is also seen In the sonnet which he wrote to relieve the intense mood cast upon him by the passage: 55 It keeps eternal whisperings around Desolate shores, and with its mighty swell Gluts twice ten thousand Caverns, till the spell Of Hecate leaves them their old shadowy sound. Often 'tia in such gentle temper found That scarcely will the very smallest shell Be mov'd for days from whence it sometime fell, When last the winds of Heaven were unbound. 0 yel who have your eyeballs vex'd and tir'd, Feast them upon the wideness of the Sea; 0 yet whose Ears are dinn'd with uproar rude Or fed too much with cloying melody-- Sit ye near some old Cavern*s Mouth and brood Until ye start as if the Sea Nymphs quir*d. Shakespeare's picture is a specific one of a very specific seascape; Keats has managed to evoke the essential qual ities of the universal sea for us (cf. Lowell, I, 305; and Finney, I, 209), particularly in the first quatrain. Its effect comes partly from the use of assonance to link "keeps” with eternal and "eternal" with "Whisperings": partly from its repeated "t*s," in line 3 especially; and partly from the run-on lines, with their caesuras in the middle of lines 2 and 3 coming after £ sounds which effectively imitate the sighing of the sea, as the rhythm of the lines Imitates the swell and fall of the waves. Though the many vague terms of the last lines--such as "wideness of the sea" or "cloying melody"— irritate and weaken, one can point to specific terms also, which seem to owe something to Shakespeare's description. Murry (Keats and Shakespeare, p. 35) points out that the "strange use" of the very specific "eye-balls" is "probably a reminiscence of the torture of Gloucester," and that 56 Hecate also oomea from Lear: Lowell (I, 305) believes that the "shell" derives from the pebbles of Shakespeare1s scene. Certainly the line describing the "very smallest shell" which lies unmoved by the gentle sea Is an attempt to Intensify our conception of the "gentle temper" of the sea, and it may be compared to the "Idle pebbles" chafed by Edgar*s sea. The term "gluts," also, with Its harsh sound and effective connotation of the "mighty swell" of the sea as It overfills not a thousand but "twice ten thousand" caves, Is another attempt at Intensity. Finally, the word "whisperings," though it reminds us of the often condemned proclivity of the young Keats for such usually weak plural gerunds, is effectively chosen here to imitate the sound and to give a sense of the mysterious, Infinite message of the sea. Though the vague expressions of the last lines and the weak Image of the Sea Nymphs lessen the value of the sonnet, it seems to be a deliberate attempt to put into practice, however ineptly, some of the things Keats was just beginning to learn from Shakespeare, the most Impor tant of which, at the moment, is Intensity. Intensity has three aspects: intensity within the work Itself, a compacting and focusing of great meaning and rioh connotatlve force into an epithet, a phrase, or a passage; intensity of the reader*s reaction as he perceives the power, the beauty, and the truth of a passage; and 57 Intensity of the artist as he focuses all his powers on his art. The letter to Reynolds just discussed illustrates two of those: Keats wrote the sonnet "On the Sea” because of his intense reaction to a passage in Lear: and he was struck by the Intensity of epithets in the quotations from The Tempest and of the entire passage from Lear. In another letter to Reynolds, the longest and most excited critical commentary in the Letters. written seven months later (November 22, 1817), Keats discusses the third aspect, the intensity of the artist, and Illustrates the other two aspects very well: One of the three Books I have with me is Shakespear*s Poems: I neer found so many beauties in the sonnets— they seem to be so full of fine things said uninten- tionally--in the intensity of working out conceits — Is this to be borne? Hark ye I When lofty trees I see barren of leaves Which erst from heat did canopy the herd, And Summer*s green all girded up in sheaves, Borne on the bier with white and bristly beard. 03on. XIlJ He has left nothing to say about nothing or any thing: for look at Snails, you know what he says about Snails, you know where he talks about "cockled snails” CLove*s Labour*s Lost. IV.ill.338: "the tender horns of cockled snails"3--well, in one of these sonnets, he says— the chap slips Into— no I I lieI this is in the Venus and Adonis Cll.1033-1038# here slightly misquoted): the Simile brought it to my Mind. Audi— As the snail, whose tender horns being hit, Shrinks back into his shelly cave with pain And there all smothered up in shade doth sit, Long after fearing to put forth again: So at his bloody view her eyes are fled Into the deep dark Cabins of her head. 58 He overwhelms a genuine Lover of Poesy with all manner of abuse, talking about— a poets rage And stretched metre of an antique song [Son. XVIII Which by the by will be a capital Motto for ray Poem- wont it? (I, 188-189) One of the pleasures of reading the letters Is their delightfully colloquial quality; one can see here the excited young poet, thrilled at being on the track of a truth, stammering In his effort to show that truth. In that excitement and in the phrase "Is this to be borne?” he illustrates the intensity of the reader in the presence of great poetry. In his comment on the poet's ”fine things said unintentionally— in the Intensity of working out conceits,” he illustrates the poet's Intensity of effort to convey exactly the right effect to the reader. It is obvious that both those aspects of intensity are related to the third aspect, the intensity of the poem itself: it comes out of the poet's intensity of effort and causes the reader's intensity of reaction. Both passages quoted by Keats have the quality he talks about here, the complete ness that leaves us with "nothing to say about nothing or any thing" so intensely described. Bate (Stylistic Development, pp. l 4 . 7-^8) points out that the first descrip tion moves forward and backward in time, for the barrenness of the trees in autumn is made more striking by comparison 59 with their fullness when they could "canopy the herd," and the "Summer*s green" has moved forward to the autumn sheaves with "white and bristly beard." The lines abound also in specific detail, which adds to the intensity: the use of "canopy" suggests the full greenness of the tree*s spreading top in summer, a visual effect; the coolness of its shade, a physical effect; and the protective quality of the tree, an emotional effect. Similarly, the funeral metaphor of the last line not only describes accurately the physical sense of the harvest but also connotes the dying year most effectlvely--and that double duty of the image is a main element in intensity. The second passage has, as Keats indicates, left little to be said about snails. The four short lines describe the snail physically and convey its fear and pain most thoroughly. The image of the snail*s "tender horns" particularly appealed to Keats, as we can see from his memory of a similar usage in Love* s Labour* s Lost and from its use in a later letter discussing the same quality of intensity. It especially appeals here because the whole picture of the hurt creature is summed up in that particularly intense adjective "tender." The "snail-horn" image is used again in a later comment on the intensity of the creative act. In a letter on April 8, 1818, discussing Haydon*s huge Christ*s Entry into Jerusalem. Keats says: 60 Believe me Haydon your picture la a part of myself--I have ever been too sensible of the labyrinthlan path to eminence In Art (judging from Poetry) ever to think I understood the emphasis of Painting. The Innumerable compositions and decompositions which take place between the Intellect and Its thousand materials before it arrives at that trembling delicate and snail horn per ception of Beauty--I know not you Cyourl many havens of Intenseness— nor ever can know them— but for this I hope not [nought^ you you atchieve Is lost upon me: for when a Schoolboy the abstract Idea I had of an heroic painting— was what I cannot describe I saw It somewhat sideways large prominent round and colour*d with magnificence— somewhat like the feel I have of Anthony and Cleopatra. Or of Alciblades, leaning on his Crimson Couch in his Galley, his broad shoulders imperceptibly heaving with the Sea— What passage in Shakespeare is finer than this C3 Henry VI. V.1.173: "See how the surly Warwick mans the Wall." (I, 26^-265) Here the adjective "surly" appeals because It suras up both character and mood while giving a vivid physical picture. The verb "mans," too, adds to the intensity of the line. It is clear that Intensity Is what Keats Illustrates with the line, for the many "havens of intenseness" of the artist lead directly to his expression of "that trembling delicate and snall-horn perception of Beauty" which Is intensity. In the letter to Reynolds the image of the "snail-horn" was picked for its quality of intensity; now the "snail horn perception"--a concrete, physical thing, yet filled with emotional Impact— stands in Keats*s mind for that vital quality of all art. That quality lies, as we have seen, bpth in the artist and the audience: from the artist*s "havens of intenseness," after "innumerable 61 compositions and decompositions," comes finally that Intense "perception of Beauty” which Is conveyed to the reader, so that he too reacts Intensely to the physical precision and the emotional compression of the scene or line. Thus Keats, reaching for meaning, describes the artist*s intensity as being like his own as viewer: "like the feel I have of Anthony and Cleopatra.” That intensity of the artist leads to another Inter esting phenomenon. In the letter to Reynolds, Keats tells us that Shakespeare's sonnets are filled with "fine things said unintentionally— in the intensity of working out conceits"— and he Illustrates In both quotations another Important attribute of the poet which he found In Shakespeare and In his own experlence--the element of "unconscious creation." In his earliest poetry, containing his first comments on the craft, he has an almost mystic view of the poet's Inspiration. In "Sleep and Poetry," written in late 1816, he speaks of writing many a verse from so strange influence That we must ever wonder how, and whence It came. (11.69-71) And he describes the mysterious "car/ And steeds with streamy manes" (11.126-127 ff.) whose charioteer is the muse of poetry— and comes in a vision or trance. In the epistle "To My Brother George," written In August, 1816, he presents a similar source for poetry: 62 It has been said, dear George, and true I hold it, (For knightly Spenser to Libertas told it,) That when a Poet is in such a trance, In air he sees white coursers paw, and prance, Bestridden of gay knights, in gay apparel. . • . (11.23-27) The trance-like condition may be all right for Spenserian romance, but now that Keats is declaring himself a disciple of Shakespeare, trances must go. Shakespeare, Keats was learning, wrote from experience and with clear-eyed objectivity--and yet he did say "fine things uninten tionally” as Keats himself wrote ”half at random" (as he told Haydon in the "presider" letter). Keats believed, as we shall see in later letters, that in the intensity of concentration on his imagery, the poet often created more than he intended. In the two quotations in this letter, Shakespeare is intent in one on describing the passage of time, and in the other on presenting vividly Venus*s reaction to her lover's death. Yet in each he gives us more than he had planned: in one a complete picture of autumn, in the other a thorough description of the fearful snail. Keats is getting at the belief that if the poet wrote naturally, following his Imagination where intuition led, he could create great poetry. And this unintentional creation, as well as intensity in general, is a part of the larger concept of Negative Capability which Keats gained from Shakespeare. On the same day as the letter to Reynolds, with its 63 groping toward the idea of intensity, there is a letter to Bailey which contains a preliminary consideration of Negative Capability. Keats says first, In passing however I must say of one thing that has pressed upon me lately and encreased my Humility and capability of submission and that is this truth— Men of Genius are great as certain ethereal Chemicals operating on the Mass of neutral intellect--but they have not any individuality, any determined character. (I, 181^) The phrase "capability of submission" seems a fore shadowing of the term "Negative Capability," for the kind of submission Keats is talking about is a negation of the self, a submission to one*s surroundings. A few lines later he says that "if a Sparrow come before my Window I take part in its existince and pick about the Gravel" (I, 186)— and in these two comments to Bailey we have two of the five related ideas contained in the total concept of Negative Capability: (1) that the "Man of Genius" (for Keats, the poet) works as a catalyst in society but has no Individuality of his own, no egotistical desire to exert his own character, and (2) that therefore he can enter into and partake of the existence of any creature in any situation--even a sparrow pecking at gravel. The other three facets, which appear in other formulations, are (3) that because of his ability to enter into any being, the poet can accept any character (or person), good or bad, and portray hero or villain with equal zest; (4) that he can come to terms with any event in life, happy, annoying, or tragic, accepting it as a part of experience; and (5) that he can accept whatever truths, however good or bad, however deep or mysterious, are revealed to him through intuition and flights of imaginative intensity, without undue questionings or doubts. The relationship of these ideas to the concept of intensity is apparent: it is by intensity of imagination that the poet can enter into any character or situation and accept good and bad with equal artistic pleasure; and it is because intensity of imagina tion reveals beauty and truth in the object of contempla tion and in life itself that the poet can accept what he imagines and what he experiences without questioning. For in the same letter to Bailey, Keats says: I am certain of nothing but of the holiness of the Heart's affections and the truth of Imagination--What the imagination seizes as Beauty must be truth--whether it existed before or not--for I have the same Idea of all our Passions as of Love they are all in their sublime, creative of essential Beauty. . . . The Imagination may be compared to Adam's dream--he awoke and found it truth. I am the more zealous in this affair because I have never yet been able to perceive how any thing can be known for truth by consequitive reasoning--and yet it must be— Can it be that even the greatest Philosopher ever arrived at his goal without putting aside numerous objections— However it may be, 0 for a life of Sensations rather than of Thoughts I (I, 181*-185) The last— often quoted and often misunderstood— line is not, obviously, the rallying cry of a sensualist but rather the motto of an intuitive poet who knows that truth comes not through rational processes alone, but also— and especially, for one like Keats--through "what the Imagina tion seizes as Beauty." The philosopher, Keats will grant, may possibly gain truth through rational processes, but for Keats truth comes only through an imaginative perception of beauty (an act of intensity; note that it is what the Imagination seizes): and how else can beauty be perceived but through the senses, by sensations? Therefore the poet must have a "Life of Sensations"— the imaginative search for beauty in all thinga--rather than a life of "Thoughts" — the rationalistic attempt to find truth by "consequitive reasoning" without reference to the truth which may be Intuitively apprehended. The "numerous objections" which the philosopher must put aside are evidently the question ings of "half-truths" which the poet with Negative Capability does not have to make. And if "all our passions" are "creative of essential Beauty," which, in turn, "must be truth," then we see how he can accept good and bad in people and events with equanimity. It should be*noted, too, that the passions create beauty only "In their sublime"— that is, only when they exhibit intensity. Thus, though the Involved concept is not yet clearly formulated, all the elements are Implied, at least, in this early inchoate version. One month after those two letters to Reynolds and 66 Bailey which grope toward the concepts of intensity and Negative Capability, both concepts are named and discussed much more clearly in a letter to Keats's brothers. Writing on December 21, Keats says: I spent Friday evening with Wells tCharles Jeremiah Wells, schoolmate and friend until he perpetrated the cruel hoax of the nAmena Letters"J & went the next morning to see Death on the Pale horse. It is a wonderful picture, when West^s age isconsidered; But there is nothing to be Intense upon; no women one feels mad to kiss; no face swelling into reality, the excellence of every Art is its intensity, capable of making all disagreeables evaporate, from their being in close relationship with Beauty & Truth--Examine King Lear & you will find this examplified throughout; but in this picture we have unpleasantness without any momentous depth of speculation excited, in which to bury its repulsiveness. (I, 192) Intensity, vital to any art, is here related to truth: a "face swelling into reality": and beauty: "women one feels mad to kiss"--and it is related in concrete physical terms. It excites one to a "depth of speculation" which does away with ugliness, making "all disagreeables evaporate." Keats here goes further than in his previous statement; now intensity is vital to beauty and truth, and any truth presented intensely will show its essential beauty and thus cause an intense reaction in the viewer of a picture or reader of a poem which will allow him to accept the unpleasant with the pleasant. Thus we have another state ment on intensity, a foreshadowing of the idea of the oneness of beauty and truth, and a preliminary version of Negative Capability, which is discussed a few lines later 67 in the same letter. The intensity he is thinking of here is not one of artistic execution alone, but of mood and Imaginative experience for both artist and audience; the intensity of execution merely acts as the conveyer of that deeper intensity from one to the other. That truth is best stated by Keats two months later in his sonnet "On Sitting Down to Read King Lear Once Again": 0 golden-tongued Romance with serene lutet Pair-plumed Syrenl Queen of far awayl Leave melodizing on this wintry day, Shut up thine olden pages, and be mute: Adleul for once again the fierce dispute, Betwixt damnation and impassion*d clay Must I burn through; once more humbly assay The bitter-sweet of this Shakespearian fruit. Chief PoetI and ye clouds of Albion, Begetters of our deep eternal theme, When through the old oak forest I am gone, Let me not wander in a barren dream, But when I am consumed in the fire, Give me new Phoenix wings to fly at ray desire. The intensity in Lear is a "fierce dispute" which Keats must "burn through"— the reader*s reaction to intense poetry; and when he begins to write again, he must be "consumed in the fire"— the poet*s Intense creative mood— if he is to rise like the Phoenix into the realms of great poetry which is his "desire." Of special interest here is the fact that it was to King Lear that Keats turned in his critique of West*s picture for an illustration of intensity and its ability to make ugliness evaporate; and it is King Lear here which evokes so intense a reaction from him. 68 Keats saw West's picture and had the thoughts about Intensity on December 20; on December 2i± or 26 (Rollins, I, 193 n.) he saw a Christmas pantomime with Brown and Dllke, after which, as he explains In a continuation of the letter to his brothers, Brown & Dllke walked with me & back from the Christmas pantomime. I had not a dispute but a disquisition with Dllke, on various subjects; and several things dove tailed In my mind, & at once It struck me, what quality went to form a Man of Achievement especially In Literature & which Shakespeare posessed so enormously— I mean Negative Capability, that Is when man is capable of being In uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact & reason— Coleridge, for instance, would let go by a fine Isolated verisimilitude caught from the Penetrallum of mystery, from being Incapable of remaining content with half knowledge. This pursued through Volumes would perhaps take us no further than this, that with a great poet the sense of Beauty overcomes every other consideration, or rather obliterates all consideration. (I, 193-19l j . ) This Negative Capability, which "Shakespeare posessed so enormously," was to be a preoccupation with Keats for the rest of his life— and It Is an Idea obtained in the midst of his study of Shakespeare and evidently from his study of Shakespeare, for references to Shakespeare or his plays occur In every statement of the concept or Its related elements. Here the emphasis Is on the fifth facet of the concept, the ability of the poet to accept the "uncer tainties, Mysteries, doubts" which a contenqjlatlon of life will naturally bring to him, without reaching out for factual knowledge. Often the poet, in "the intensity of working out conceits" (see above, p. 57) will come across a truth and express It beautifully and almost uninten tionally; It Is "caught” by an act of Intensity from "the Penetrallum of mystery” and may be lost If the poet Is, like Coleridge, "Incapable of remaining content with half knowledge." The "fine Isolated verisimilitude" which comes to the poet Is often only half-seen, but If It Is captured In poetry, then the "sense of Beauty" will "overcome every other consideration" and we can remain "content with half knowledge." That the close relationship of Intensity and Negative Capability Is a vital part of Keats*s thought Is clear from the fact that in this one letter both are discussed in the same terms: both are concerned with Beauty and Truth, and therefore one is "capable of making all disagreeables evaporate" while the "sense of Beauty" In the other "obliterates all consideration." Keats has not yet completely worked out his ideas, but his total meaning becomes clear in two other statements In the letters. At this time it is enough to see that Negative Capability and Intensity are related, and that both came from the study of Shakespeare, who Illustrates both so well. That relationship of Negative Capability to intensity is clarified further a year later, on October 27, 1818, In a letter to Richard Woodhouse; though it appears in the period after the one now under study, Its Ideas are 70 restatements of the Ideas well thought out In this Shakespearean year. Though Keats does not use the term "Negative Capability" here, he describes it exactly: As to the poetical Character Itself (I mean that sort of which, If I am anything, I am a Member; that sort distin guished from the Wordsworthian or egotistical sublime; which is a thing per se and stands alone) it is not itself— it has no self— it is every thing and nothing— It has no character— it enjoys light and shade; it lives in gusto, be it foul or fair, high or low, rich or poor, mean or elevated--It has as much delight in conceiving an Iago as an Imogen. What shocks the virtuous philos opher delights the camelion Poet. It does no harm from its relish of the dark side of things any more than from its taste for the bright one; because they both end in speculation. A Poet is the most unpoetical of any thing in existence; because he has no Identity— he is con tinually in for--and filling some other Body— The Sun, the Moon, the Sea and Men and Women who are creatures of impulse are poetical and have about them an un changeable attribute— the poet has none; no identity— he is certainly the most unpoetical of all God*s Creatures. (I, 386-387) Here we see a reappearance of four of the five facets of the concept: (1) "A Poet is the most unpoetical of any thing in existence; because he has no Identity"; (2) "he is continually in for--and filling some other Body"; (3) "It has as much delight in conceiving an Iago as an Imogen"— that Is, the poetical character In the Intensity of creation can accept with artistic pleasure any person or character, good or bad; and (L | . ) "it lives in gusto, be It foul or fair, high or low, rich or poor, mean or elevated"--that is, the poet not only creates with intensity but experiences with intensity, or "gusto," and thus can accept whatever that experience brings to him. Implied in all four, of course, is the last part of the concept, that (5) the poet accepts whatever is revealed to him by the intensive working of the intuitive imagination, and is satisfied with "half knowledge”— with Speculation” or thought rather than a fruitless search for certainty. If we recall now the statement that intensity makes "all disagreeables evaporate, from their being in close rela tionship with Beauty & Truth" and the parallel statement that, for the poet with Negative Capability, "the sense of Beauty overcomes every other consideration," we begin to understand how the poet can have this Acceptance (to use Murry*s term) of good and bad and mysterious, without questioning: if he creates beauty in revealing truth, then all other considerations vanish, and no questions are needed in the face of beauty. The comment about Wordsworth's egotism is not acci dental, for Keats in the period when he was formulating his poetic faith from his study of Shakespeare was also reacting against Wordsworth and Coleridge because they seemed to him to be the opposite kind of poet from Shakespeare. In the middle of that period, on February 3, 1818, Keata rejected his contemporaries precisely because they were egotistical Instead of having the self- annihllating quality of Negative Capability: It may be said that we ought to read our Contemporaries. that Wordsworth &c should have their due from us. but for 72 the sake of a few fine imaginative or domestic passages, are we to be bullied into a oertaln philosophy engendered in the whims of an Egotist--Every man has his specula tions, but every man does not brood and peaoook over them till he makes a false coinage and deceives himself— Many a man can travel to the very bourne of Heaven CHamlet.111.1.793. and yet want confidence to put down his halfseeing. (I, 223-22lj.) Wordsworth and his followers insist upon a full system; they may occasionally have a real insight, but Instead of lacking the confidence to put down their "halfseeing," they put it down and add to it until they have made a false system. Many men may occasionally have such in sights, but lacking confidence in intuition, they do not write poetry. Only the true poet, like Shakespeare (and Keats himself), can both "travel to the very bourne of Heaven" and have the Negative Capability to put down the incomplete vision. The Wordsworthlans not only put down a "false coinage" but attempt to force it upon the reader, and that egotistical didacticism particularly annoys Keats because it seems so far from the truths of nature as Shakespeare presents them: We hate poetry that has a palpable design upon us— and if we do not agree, seems to put its hand in its breeches pocket. Poetry should be great & unobtrusive, a thihg which enters into one*s soul, and does not startle it or amaze it with itself but with its subject.— How beautiful are the retired flowers! how would they lose their beauty were they to throng into the highway crying out, "admire me I am a violet! dote upon me I am a primrose! (I, 2210 One can almost hear his additional thought as he 73 contenqslates Wordsworth*8 egotism: "Honor me; I am a poetl" Here he la not only averse to the didaotloism hut also irritated by what now seems to him to be a great sin in poetry: the too-obvious design. It is the obtrusive- ness of Wordsworth*s teaching that irritates Keats most. He continues his discussion: Modern poets differ from the Elizabethans in this. Each of the moderns like an Elector of Hanover governs his petty state, & knows how many straws are swept dally from the Causeways in all his dominions & has a con tinual Itching that all the Housewives should have their coppers well scoured: the antlents were Emperors of vast Provinces, they had only heard of the remote ones and scarcely cared to visit them.— I will cut all this— I will have no more of Wordsworth or Hunt in particular. (I, 221*) The contrast here is many-fold. The "moderns'* are con cerned with petty commonplaces--the sweeping of straws and the soourlng of kettles, in Keats*s simile; the "antlents" had the world-view and were magnificent rulers of universal themes. Keats*s contemporaries are didactic: they have a "continual itching" to make certain that their readers do and think as the poets order; the Elizabethans, with "vast Provinces" of thought and poetic grandeur, had no time for such pettiness. And finally, Keats*s contemporaries Insist upon a system, a rational limitation of thought: they know the straws and causeways and kettles in their small states; Shakespeare*s clan with their vast domains had "only heard of the remote ones and scarcely cared to visit them"— that is, they had Negative Capability and could rule without 7k obtrusive questionings of the truths they commanded by Intuitive genius. All these contrasts seem Implied In Keats's devastating simile. But his remarks get even sharper: Why should we be of the tribe of Manasseh, when we can wander with Esau? why should we klok against the Pricks, when we can walk on Roses? Why should we be owls, when we can be Eagles? Why be teased with "nloe-Eyed wagtails" [Hunt's Foliage, p. xxxiiij, when we have In sight "the Cherub Contemplation" t"Ii Penseroso," 1.514-1? --Why with Wordsworths "Matthew with a bough of wilding in his hand" C"The Two April Mornings," 1.591 when we can have Jacques "under an oak lAs You Like It. II.1. 311— The secret of the Bough of Wilding will run through your head faster than I can write it— Old Matthew spoke to him some years ago on some nothing, & because he happens in an Evening Walk to Imagine the figure of the old man— he must stamp It down In black 3 c white, and It is henceforth sacred— I don't mean to deny Wordsworth's grandeur & Hunt's merit, but I mean to say we need not be teazed with grandeur 8 c merit— when we can have them uncontaminated & unobtrusive. Let us have the old Poets, 8 c robin Hood. . . . (I, 2214.-225) Hunt and Wordswoi-th have some "grandeur 3 c merit," but they are didactic owls Instead of soaring eagles; they Insist on the worth and glory of every personal thought and exper ience until they destroy the force of their real merit. Keats has had enough of such egotism; he longs for the "uncontaminated 3 c unobtrusive" grandeur of Shakespeare and Milton. So strong is his feeling about the point that it becomes one of his "poetic axioms" three weeks later. Those axioms appear in a letter to Keats's publisher, John Taylor, written February 27, 1818, in which Keats discusses corrections for Endymlon and then says: 75 In Poetry I have a few Axioms and you will see how far I am from their Centre. 1st I think Poetry should surprise by a fine excess and not by Singularity--it should strike the Reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts, and appear almost a Remembrance— 2nd Its touches of Beauty should never be halfway therby making the reader breath less Instead of content: the rise, the progress, the setting of Imagery should like the Sun come natural natural too hira--shine over him and set soberly although in magnificence leaving him in the Luxury of twilight— but it is easier to think what Poetry should be than to write it--and this leads me on to another axiom. That if Poetry comes not as naturally as the Leaves to a tree it had better not come at all. However it may be with me I cannot help looking into new countries with "0 for a Muse of fire to ascend." (I, 238-239) The obvious links of this passage with the preceding one on the shortcomings of Keats*s contemporaries need only brief discussion here. The first axiom requires that poetry have no "singularity" and no "palpable design" or artificiality; its surprises are to come by a "fine excess"— that is, by a careful and precise use of intensity. It must have universality, coming naturally to the reader and seeming like his own highest thoughts expressed better than he could possibly say them; it must, as Keats had said three weeks earlier, startle not "with itself but its subject." And not only must the poetry seem natural to the reader, but it must also come naturally to the poet, without any "irrithble reaching out"; the receptive poet, with Negative Capability, must take what is given him. The second axiom, concerned with the progress of imagery, expresses a fact that Keats had learned from his close study of Shakespeare: that imagery must not startle by its suddenness, but must be developed slowly and naturally to Its climax, and the reader must not be dropped there but led back, somehow, to reality— but a reality tinged with "the Luxury of twilight," when a lingering memory of magnlflcenoe softens that reality a bit. Thus the first axiom seems to refer to Intensity, and the third to Negative Capability; but the second contains a separate element which can be Illus trated out of the plays which Keats was reading. That all the axioms are related to Shakespeare Is evident from their relationship to previous formulations, from the quotation from Henry V (Prol. 1) which follows them, and from Keats's acknowledgement at the end of the passage: "I have great reason to be content, for thank God I can read and perhaps understand Shakespeare to his depths. ..." (I, 239). Keats tells us here that "it Is easier to think what Poetry should be than to write It," and he illustrates that fact in his own Inability to apply his second axiom effectively before the writing of "The Eve of St. Agnes," "La Belle Dame sans Mercl," and the odes In 1819* Since the axiom is so important to those poems, however, It must be Illustrated in some detail here, using three plays which we know he had studied well by this time. The last act of Hamlet, for example, exhibits two such complete movements of the Imagery. The first Is concerned with Imagery of death and the grave; it opens quietly with the cynical 77 humor of the gravedlggera and builds suspense slowly as Hamlet enters and engages In a macabre discussion with one of the craftsmen. The audience, aware of Ophelia*s death and expecting her funeral, is struck by the double-edged Irony of Hamlet*s comment to the skull: Now get you to my lady* s chamber, and tell her, let her paint an Inch thick, to this favour she must come; make her laugh at that. (V.1.213-216) To that "favour" Ophelia does come, seventeen lines later, and the Intensity In the scene rises through Laertes* first quietly bitter question, "Must there no more be done?" and the priest*s reply that such "maimed rites" are more than Ophelia deserves. Laertes* grief is symbolized by the physical Imagery of his leap into the grave, and the climax oomes at that point, when Hamlet, realizing who has died, advances and leaps also Into the grave. The struggle In the grave Is symbolio of the duel which leads to the death of both, and it is painful in its physical Intensity. From that point the passion drops to the end of the scene, as Claudius speaks to Gertrude of "an hour of quiet" before the next "proceeding." The second scene also opens quietly, as Hamlet talks with Horatio; they are Interrupted by the fop Osrlc, and once more suspense is Intensified by a delay In the aotion. We know the fatal duel is imminent, but we must pause while Shakespeare paints a picture of the foppish courtier— a picture which Intensifies the tragedy of Hamlet, who must die while the Osrlcs of the court survive. The slowly developing duel seene Is a master piece of "the rise, the progress, the setting of Imagery," with Its slow movement building In intensity with eaoh hit Hamlet makes, through the Queen*s sacrificial drink, to Hamlet's mortal wound and the frenzy of Impassioned action it precipitates. After the King's death, the action is over, but the imagery and the emotion it elicits remain through Hamlet's death and Horatio's stirring farewell. And then comes the "setting of imagery," which does Indeed leave us in "the Luxury of twilight" as Hamlet's body is borne majestically away to lie in state on the battle ments. That rhythmic movement of the imagery is also seen in Macbeth. In the great murder sequence of Act II, for example, the action opens with Fleance and Banquo walking in the courtyard and talking quietly; Banquo is apprehen sive, fearing the "cursed thoughts" that sleep may bring. His apprehension is given symbolic form in his grasping of his sword at the entrance of Macbeth. Macbeth's veiled hints, in their conversation together, foreshadow the deed to come. Then Macbeth is alone on the stage; the vision of a bloody dagger points the way to his damnation, though he struggles against it. The scene gains in intensity as Lady Macbeth enters and waits nervously for her husband. 79 His return in a state of shook, with the deed half done, builds the suspense even further; the blood which covers his hands rapidly assumes the status of a symbol with Lady Maobeth*s words as she returns from smearing the Innocent grooms with blood: My hands are of your colour; but I shame To wear a heart so white. (II.il.61j.-6£>) The two stand for a moment confronting each other, the visible symbol of the guilt which will haunt them covering their hands and making mockery of Lady Macbeth*s next words: A little water clears us of this deed: How easy is it, then! (II.ii.67-68) The unbearable tension is broken by the knock on the gate, and the bawdy humor of the drunken porter begins a new movement of imagery, for the next scene starts slowly again and builds through Macduff*s cry of "0 horror, horror, horror!t t (II.iii.69) to Macbeth*s inept attempt to explain the murder of the grooms. The scene has reached its height; the tension is broken just in time by Lady Macbeth*s "faint," and the intensity of mood falls off as the frightened princes whisper together. The same movement of imagery is evident in the comedies, particularly Twelfth Night, in which the magic scenes of high romance are interspersed with the earthy comedy of Sir Toby and Malvolio, and in which we are left 80 not in the fairy land of Illyria with Viola*a exquisite poetry ringing in our ears, but rather in the harah, everyday world of reality to which the down*a ironic song has returned us: A great while ago the world begun, With hey, ho, the wind and the rain, But that*a all one, our play la done, And we*11 strive to please you every day. Keats follows the movement of imagery of Twelfth Night very closely in "The Eve of St. Agnes," and all the great odes exhibit a similar movement, but since Keata*s poetic practice lagged behind his poetic theory, we find only irregular illustrations of the axioms in the poetry before 1819. We have seen in the letters of Keats the record of a student poet learning from his master. In his first letters of this Shakespearean period, he showed an excited Interest in Shakespeare, particularly in A Midsummer Night*s Dream. The Tempest, and King Lear. He was partic ularly interested in the fairy lore of the two comedies. His early uses of Shakespeare in the letters were drawn mostly from the comedies and indicated at first merely a desire to show off his new learning— which appeared mainly as a knowledge of lines, not a deep understanding of Shakespeare. But as he studied, the uses of Shakespeare in the letters changed, showing a much more mature and deeper understanding of the plays and their poetic 81 technique. Finally, the orltloal and philosophical state ments show a great growth Indeed from the student poet who "unbox*d a Shakspeare" In April of 1817. By the summer of 1818, when this period ends, he had learned his art from his "preslder," though he had not yet been able to put all he had learned Into practice. What he was able to put Into practlce--and how far he was as yet from being what he was becoming— will be seen In the following survey of the Influences of Shakespeare on Endymlon and the shorter poems of this period. Since Keats began writing Endymlon about April 2 1 4 ., 1817 (Letters. I, 139), finished the first draft on November 28, 1817 (Finney, I, 23I 4 .), and sent his publishers the last revised copy on March 21, 1818 (Letters. I, 253), we would expect that poem to reflect his new interest In Shakespeare. Despite Miss Lowell, however, who says that Keats was a "handy borrower" (I, 314-8), he was no profligate plagiarist: In Endymlon there are only twenty-eight possible echoes noticed even by such avid searchers as Miss Lowell and Finney. Of those twenty-eight, five will not meet the oriterla established In this study, leaving twenty-three probable echoes--twenty-three In I 4.050 lines. In the 2160 lines Keats had written before that April, twenty-six possible echoes have been pointed out, as we have seen. Yet, as we read Endymlon. we are struck by Its change In tone: there Is much of Shakespeare struggling to get through the oloylng Spenserlanlsms and cockneylsms here. De Sellncourt provides one clue to the Shakespearean tone In his list of possible sources for Keats's vocab ulary: only ten of the Shakespearean terms there are found In poems before Endymlon. but Endymlon alone has seventy-threeKeats was not copying lines, but he was becoming Infused with Shakespeare, and his vocabulary was being Influenced by his study. And that new vocabulary, In turn, Influenced the tone of his work. But there are other elements which contribute to that tone; the first Is the motto, "The stretched metre of an antique song," from Sonnet XVII, which came to him, as we have seen (above, p. 58), almost by chance as he discussed the "beauties In the sonnets" with Reynolds on November 22, 1817 (Letters. I, 189). Other obvious echoes are refer ences to Shakespearean characters; Keats speaks of "the close of Trollua and Cressld sweet," (11.13), of "Juliet leanlng/Amld her window flowers" (11.27-28), and of "The sliver flow/Of Hero's tears, the swoon of Imogen" (II. c ^De Sellncourt (pp. 611-626) lists single words not In the common word-stock, words which Keats must have picked up from his reading. Such borrowing of vocabulary, since It Is a continuous and unconscious process, Is not counted among the "echoes." 83 30-31), Though do Sellncourt (pp. i|.29-^30) uses his care ful study of Keats*s vocabulary to show that the reference In 11.13 Is probably to Shakespeare*s play rather than to Chaucer*s poem of the Trojan lovers, and Oarrod (p. 83 n.) Is certain that all these references are to Shakespeare, they do not necessarily show any deep kinship as yet with Shakespeare or any wide reading of the plays, for all were undoubtedly part of the stock of references floating about In the literary society which surrounded the Hunts. Shakespeare may also be the source for similar refer ences to mythological characters In Endymlon. In Book II (I4 .I—I 4 J 4 .), Keats describes Apollo wandering In exile; de Sellncourt (pp. lj.20-21) points to Ovid and Spenser as probable sources but says that the story Is "referred to by Shakespeare" In The Winter*a Tale (IV.lv.30). And "Niobe, all tears," Is similarly mentioned In Hamlet (I.II.II4 . 9); in Endymlon (I.337-3U3) Keats desoribes her grief at the loss of her children. De Sellncourt (p. lj.23) cites Hamlet as the probable source but reminds us that Keats also knew the story In Spenser and Ovid. De Sellncourt similarly lists Spenser as a possible source for the "Venus and Adonis" story In Endymlon (II.I4 .OO ff.), though he thinks It was "probably suggested partly by Shakespeare*s Venus and Adonis" (p. lj-32). Finally, In Book III (97-99), Keats refers to Leander, Orpheus, and Pluto, all of whom may have come from The Winter*a Tale. It Is probable that he came across all these references In Shakespeare, but again, they show very little depth of Influence. Though five of the "echoes" found by source-hunters seem very doubtful--such as Finney*s suggestion (I, 282) that Macbeth* s Blrnura Wood Is the source of the "moving vintage" of Bacchus* crew In Endymlon (IV.200), though the movement of greenery Is the only possible connection--there are numerous real echoes. Two of them are Indebted to Hamlet; Endymlon*s spirit Is seen to "melt away and thaw" (1.501) In a clear echo of Hamlet*s wish that his body "would melt,/Thaw and resolve Itself Into a dew" (1.11.129- 130), and "the very bourne of heaven" In Endymlon (1.295) Is clearly from Hamlet*s "bourne of Heaven" (III.1.78-80). In Endymlon (1.261), Keats speaks of "every wind that nods the mountain pine," which, like the similar line in "Sleep and Poetry," Lowell (I, U4 . 7-II4 . 8) asorlbes to Cymbellne (IV. 11.i7l|-175) or The Merchant of Venice (IV. 1.75-77). Another possible echo Is seen by de Sellncourt In Endymlon*s words (IV.Ill) to the Indian Maid; "Thou art my executioner," which probably came from As You Like It (III.v.8); "I would not be thy executioner," since the image is the same In each. De Sellncourt (p. 514- 2) also compares Glaucus*s "I sue not for my ruddy drops of life" 85 (III.51+6) with Jullua Caesar. "The ruddy drops/That visit my sad heart” (11.1.289-290), and Keats*s phrase "my herald thought" (1.59) with "my herald thoughts" In Two Gentlemen of Verona (III.1.1M) and with Romeo and Juliet*a "love*s heralds should be thoughts" (II.v.lj.). Though these are all probable reminiscences, they are all surface echoes, showing only a knowledge of lines. Of a different sort are various reworkings of phrases, images, and passages In Shakespeare whloh show both a deeper reading of the plays and a deliberate attempt by Keats to put Into his own poetry what he was learning from Shakespeare. There are eight such borrowings, all from The Tempest or A Midsummer Wight*s Dream, both of which we know he was marking and studying during the writing of Endymlon. De Sellncourt compares the description of Endymlon, "Whose eyelids curtain*d up their jewels dim" (1.39^) with The Tempest (I. ll.lj.08), "The fringed curtains of thine eyes advance," and with a passage In Pericles; Her eyelids, cases to those heavenly jewels Which Pericles hath lost, Begin to part their fringes of bright gold. (III.11.99-100) De Sellncourt believes the two passages "combined in Keats*s mind" (p. I 4 . 2I 4 .), one giving him the Image of the curtains, and the other the Image of jewels. Both also have the image of fringes, which appears again in Endymlon (II.563-5&IJ.): "Those same full fringed lids a constant 86 blind/ Over his sullen eyes." The line in The Tempest was underlined by Keats (Spurgeon, p. 72). Miss Lowell presents a similar adaptation In Endymlon (I.ij.31-^3^) t where Peona(s arbor and favorite pastime are described: Where nested was an arbour, overwove By many a summer*s silent fingering; To whose cool bosom she was used to bring Her playmates, with their needle broidery, And minstrel memories of times gone by. She compares this passage with one which Keats had under lined and sldemarked in A Midsummer Night*s Dream (Spurgeon, p. 97): We, Hermia, like two artificial gods, Have with our needles created both one flower, Both on one sampler, sitting on one cushion, Both warbling of one song, both in one key. (III.ii.203-206) Miss Lowell could not have known about the marking of this passage, since Keats*s volumes of Shakespeare had not been discovered when she wrote; she adds evidence, however, by pointing out that Keats*8 friend Severn had painted a picture of this scene, had titled it Helena and Hermia. and had used the quotation as a superscription. The picture was on exhibition at the Royal Academy, where Keats may well have seen it. De Sellncourt also compares Endymlon. 11.277: "A mad-pursuing of the fog-born elf,1 * with A Midsummer Night* s Dream (II.i.39), which speaks of Puck*s proclivity to "Mislead nlght-wanderers, laughing at their harm." The parallel is not very close here; one might better point to the treatment of the deluded drunkards by Ariel in The Tempest (see Spurgeon, pp. 58-59). Ariel leaves his victims "I* the filthy-mantled pool" (IV.1.182); in Endymlon. the elf* s pursuers are led "into the bosom of a hated thing" (11.280). The line from Dream has a side- marking, while the passage in The Tempest is underlined. Also underlined in The Tempest is a description of Caliban as "hag-born" (I.ii.283), from which Keats may have ob tained the more delicate "fog-born." It seems probable that he had both Ariel and Puck in mind when he wrote his lines and was using Shakespeare as a source for the habits of such creatures. Two passages show the impact of Prospero and his magic on Keats. The first is a clear borrowing of one of Prospero*s most famous speeches: We are such stuff As dreams are made on, and our little life Is rounded with a sleep. (IV.i.156-158) In Book I of Endymlon. written early in the period of study of Shakespeare, when we might expect such bald borrowings, Endymlon speaks of The Morphean fount Of that fine element that visions, dreams, And fitful whims of sleep are made of . . • (I.7U7-7U9) The debt is more certain because in Ke<*ts*s edition, 88 unlike the Folio reading shown above and usually given In modern versions, Prospero*a words are "dreams are made of" Instead of "dreams are made on" (see Spurgeon, p. 55). In Book III, however, Keats shows more clearly how he Is learning details of magic and fairy lore from Shakespeare. Finney (I, 258) thinks that Glaucus*s maglo book probably came from Prospero*s similar volume. The matter Is made more certain, though Finney does not point It out, by the fact that the same passage In Endymlon (III.670 ff.) mentions also a "slender wand" like Prospero*s staff, and a most Prospero-like robe. All three must have come out of Keats*s reading of The Tempest. Most commentators have noticed the connection between the "ocean floor" passages in Richard III and In Endymlon. Shakespeare describes the bottom of the sea thus: What dreadful noise of waters in mine ears! What ugly sights of death within my eyes! Methought I saw a thousand fearful wrecks; Ten thousand men that fishes gnaw*d upon; Wedges of gold, great anchors, heaps of pearl, Inestimable stones, unvalued jewels, All scatter*d in the bottom of the sea: Some lay in dead men*s skulls; and, In those holes Where eyes did once Inhabit, there were crept, As 'twere In scorn of eyes, reflecting gems, Which woo*d the slimy bottom of the deep, And mock*d the dead bones that lay scatter*d by. (I.iv.22-33) Keats*s longer passage places Endymlon on a different sort of ocean floor: 89 Far had he roam'd, With nothing save the hollow vast, that foam'd Above, around, and at his feet; save things More dead than Morpheus' Imaginings; Old rusted anchors, helmets, breast-plates large Of gone sea-warrlors; brazen beaks and targe; Rudders that for a hundred years had lost The sway of human hand; gold vase emboss'd With long-forgotten story, and wherein No reveller had ever dlpp'd a chin But those of Saturn's vintage; mouldering scrolls, Writ In the tongue of heaven, by those souls Who first were on the earth; and sculptures rude In ponderous stone, developing the mood Of Ancient Nox;— then skeletons of man, Of beast, behemoth, and leviathan. And elephant, and eagle, and huge jaw Of nameless monster. A cold leaden awe These secrets struck Into him; and unless Dlan had chaced away that heaviness, He might have died. . . . (111.119-139) Though both Colvin (Keats, p. 103) and de Sellncourt (p. 14-37) think Keats's passage Is based on and compares favorably with Shakespeare's, Miss Lowell believes that Shakespeare's Is "Infinitely superior” because It Is direct and unadorned, with "no fine figures of speech, no metaphors, no Interpolated allusions" to weaken It as Keats's passage Is weakened: Now take Keats. Inversions, extraneous details, ancient gods called In to help out short lines or lend a circumstance to tag a rhyme. Unnatural archaisms such as the ponderous stones of Nox, or behemoth and leviathan, which come directly from Milton and should have been left there, or at least reserved for some more appropriate occasion. Cheap expressions, again In the cause of rhyme, as In the revellers who had never "dlpp'd a chin." Preposterous suggestions, as that of elephants and eagles at the bottom of the sea. We might be gazing at the wreck of Noah's ark. The mind Is led away from the scene In almost every line by some Impertinent Interpolation. (I, 39k) 90 Being an Imaglat poet, Miss Lowell nay be excused for being out of sympathy with Keats here: his purpose Is not the compressed intensity of expression that he achieved In his odes and that Shakespeare achieves In his ooean-floor passage. His purpose, he tells Bailey (Letters. I, 170) Is to "make ij.000 Lines of one bare circumstance," and In so doing to provide for "Lovers of Poetry" what he calls "a little Region to wander In where they may pick and choose" from among Images "so numerous that many are for gotten and found new In a second Reading." That Is not Imaglst poetry, and probably not the best poetry, but It was at the moment his idea of poetry. And the very Images Miss Lowell condemns have a real purpose. Shakespeare Is not concerned to give any particular feeling of antiquity to his scene: some of the oorpses are fresh enough still for the fish to nibble on. But Keats Is foreshadowing the whole purpose of Endymlon*a visit to the ocean floor here. Endymlon himself la a child of the misty, mythological dawn-era, and Glaucus has been on the ocean floor 1000 years when Endymlon meets him. The statues of ancient armor and scrolls and drinking cups are therefore exactly right In setting the scene: these wrecks, unlike Shakespeare*s, are deliberately ancient— the fleets of "gone sea warriors" whose antiquity aptly prepares us for the aged Glaucus. Even the elephant and eagle are not out 91 of place: they and the "nameless monster" come not from the facetiously suggested Noah's ark but from a flood like the one In the Noah story, a flood which suddenly over whelmed the primeval land long before the ancient fleets were sunk. Such floods are, after all, a part of the folk lore and mythology of every people; Keats's Images here evoke those old legends. The Image of "leviathan" Is probably not from Milton, as Miss Lowell suggests, but from A Midsummer Night's Dream (II.1.17ijJ, as the use of "vast" as a highly connotatlve noun In line 121 came from The Tempest (1.11.127), where, as we have seen, it particularly appealed to Keats. A similar use of Shakespeare as an example of how to paint a particular picture Is seen In Glaucus*s evocative description of a shipwreck: On a day Sitting upon a rock above the spray, I saw grow up from the horizon's brink A gallant vessel: soon she seem'd to sink Away from me again, as though her course Had been resum'd In spite of hindering force— So vanish'd: and not long, before arose Dark clouds, and mutterings of winds morose. Old Aeolus would stifle his mad spleen, But could not: therefore all the billows green Toss'd up the silver spume against the clouds. The tempest came: I saw that vessel's shrouds In perilous bustle; while upon the deck Stood trembling creatures. I beheld the wreck; The final gulphlng; the poor struggling souls: I heard their cries amid loud thunder-rolls. (III. 61*5-660) Since Keats had just read The Tempest. It seems very likely 92 that the vivid shipwreck (1.1) and Miranda*s description of it are In his mind. Miranda says: 0, I have suffer*d With those that I saw suffer: a brave vessel, Who had, no doubt, some noble creature In her, Dash*d all to pieces. 0, the cry did knook Against my very heart. Poor souls, they perish*d. (I.il.5-9) Keats has not used Shakespeare*s language (except for "the tempest" and "poor souls"), but much of the Imagery Is the same. In the lively shipwreck scene In The Tempest, there is the same bustling about the "shrouds," the same "trem bling creatures" struggle on the deck, and their cries affect Miranda In the same way Glaucus is affected. The Image of the "final gulphlng" may also have come from The Tempest (1.1.62-6U), where Gonzalo says that the captain will live to hang though "every drop of water" may "gape at widest to glut him." "Gallant vessel," too, obviously owes something to "brave vessel" In Miranda*s lines. Here Keats seems to be using Shakespeare as a source-book for the technique of presenting briefly and powerfully in poetry the excitement and tragedy of a shipwreck. A glance at the parallel passages In Miss Spurgeon*s study (pp. 56- 65) will show other examples of possible similar debts, but none are so clear-cut as this one. Miss Spurgeon points out that Keats underlined in his Shakespeare the lines "0, the cry did knock / Against my very heart" in Miranda*s speech; it is, she says, the "intensity of feeling conveyed by this vivid physical image" which impressed him (p. 17)* His markings through out The Tempest, as we have seen, show an interest In intensity, particularly the intensity of epithet which Valter Bate discusses so well. Though Bate (Stylistic Development. pp. 50, 90, 95) believes that there is little indication that Keats was able to put intensity into practice in Endymlon. a careful study of the poem indicates an effort, at least, in that direction. In Book I, the phrase "unfooted plains" (1.77) seems to be an attempt to describe the wilderness in physical, human terms: it is not only deserted now but has never been crossed by human feet. In Book II, "the glutted Cyclops" (1.27) focuses in one gruesome epithet all the evil appetites of Polyphemus. In Book III, "the gulphing whale" (1.205) strongly presents the size, appetite, and range of the sea beast in an epithet whioh here does triple duty. In Book IV, Endymlon in a dream kisses "with dazzled lips" the "starlight hand" of Hebe (1.lj.19)--and in the epithet "dazzled" we see not only synesthesia but an intensely appropriate adjective reflecting the "starlight" as well as the dazzled mind of Endymlon. Though there are not many such examples in Endymlon. these few indicate the beginning of Keats's effort to get into his own poetry that element of intensity whioh he so appreciated in Shakespeare. 9 1 4 - That it was a deliberate effort, but that it was not widespread in Endymlon. is evident from the fact that the only revision noted by Garrod (p. 97) which moves toward greater intensity does so particularly by replacing a weak "E-adjective" with an intense past-participle; Keats originally described Venus weeping over her dead Adonis In these lines: • • .when our love-sick queen did weep Over this paly corse, the crystal shower Heal'd up the wound. . . (II.l4 . 8l-l4 . 83) The revision changes line I 4.82 to read: "Over his waned corse, the tremulous shower," both changes of which in tensify the line. "Tremulous" gives a physical picture while showing the grief and fear of Venus; but more effective is "waned," which not only retains the visual effect of "paly" but also shows the death as having taken place in the past, and yet prepares us for the return to life of the youth, since "waning" is not a complete ex tinguishing of a light. Further, it is exactly appropriate as a foreshadowing of the kind of "waxing and waning" of life which will be Adonis's fate from that time on. It is probably the happiest choice of adjectives in Endymlon. and its use here indicates how much Keats was learning from Shakespeare about intensity; the fact that it is the only such saiqple in the entire poem of such an intensification In the revision, however, illustrates how difficult Keats 95 found it, as he admitted In listing his axioms for Taylor (I, 238), to put Into practice what he had learned. In Endymlon the "fine excess" of the first axiom too often appears merely as excess, so that we get lost both In the convolutions of plot and in the luxuriant Imagery; but that is the kind of poetry which seems to have come "naturally" to Keats--as his third axiom requlres--ln his early apprenticeship to Shakespeare. His comment to Bailey (Letters. I, 170) that poetry should provide images numerous enough for the reader to pick and choose among them was evidently his motto during the writing of Endymlon. in which there Is little of the selectivity that the first axiom implies. Yet there are attempts, as we have seen, to provide intensity, and though there are such excesses as the "slippery blisses" of Cynthia*s lips (II. 758)» there are also more forceful lines: A thing of beauty Is a Joy for ever: Its loveliness increases; It will never Pass Into nothingness. . • . (1.1-3) Cynthia may often speak of love In such startling phrases as "Let us entwine hoverlngly" (11.817); yet she can also use more precise poetic Imagery: Sweet love, I was as vague as solitary dove, Nor knew that nests were built. (II.8OI4 .-8O6) But Endymlon. written to "make 1|.000 Lines of one bare circumstance" (Letters. I, 170), does not often illustrate the first axiom well. The second axiom, concerning the movement of imagery, is illustrated more often. The plot Itself, with its slow opening as the troubled Endymlon tells his sorrows to his sister before embarking on his startling adventures under ground, beneath the sea, and in the upper air, illustrates "the rise" and "the progress" of the imagery; and Endymlon*s rejection of his immortal love and his super natural adventures (IV.615 ff.) provides a momentary "setting of imagery." Each book opens with a poetic comment not directly connected with the plot: Book I, with the famous passage on Beauty; Book II, with a discussion of the "sovereign power of love"; Book III, with a comment on earthly vanities and the glory of the moon; and Book IV, with an evocation of the Muse of Poetry. After those Introductory asides, the story is advanced slowly in each book to heights of emotion or adventure (or both) and then to an abrupt conclusion of the episode. Book I, after Endymlon*s emotional confession to Peona, has only these lines to provide a "setting of imagery": This said, he rose, faint-smiling like a star Through autumn mists, and took Peona*s hand: They stept into the boat, and launch*d from land. (1.990-992) Book II, after the flights of imagery describing the awakening of Adonis and the lament of Alpheus for Arethusa, ends with Endymlon suddenly discovering "the giant sea 97 abovo his head." Book III ends similarly, with Endymion abruptly transported from the sea floor to a "placid lake," the scene of which provides calm after the emotional reunion of the lovers under the sea. Book IV, after Endymion*s rejeotlon of his dream and his discovery that Cynthia is to be his after all, ends with only a brief line and a half to provide a new "setting of Imagery": Endymion kissfes his sister, kneels to his goddess, and She gave her fair hands to him, and behold, Before three swiftest kisses he had told, They vanish*d far away! Peona went Horae through the gloomy woods in wonderment. Again it all happens too quickly to provide the kind of relaxation from emotional tension which Keats's second axiom calls for, and whloh is seen most effectively in his odes of 1819. Among the shorter poems written during the Endymion period, the only important Shakespearean influence is found in the sonnets, but there are a few debts in the short lyrics. In "Weloome Joy, and Welcome Sorrow," written in January, l8l8, Finney (I, 353) finds three echoes of Shakespeare. The reference to "Cleopatra regal- dre88*d" (1. 16), like that to "Cleopatra*s winding-sheet" in "The Castle-Builder" (1. 50), written the same month, is probably, as Finney believes (I, 353), from Shakespeare*s Antony and Cleopatra, though it may come from any number 98 of other sources. The phrase "Lethe*s weed" (1.2) may come from Hamlet (I.v.32-33), and the common phrase "fair and foul" (1.7) may possibly be from Macbeth (1.1.11), since we know Keats was steeped In Shakespeare when he wrote the lines— but the echoes tell us little about the depth of his reading. Of more Interest Is Finney* s belief that the light lyric "0 Blush Not So," also written in January, l8l8, Is a pastiche of Shakespearean reminiscences. The blushes In the first stanza come, Finney thinks (I, 357-358), from the "gay and cynical badinage" between Cresslda and Pandar In Trollus and Cresslda. He quotes Pandar*s line to Trollus: "You must be witty now. She does so blush" (III.11.32), and his line to Cresslda: "What, blushing still?" (III.11.108); more telling, however. Is the line, "How now, how now! how go maidenheads?" (IV.11,23). Cresslda Is very like the girl Keats addresses, and the total effect In Shakespeare Is similar to that In Keats*s lines: 0 blush not so! 0 blush not sot Or I shall think you knowing; And If you smile the blushing while, Then maidenheads are going. Here the parallels seem close, and we have seen In Endymion that Keats can work out his own Imagery from a few such suggestions in Shakespeare. But Finney also thinks that the sighing in the third stanza comes from a song In Much 99 Ado About Nothing (II.iii.6U.-76) , the carpe diem theme of the fourth stanza from the song "What Is Love?" in Twelfth Night ( 11.111.1*0-53) * and the line "We have not one sweet tooth out" (1.16) from All*a Well That Ends Well (II.ill. 1*5): "1*11 like a maid the better, whilst I have a tooth in my head." But sighing and the passage of time and teeth are common not only to muoh poetry but to life Itself; surely no poet need look to Shakespeare for such ideas. A much more important and more certain reminiscence is found in the fragment "Oh, I am Frighten*d with Most Hateful Thoughts," written the following month: Oh, I am frighten*d with most hateful thoughts! Perhaps her voice is not a nightingale*s, Perhaps her teeth are not the fairest pearl; Her eye-lashes may be, for aught I know, Not longer than the May-fly*s small fan-horns; There may not be one dimple on her hand; And freckles many: ah! a careless nurse, In haste to teach the little thing to walk, May have crumpt up a pair of Dlan*s legs, And warpt the ivory of a Juno's neck. Finney (I, 370) believes that this "lover*s depreciation of the beauty of his mistress" came from a reading of Shakespeare's Sonnet CXXX: My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun; Coral is far more red than her lips* red: If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun; If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head. I have seen roses damask'd, red and white, But no such roses see I in her cheeks; And in some perfumes is there more delight Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks. I love to hear her speak, yet well I know 100 That music hath a far more pleasing sound; I grant I never saw a goddess go; My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground: And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare As any she belled with false compare. Shakespeare is certain his love is no paragon; Keats Is not convinced but hedges with "perhaps." Shakespeare's "goddess" has become Diana and Juno in Keats's poem. Both poems mention the voice, but that is the only specific detail which Is the same. More important than the fact that Keats must have picked up his Idea from Shakespeare Is the fact that he Is also copying Shakespeare's tech nique: though he Is guilty of an occasional vague phrase like "fairest pearl," he can be very specific in providing a particular visual Image drawn from nature, as In "the May-fly's small fan-horns"--an image reminiscent of the "snail horns" that so intrigued him. The Image here is more exact and specific than any one Image In Shakespeare's sonnet. There are also certain formal debts to Shakespeare. The first three lines In each poem are completely end- stopped; Shakespeare's parallelism of "If snow be white..." and "If hairs be wires. . ." is similar to Keats's "Perhaps her voice. . ." and "Perhaps her teeth. . ."; and the rhythm of Keats's "Her eye-lashes may be, for aught I know" seems to follow Shakespeare's similar line "I love to hear her speak, yet well I know." Keats's lines are 101 blank verse, much like that of Shakespeare's earlier plays; Its rhythms are very similar to those of his rhymed sonnets. All these similarities point to a definite Influence of Shakespeare's sonnets on Keats when he wrote this poem In February, 1818. The matter Is made more certain by what we see happening to Keats's sonnets at this time. After the sonnet "On the Sea," written In April, 1817, as a direct result of reading King Lear, he wrote no sonnets at all for six months. We know from his letter to Reynolds on November 22, 1817, after finishing the first draft of Endymion. that he was rereading Shakespeare's sonnets, for he says In that letter that he "neer found so many beauties in the sonnets" (Letters. I, 188). De Selincourt believes that this was Keats's "first serious study of Shakespeare's poems"— a conclusion for which, as we have seen, there Is considerable evidence--and that the study "completely destroyed his allegiance to the Italian sonnet" (pp. 5^3“ 5M0. On January 16, 1818, he wrote the Petrarchan "Sonnet to a Cat," which is, as de Selincourt points out (p. 5M|-), a parody of Milton and hence naturally in the Petrarchan form used by Milton. His next sonnet, written January 22, 1818, was "On Sitting Down to Read King Lear Once Again," which Is, as we have seen, highly Shakespearean in tone and Intensity; though Petrarchan In 102 its general form, It has the Shakespearean flow of three quatrains and a concluding couplet. It Is also a plea to the nChlef Poet" to Inspire him to write the new sort of poetry he had found In his "preslder," and It marks a turning point In his sonnet-writing, for though all of his previous sonnets were Petrarchan In form, only four after this date follow that form, while sixteen are Shakespearean and three are experimental. The first Shakespearean sonnet is "When I Have Fears," written between January 22 and January 31, 1818, imme diately after "On Sitting Down to Read King Lear Once Again." Not only Is it Shakespearean In form, but its theme of the "mutability of life" is, Finney points out (I, 355), a typical Elizabethan subject; Finney picks Shakespeare1s Sonnet LXIV, which expresses the same general idea, as the model— if Keats needed a specific model. A few days later, on February i;, 1818, Keats composed another Shakespearean sonnet, "To a Lady Seen for a Few Moments at Vauxhall," which de Selineourt calls "the most Shakespearean sonnet that Keats ever wrote, the weakness In the twelfth line being its only flaw" (p. 5M 0 • The same weakness appears in "When I Have Fears": beginning the final thought In the middle of the twelfth line, Instead of confining it to the concluding couplet. Bate (pp. 119-120) tells us that Shakespeare maintained the 103 Integrity of the couplet "almost exclusively," but he does not point out that In three sonnets (XXXV, CLIII, and CLIV) Shakespeare violates It, and In CLIV he has exaotly the same sort of caesura In the twelfth line followed by the run-on couplet as Keats uses. Keats thus has some preoedent for the flaws In his first two Shakespearean sonnets. After that first Shakespearean sonnet, he wrote only four Petrarchan sonnets. The first was "To the Nile," written on the same day as the Shakespearean "To a Lady Seen for a Few Moments at Vauxhall." Since It was, as de Selincourt points out (p. 5W+), written as part of a competition with Shelley and Hunt (Letters. I, 227-228), It Is naturally In the more approved Petrarchan form. The last three were written on his walking tour with Brown, in July, l8l8: "To Ailsa Rock," "On Visiting the Tomb of Burns," and "On Hearing the Bagpipe and Seeing *The Stranger* Played at Inverary." After those three, all his sonnets are Shakespearean or (as Chapter V will discuss) experimental sonnets reflecting dissatisfaction with the sonnet form— a dissatisfaction which led to the creation of his ode stanza. Even the three Petrarchan sonnets written on the walking-tour are influenced by the Shakespearean form, and the two other sonnets written on the tour, "Written in the Cottage Where Burns Was Born" 1 0 1 * . and "Written on the Top of Ben Nevis," are Shakespearean. "To Ailsa Rook" and "On Hearing the Bagpipe" both use a device which Bate (Stylistic Development, p. 121) says is typically Shakespearean, that of "almost invariably" beginning "with an end consciously in view" (p. 120), so that the last two lines reflect the first two in some way, or the last one reflects the first one. As an example of the first type, Bate cites Shakespeare's Sonnet XIX: Devouring time, blunt thou the lion's paws, And make the earth devour her own sweet brood; • ♦ e • Yet, do thy worst, old Time: despite thy wrong, My love shall in my verse live ever young. As an example of the second, he cites sonnet L, among others: How heavy do I Journey on my way, • e • • My grief lies onward and my joy behind. Keats's sonnet "To Alisa Rock" has a similar technique: Hearken, thou craggy ocean-pyramidl s e e # Another cannot wake thy giant sizeI The lines between discuss the fact that the rock was beneath the water until an earthquake caused it to thrust its huge peak above the surface— but that cataclysm did not waken its dead bulk, nor can another. The last line therefore reflects both the deadness of the "craggy" bulk and the fact that it therefore will never "hearken" to the poet. Closer to Shakespeare's technique is the ironic 105 bagpipe sonnet: Of late two dainties were before me plac'd, • • * • Mum chance art thou with both oblig'd to part. Here, after describing the "pleasure" of hearing the bag pipe and seeing the play, Keats says he cannot choose between them, but It doesn't really matter, he tells his heart, for It must part with both. Thus both sonnets, though only slightly, reflect In their form the reading of Shakespeare. The third Petrarchan sonnet of the period, "On Visiting the Tomb of Burns," also has a strong Shake spearean overtone, as both de Selincourt (p. 5lj.6) and Finney (II, U.12) have pointed out. De Selincourt quotes, with Italics, three lines from Hamlet's soliloquy: Thus conscience doth make cowards of us all. And thus the native hue of resolution Is slcklled o'er with the pale cast of thought. TUI. 1.83-85) He points out that Keats seems "haunted by the reflections of Hamlet" In the sestet of his sonnet: For who has mind to relish, Mlnos-wlse, The Real of Beauty, free from that dead hue Sickly Imagination and sick pride Cast wan upon It? Burns! with honour due I oft have honour'd thee. Great shadow, hide Thy face; I sin against thy native skies. The echoes of words as well as the strong echoes of mood make this a very probable reminiscence of Hamlet's soliloquy, and show that the Influence of Shakespeare was 106 strong, even during the walking-tour when Keats reverted for a moment to the Petrarchan sonnet form. Between the Petrarchan sonnet "To the Nile," written February 5, 1818, and the three Petrarchan sonnets written In Scotland In July, Keats wrote one experimental sonnet ("What the Thrush Said") and six In the Shakespearean form: "To Spenser" (February 5), "BlueI 'Tls the Life of Heaven" (February 8), "The Human Seasons," In two versions (March), the "Sonnet to A.G.S." (Spring, 1818), the sonnet "To Rice" (April 20), and the sonnet "To Homer" (April 27). The first, "To Spenser," contains the Image of Phoebus: To rise, like Phoebus, with a golden quell, Fire-wlng'd and make a morning In his Mirth. The rare noun "quell," both Finney (I, 3614.) and de Selincourt (p. 619) agree, came from Maobeth (I.vii.72), and the Image, Finney thinks, comes from Trollus and Cresslda: I have (as when the Sunne doth light a-scorne) Burled this sigh, In wrinkle of a smile. (1.1.37-38) Line 37 appears thus In the Folio, but Rowe corrected it to read "the Sunne doth light a storm"--which Is the reading generally given today, and which appeared in Keats's seven-volume edition. In his Folio. Keats made the following note: I have not read this copy much and yet have had time to find many faults— however 'tls certain that the Commentators have contrived to twist many beautiful 107 passages Into common places as they have done with respect to "a scorn" which they have hocus-pocus'd into "a storm" thereby destroying the depth of the simile— taking away all the surrounding Atmosphere of Imagery and leaving a bare and unapt picture. Now however beautiful a comparison may be for a bare aptness— Shakspeare is seldom guilty of one— he oould not be content to the "sun lighting a storm," but he gives us Apollo in the act of drawing back his head and forcing a smile upon the world— "the Sun doth light a-soorn." (Spurgeon, p. Uj.9n.) To Keats, the Folio reading evidently seemed rich in intensity since it caused him to picture the sun lighting up the dark world in a physical gesture indicating his scorn of darkness; the word "scorn" brings immediately to his mind the "act of drawing back his head and forcing a smile upon the world." But he reads too much into the word; without his act of supplying a place for Apollo to light or darkness for him to light up, the sentence as Keats reads it is incomplete and makes little sense as a simile. With the addition which he unconsciously supplies, however, the simile is indeed rich in "surround ing Atmosphere of Imagery," giving us a sharp picture of the sun-god, scornful of darkness— and hence, of sadness— and lighting up the world despite its reluctance, in the same way Trollus forces back with a reluctant smile the sorrow he feels. So Keats, in his poem, pictures Phoebus rising "with a golden quell" to "make a morning in his Mirth" and thus destroy both the dreary physical landscape of winter in England and the dark mood which keeps Keats 108 from writing like Spenser. In both cases, Keats Is con cerned with the kind of Intensity he saw In his study of Shakespeare in 1817, when Shakespeare seemed to be "full of fine things said unlntentionally— ln the Intensity of working out a conceit." Here he sees in the "original" Shakespeare--and tries to put into his own poem--a "surrounding Atmosphere of Imagery" which adds to the richness of the passage. The other Shakespearean sonnets written In this spring are lesser poems, but all demonstrate a close understanding of Shakespeare's techniques, as a result of his close study of Shakespeare's sonnets. Bate,In The Stylistic Develop ment of Keats, shows us Just how close that study was, for though few of the Shakespearean sonnets contain the kind of eoho that Finney likes to point out, all owe a debt to Shakespeare In form. Bate points out two probable debts even in the early Petrarchan sonnets, which, In contrast to the later ones, "make abundant use of the feminine ending" (p. 16). The lines of the sonnets In the 1817 volume contain 8.1; per cent feminine endings, which Milton had used less than half as often (3.8 per cent), Hunt and Wordsworth only a little more, and the Eighteenth Century sonneteers negligibly. Shakespeare's sonnets, however, have a total of 7.1* per cent feminine endings; Bate concludes that it is Shakespeare's lead Keats is following 109 here. But since the couplets of the 1817 volume contain 2 1 ) . per cent feminine endings (Bate, p. 77), he may be merely following a natural Inclination. The other possible Influence Is In Repetition or parallelism of phrase and line," which Is "almost totally absent" In his contempo raries' sonnets and all others since the Elizabethans. In the early sonnets, however, the repetition Is very simple, as In "Womanl When I Behold Thee Flippant, Vain," written In May, 1816: E'en then, elate, my spirit leaps, and prances; fe*en itien my soul with exultation dances. • . . A glanoe at Shakespeare's sonnets will show how widespread (and hence easy to pick up on a first study) that technique Is. Sonnet LXIV, for example, has three parallel lines, the first line of each quatrain: When I have seen by Time's fell hand defaced • e ♦ • When I have seen the hungry ocean gain • • • • When I have seen such interchange of state. . . . Thus some Influence of Shakespeare Is apparent even In the Petrarchan sonnets before January, 1818, when Keats switched to the Shakespearean form. But, as Bate shows, the Influence Is far more per vasive In the sixteen Shakespearean sonnets after that turning point. Not only do many have, as we have seen, the kind of Intensity Keats found In Shakespeare and not only are they In the Shakespearean form, but they exhibit 110 more subtle Influences as well. Bate points out that Shakespeare maintained "almost exclusively" a strict quatrain division, each being dosed by a full stop (p. 119). Nine of the sixteen Shakespearean sonnets of Keats, or 53 P®r cent, have that strict division, and the percentage would have been higher except for his occasional praotloe of running the third quatrain into the concluding oouplet, as in "On a Lady Seen for a Few Moments at Vauxhall"—*a praotice which, as we have seen, also had some Shakespearean precedents. Bate also points to the technique in "To Alisa Rook" of letting the last line or lines of a poem reflect the first, a device oommon in Shakespeare, And Bate analyzes very carefully more subtle devices of Shakespeare*a which Keats oopled, such as various kinds of repetition of words or sounds to balanoe lines, as in Shakespeare's Sonnet VIII: "Music to hear, why hear1st thou music sadly?" and in Keats's "What the Thrush Said": "At thought of idleness cannot be idle." Bate points to several similar devices which Keats found in Shakespeare and used in his own sonnets. Though his thorough analysis is too long to discuss here, it does show clearly that the later sonnets of Keats, even those in the Petrarchan form, owe a great deal of their stylistic beauty and effectiveness to the study of Shakespeare. In the poetry of this period of greatest study of Ill Shakespeare, therefore, the most Important reflection of that study lies In the shift from the Petrarchan sonnet to the Shakespearean form. Though many "echoes'* have been noticed In the other poetry, Including Endymion. the actual borrowing of words and phrases Is much less than the "souroe-hunters" try to make out. The Influence of Shakespeare Is a much deeper and more subtle thing. It appears especially In Keats*s use of Shakespearean passages as guides for his own creation of similar scenes and moods, as In the "shipwreok" passages of The Tempest and Endymion or the lines "Oh, I am Frighten*d with Most Hateful Thoughts," which are his version of Sonnet CXXX. It appears also In his use of Shakespeare as a source for much of his Information about maglo, fairies, and mythology. But It appears especially, In both Endymion and the sonnets, In his attempt to apply the vital element of Intensity to his lines. That attempt becomes eminently successful In later poems, particularly the odes of 1819, where the other Important critical understandings he gained from Shakespeare, the management of Imagery, the concept of Negative Capability, and the oneness of Truth and Beauty, are also most thoroughly demonstrated. Between the period of Endymion and the period of the odes, however, lies the period of Hyperion, which Is the subject of Chapter IV. 112 CHAPTER IV: THE PERIOD OP HYPERION (AUGUST, 1818, TO APRIL, 1819) After the reference to Shakespeare In the letter of July 13, 1818, came a period of three months in which Keats, though he wrote at least fifteen letters, did not refer to or quote Shakespeare at all, so far as we know. In the period now under study, from August, 1818, when Hyperion was begun, to May, 1819, the month of the great odes, Keats wrote forty*two letters, only four of which mention Shakespeare. Beoause of those faots, and because Hyperlob, written during this period, is obviously patterned after Milton's Paradise Lost. Murry (Keats and Shakespeare, pp. 70*71; 166*167) is led to the conclusion that Keats had temporarily rejected Shakespeare for Milton. But the facts are misleading: there Is much more of Shakespeare In Hyperion than may have been realized; "The Eve of St. Agnes," which owes much to Shakespeare, was written In the midst of the revision of Hyperion: and "La Belle Dame sans Merci," which puts Into practice muoh of what Keats had learned from his study of his "preslder," oame Immediately thereafter. Furthermore, though Shakespeare Is mentioned In only four letters, those letters cover almost the entire period (one of them being 113 the long Journal-letter to George and Georglana Keate, written between February and April, 1819), and they con tain twenty-six references to or echoes of Shakespeare, including all four of the types distinguished in Chapter III. And those types continue the trends distinguished in that chapter. In the first place, the seventeen references to or quotations from the plays reveal that the trend away from the lighter comedies and toward the more serious character studies and tragedies continued. The Tempest appears only once, as do Much Ado About Nothing. Measure for Measure. 40(1 2 Henry IV: and there are three references (all in Ootober) to Trollus and Cresslda. which was to become of special importance to Keats beoause of its thorough and bitter study of a wanton. The others are all tragedies: King Lear appears three times, Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet twice, and Othello. Maobeth. and Julius Caesar once each. The Tempest, though it has Caliban and Ariel, has also the deeper philosophical comments of Prospero; Muoh Ado About Hothlng. though it oontalns the delightful sparring of Beatrioe and Benedict, also has a serious study of jealousy; 2 Henry IV Includes with the foolery of Falstaff the pathos of his rejection by Henry. Measure for Measure and Trollus and Cresslda. though they may be classed as comedies, are bitter explorations of character. Thus Keats Ill* seems almost entirely concerned here with the more serious and more poetlo plays of Shakespeare; he has moved beyond his Interest In fairies and light comedy. The quotations are used in the same ways we saw In the first period of Shakespeare1s Influence, except that there seem to be only two merely pedantic uses; most of the quo tations serve a forceful communicative purpose. The pedantlo quotations are late ones, both In the long joumal-letter to his brother and sister-ln-law. On April 15, 1819« be oomplalns about the lack of news with the sentenoe, "I wish I could hear from you to make me 'whole and general as the casing air*" (Letters. II, 82), In which he misquotes Maobeth's statement that If Fleance had not escaped, Macbeth would be Whole as the marble, founded as the rook, As broad and general as the casing air. (III.lv.22-23) This Is Keats's third use of the phrase; the faot that he is relying on his memory Is evident from his misquoting in each case. The first use Is In a letter to his brothers In January, l8l8, when he says that when Tom gets well, "I shall feel 'Whole and general as the casing air'" (I, 201); the other Is In a letter to Reynolds In April, 1818, In which he expresses his desire to be free of the burden of the Preface to Endymion: nDo let the Printer's Devil cook it--and 'let me be as the casing air,*" (I, 269). Since this phrase seems to oome so naturally to him, It may be unjust to call it "pedantic." The oharge may much more fairly be brought against another quotation, however, In the same letter; describing Reynolds' parody of Words worth's "Peter Bell," Keats says that besides "a pernioious likeness in the scenery" there Is "a 'pestilent humour* In the rhymes and an Inveterate cadenoe In some of the stanzas that must be lamented" (II, 9 1 4 - ) • Here he Is remembering either Romeo and Juliet (IV.V.U4 . 7): "a pestilent knave," or King Lear (I.iv,127)s "a pestilent gall." Since both plays, we have seen, are favorites of Keats, he may be remembering both; but the use he puts the adaptation to Is not so effective as ostentatious. Most of his quotations, however, show a precise com municative purpose. In a letter to George and Georglana Keats on October U4 . , 1818, he tells them he has "a great mind to make a prophecy" that one of their children will be the first American poet; he then breaks Into spontaneous verse: 'Tls 'the witching time of night' Orbed Is the Moon and bright And the stars they glisten, glisten. • . . (I, 398) Here the quotation from Hamlet (III. 11 .lj.06), "*Tis now the very witching time of night," Is appropriately used; it says exactly what Keats wants to say, though Its context has no connection with his meaning. A similar use In 116 another "little extempore" is found in the longer Journal- letter (February-May, 1819) to George and Georgiana: 0 king of Othaiete— tho a Mule •Aye every inch a king*--tho--*Fortune1a fool* (II, 88) The first quotation is from King Lear (IV.vi.109), the second from Romeo and Juliet (III. i.1 1 4 . 1). Neither context adds to the meaning, but both phrases convey Keats*a intention. A final example of this sort may be seen in another letter to George and Georgiana, on January 3, 1819, as he desoribes an author who "was wont to hold conversa tions . . . in the dark middle of the might" (II, 28), which is possibly an eoho of Hamlet (I.11.198): "in the dead vast and middle of the night," or of Measure for Measure (IV.1.35): "the heavy middle of the night." Again, the context of the quotations counts for little, but the words are apt. But as in his first period of Shakespearean Influence, Keats also has some allusive references. One example is in the journal-letter to his brother and sister-in-law on April 21, 1819, where he comments on the ills of society and says: The whole appears to resolve into this— that Man is originally a *poor forked creature* subject to the same mischances as the beasts of the forest, destined to hard ships and disquietude of some kind or other. (II, 101) He is here slightly misquoting King Lear (III.iv.lll), and the context in Lear adds a dimension to his meaning, for 117 when Lear says the phrase, he has been wandering mad on the stormy heath, with only a Fool to guide him; he meets Edgar, disguised as the madman "poor Tom," and tries pitifully to comfort him with his own oonfused but very meaningful words: Why, thou wert better In thy grave than to answer with thy uncovered body this extremity of the skies. Is man no more than this? Consider him well. Thou owest the worm no silk, the beast no hide, the sheep no wool, the cat no perfume. Hat here's three on 's are sophisticated! Thou art the thing Itself: unacoommodated man is no more but such a poor, bare, forked animal as thou art. (III.lv.105-112) Recalling that context, as Keats evidently expects his readers to, enrlohes his meaning considerably. A more humorous example of such an allusive use of Shakespeare Is his description on April 16, 1819, of an invasion of Charles Brown's home, Wentworth Place, where Keats was staying during that spring, by Brown's two nephews: The servant has come for the little Browns this morning— they have been a toothaohe to me which I shall enjoy the riddance of— Their little voices are like wasp stings— Some times am I all wound with Browns. (II, 90) His half-humorous, half-petulant reaction to the children Is not completely clear until one recognizes the quotation and remembers Its context, Caliban's description In The Tempest (II.11.12-13) of the supernatural punishments he endures: "Sometime am I /All wound with adders.1 * Like the quotations, the nine references to Shakespeare himself are scattered through the letters of this period; they Indicate Keats1a continuing Interest in all things to do with his "presider." On October 16, 1818, he tells his brother and sister-in-law that he has just been disousslng Shakespeare, among other subjects, with Dllke and Brown (I, lj.01). On December 16, he tells the same couple that he longs to know what they are doing, and that he will feel closer to them through Shakespeare, for "I shall read a passage of Shakspeare every Sunday at ten o Clock,” and If they do the same, "we shall be as near each other as blind bodies oan be In the same room” (II, 5). Though he seems unaware of the time difference between America and England, his use of Shakespeare to bridge the distance shows his regard for his "presider." On March 12, 1819, he wonders nln what position Shakspeare sat when he began 1 To be or not to be,n (II, 73); on the next day he quotes for his relatives a long passage of Hazlltt's, defending his Characters of Shakespeare*s Plays against the attacks of the reviewer William Gifford. The most vital reference, however, comes on December 31, 1818, in another letter to the George Keatses: he wonders If a superior being may possibly see the flaws in Shakespeare that Keats now finds In the poets Mary Tighe and James Beattie, who "once delighted" him, though now he can "see through them and can find nothing In them— or weakness." He answers his question with a simple but firm "No" (II, 18). Here 119 he reveals how much he has grown in his orltical ability since he began the study of Shakespeare; of that ability he Is now certain, for he says, ”1 have not one opinion on any thing except In matters of taste— I can never feel certain of any truth but from a clear perception of Its Beauty** (II, 19)* A moment later In the same letter, he discusses his newly achieved appreciation of the cartoons of Raphael, and says he enjoys such art so muoh that "I do not think I ever had a greater treat out of Shakespeare" (II, 19)* Thus Shakespeare Is still his criterion for artistic greatness and his prime source of beauty. The references show no diminution of Interest; Instead, they Indicate a less excited but firmer conviction of the greatness of Shakespeare. That evidence is continued In throe very Important critical comments In the letters of this period. One (October 27, 1818), in which he discusses the poetical character, particularly his own and Shakespeare*s con trasted with "the Wordsworthian or egotistical sublime," In a continuation of his thoughts on Negative Capability (I, 386-387)> has already been discussed (above, pp. 69-71) In illustrating the complexity of that concept. In another letter three days earlier, October 2I 4 ., 1818, he mentions the important elements of beauty and truth again. Dis cussing his attitude toward women, he tells his relatives 120 he plana never to marry: The roaring of the wind la my wife and the Stars through the window pane are my Children. The mighty abstract Idea I have of Beauty In all things stifles the more divided and minute domestic happiness— -an amiable wife and sweet Children I contemplate as a part of that Beauty, but I must have a thousand of those beautiful partloles to fill up my heart. (I, I 4 . 03) And a moment later he speaks of "the yearning Passion I have for the beautiful" (I, l^Oif) • When we couple this with the statement In the paragraph above that truth oan come to Keats only through "a clear perception of Its Beauty," we see that he Is still mulling over the various elements of Hegative Capability whloh he had thought out a few months earlier. Finally, In this same letter, he gives us an example of the kind of beauty he found In Shakespeare by showing us his reaction to a passage in Trollus and Cresslda (III.11.9-11): I throw my whole being Into Triolus and repeating those lines, "I wander, like a lost soul upon the stygian Banks staying for waftage," I melt Into the air with a voluptuousness so delicate that I am content to be alone. (I, J 4 .OI 4 .) We can regret the Huntian phrasing of that last line while understanding clearly what is meant: his reaction Is so Intense that he loses his own Identity In that of Trollus and the "lost soul," and thus melts Into the air, In his Imagination, like the spirit on the banks of the Styx. But before that Intense reaotlon of the reader must come an act of Intensity on the part of the poet, as Keats 121 explained three daya later In hia letter on hla type of poet, 'who loao8 hla Identity In the eharaetera he creates. And since the passage he quotes Is a prime example of Intensity of phrasing, all three elements of Intensity are represented here. The third Important critical statement la the last of such comments on Shakespeare In the letters--and one of the most Important. On February 19, 1819, writing again to George and Georglana, he dlsousses the apparent duplicity of his Wordsworthian friend Bailey, who had led Marlane Reynolds and her family to believe that he was In love with her, but had recently surprised everyone by suddenly making a more advantageous marriage (see Hewlett, pp. 2l±2-21i3). Keats says: All this I am not supposed by the Reynoldses to have any hint of— It will be a good Lesson to the Mother and Daughters--nothing would serve but Bailey--If you mentioned the word Tea pot--some one of them oame out with an a propos about Balley--noble fellow--flne fellowt was always In their mouths— this may teaoh them that the man who redlcules romanoe Is the moat romantic of Men--that he who abuses women and slights them— loves them the most--that he who talks of roasting a Man alive would not do It when It came to the push-- and above all that they are very shallow people who take every thing literal A Man*a life of any worth Is a continual allegory— and very few eyes can see the Mystery of his life--a life like the scriptures, figurative— which such people can no more make out than they can the hebrew Bible. Lord Byron cuts a figure— but he Is not figurative— Shakspeare led a life of Allegory; his works are the comments on It— (II, 67) This remarkable penetration Into the ways of men Is the 122 result of his study of Shakespeare and of the nature of poets and lesser men, based on what he found in Shake speare. We have seen his belief that the poet must be able to lose his Identity In others; here we see Keats projec ting himself Into Bailey and realizing that Bailey, who appeared romantic, was really calculating. Keats, on the other hand, had often spoken slightingly of women and marriage (see for example, Letters. I, 325; I, 3^1-3l|-2; II, 19; and II, 186), but now he had met and fallen In love with Fanny Brawne and hoped to marry her— surely he Is talking of himself as much as of Bailey here. But the Important part of the passage Is that con cerned with the "life of Allegory.” Keats Is talking about the difficulty of really knowing any person from his statements and actions. The man who most belittles women and romance Is most sensitive about both, most romantic, most susceptible to love. We all hide our Inmost thoughts behind a facade of banter and boasting about the things we feel most deeply. Keats himself, for Instance, presents in this same journal-letter, with no introduction, the remarkable "La Belle Dame sans Mercl" and follows that heartfelt allegory of his own painful love with the jocular passage: Why four kisses— you will say--why four because I wish to restrain the headlong impetuosity of my Muse-- she would have fain said "score” without hurting the rhyme— but we must temper the Imagination as the Critics 123 say with Judgment. I was obliged to ohooae an even number that both eyes might have fair play: and to 8peak truly I think two a piece quite sufficient— Suppose I had aald seven; there would have been three and a half a piece— a very awkward affair--and well got out of on my side. (II, 97) The man who could thus hide hla profound emotions after the writing of so moving an allegory of his life knew exactly how "A Man1s life of any worth is a continual allegory." He knew also that, though "very few eyes can see the Mystery," It can be read in the works of poets by those who have the power to read with perception, who do not "take every thing literal." For he had presented in his Negative Capability formulation the Idea that "with a great poet the sense of Beauty overcomes every other considera tion" (see above, p. 68), and that It Is an act of in tensity by which one can make "all disagreeables evaporate" (see above, p. 66). Here he says that Shakespeare "lived a life of Allegory"--that is, he, like Keats, hid his private world of thoughts and emotion from the world; but "hla works are the comments on it." In his works, Shakespeare has made poetry of his griefs and frustrations, and by the acts of intensity Involved has made them acceptable. Byron "cuts a figure," but the part he plays and the poems he writes (such as the highly autobiographic Don Juan, with its thinly disguised portrayal of his wife and himself) are not figurative but closely representative of the real Byron. Keats, like Shakespeare, hid his 12U Inmost thoughts, especially about love: we get only the slightest hint In the letters to his friends of his love for Fanny Brawne and the pain It caused him. Yet he wrote several allegories of that love, two In this period: nThe Eve of St. Agnes," which sets forth in symbolic form his passionate feeling for Fanny, and nLa Belle Dame sans Meroi," which allegorizes both his fear that the love might destroy him as a poet, and his pangs of jealousy. The festering strength of that jealousy oomes out best In the bitter letters of 1820 and will be discussed there; but It shows up also In the "First Ode to Fanny Brawne," written In February, 1819, between the symbolic ecstasy of "The Eve of St. Agnes" and the symbolic fears of "La Belle Dame sans Merci." In stanza 111 of the "First Ode," Keats says, Who now, with greedy looks, eats up my feast? What stare outfaces now my silver moon? Ah, keep that hand unravlsh*d at the least; Let, let, the amorous burn-- But, pr»ythee, do not turn The current of your heart from me so soon. 01 save, in charity, The quickest pulse for me. And on the same day that he wrote "La Belle Dame sans Mercl," he also wrote the "Seoond Ode to Fanny Brawne," which Illustrates well his fears that love might prevent him from writing poetry: 125 What can I do to drive away Remembrance from my eyes? for they have seen, Aye, an hour ago, my brilliant Queent Touch has a memory. 0 say, love, say, What can I do to kill it and be free In my old liberty? When every fair one that I saw was fair Enough to oatoh me in but half a snare, Hot keep me there: When, how'er poor or particolour*d things, Hy muse had wings, And ever ready was to take her course Whither I bent her force, TJnintellectual, yet divine to me; — e e • # How shall I do To get anew Those moulted feathers, and so mount once more Above, above The reaoh of fluttering Love, And make him cower lowly while I soar? In these two poetic statements, he presents directly the fears he allegorizes In nLa Belle Dame sans Merci," where the infatuated "knight-at-arras" Is Keats and the reluotant sorceress is Fanny; and in the ballad we see exemplified the kind of emotional intensity which allows us to accept the tragic incidents, as the writing of it evidently helped Keats accept the prospect of a destroying but beautiful love. The poem presents a soene of desolation with great economy and force: The sedge has withered from the Lake And no birds slngl The forlorn knight*s tale builds to a peak of intensity in its description of a strange and passionate love: 126 I met a Lady in the Meads; Full beautiful, a faery*s ohild Her hair was long, her foot was light And her eyes were wild— I made a Garland for her head, And braoelets too, and fragrant Zone She look*d at me as she did love And made sweet moan— I set her on my pacing steed And nothing else saw all day long For sidelong would she bend and sing A faery* s song— She found me roots of relish sweet And honey wild and manna dew And sure In language strange she said I love thee true— Slnoe we have been prepared for tragedy by the knight*s appearance at the poem* s opening, the love play here merely serves to Intensify the feeling of Impending doom. The next stanza, with Its picture of the tenderly passionate lover and the sorceress reluctant to do her evil deed, builds the suspense further: She took me to her elfin grot And there she wept and slgh*d full sore, And there I shut her wild, wild eyes With kisses four. And then we move to a very Intense emotional Involvement, as the knight*s doom comes upon him: And there she lulled me asleep And there I dream*d, Ah Woe betide I The latest dream I ever dreamt On the cold hill side. I saw pale Kings, and Princes too Pale warriors, death pale were they all; They cried, La belle dame sans mercl Thee hath In thrall. 127 I saw their starv’d lips la the gloam With horrid warning gaped wide, And I awoke, and found me here On the cold hill’s side. The terrible ory of the "pale Kings, and Princes" and the sudden contrast between warm love and the "cold hill’s side" show Intensity of mood and expression at their best, and the quietness of the ending Intensifies the finality and emptiness of the Knight’s doom. The very briefness and unadorned quality of the last line Is especially evocative. And the repetition of the first stanza In the last, which effectively frames the gradually rising In tensity of the fairy-tale tragedy In a world of desolation, exemplifies Keats’s seoond poetlo axiom, which says that "the rise, the progress, the setting of Imagery" should be a natural and gradual thing. The same elements of allegorical treatment of his real love, movement of the imagery, and Intensity are also found In "The Eve of St. Agnes," written In January and February, 1819. Keats evidently beoame engaged to Fanny Brawne on Christmas Day, 1818 (Hewlett, p. 2314.), and the poem written the following month oelebrates allegorically the consum mation of their love despite the opposing forces of the cold, harsh world. His financial straits, the unfavorable review of Endymlon. and the sore throat that had plagued him since his walking-tour must have made the chances of an early marriage seem remote Indeed; In the poem the 128 lovers meet, make love, and elope In spite of the storm and the enmity of the outside world. The tenderness, awe, and physloal intensity with whloh the love scene, especially, Is filled are a mark of the depth of feeling which Keats had for Fanny. The movement of the imagery In "The Eve of St. Agnes," like that in "La Belle Dame sans Merci," Illustrates the second axiom very well. The poem opens with a harsh and forceful evocation of winter, presented with physical Intensity in the suffering of the animals and the old Beadsman from the cold: St. Agnes' Eve— Ah, bitter chill It was I The owl, for all his feathers, was a-cold; The hare limp'd trembling through the frozen grass, And silent was the flock in wooly fold: Numb were the Beadsman*s fingers, while he told His rosary, and while his frosted breath, Like pious incense from a censer old, Seem*d taking flight for heaven, without a death, Past the sweet Virgin's picture, while his prayer he saith. We move with the Beadsman up the cold aisle of the chapel and hear with him the first sounds of the coming celebra tion. Soon the stage Is set: the revel Is In progress; Porphyro risks his life by coming to the stronghold of his enemies to see Madeline; old Angela, "weak in body and in soul," Is introduced; and the enmity of the household toward the love is stressed. Porphyro is hidden In Madeline's room, and the intensity of the scene builds through Madeline's preparations for bed, to the feast, and 129 finally to the scene of highest Intensity, as the consum mation of love Is suggested In tender yet passionate terms: Beyond a mortal man impassion*d far At these voluptuous accents, he arose, Ethereal, flush*d, and like a throbbing star Seen mid the sapphire heaven*a deep repose; Into her dream he melted, as the rose Blendeth Its odour with the violet,— Solution sweet. . . . And then, quickly but naturally, we have the "setting of imagery," as the two "glide, like phantoms, into the wide hall," past the wakeful bloodhound and the drunken Porter, through the door— And they are gone: aye, ages long ago These lovers fled away Into the storm. That night the Baron dreamt of many a woe, And all his warrior-guests, with shade and form Of wltoh, and demon, and large coffln-worm, Were long be-nightmar*d, Angela the old Died palsy-twltch*d, with meagre face deform; The Beadsman, after thousand aves told, For aye unsought for slept among his ashes cold. Thus, with the reminders of the cold, with the death of Angela, and with the Beadsman*s "thousand aves," we are brought full-circle, back to the harsh and ugly world with which the story opened and which contrasts so sharply with the warmth of the love-scenes--just as in "La Belle Dame sans Mercl." That Keats is here applying a technique he learned from his "presider" Is made more probable by the other debts the poem owes to Shakespeare and by Its close parallel to the movement In Shakespeare»s plays. Twelfth Night, particularly, rounds off a highly romantic tale with 130 a similar return to the real world in the clown's ironic song: When that I was and a little tiny boy, With hey, ho, the wind and the rain, A foolish thing was but a toy, For the rain it ralneth every day. But when I came to man's estate, With hey, ho, the wind and the rain, 'Gainst knaves and thieves men shut their gate, For the rain it ralneth every day. But when I came, alast to wive, With hey, ho, the wind and the rain, By swaggering could I never thrive, For the rain it ralneth every day. But when I came unto my beds, With hey, ho, the wind and the rain. With toss-pots still had drunken heads, For the rain it ralneth every day. A great while ago the world begun, With hey, ho, the wind and the rain, But that's all one, our play is done, And we'll strive to please you every day. The same reminders that the romantic adventures occurred "a long time ago" and that storms, drunkenness, sickness, and grief surrounded the lovers and their moments of beauty are seen in both works; and in both, the reminders serve to bring us back from the flights of imagery to the real world. That Keats thought enough of that principle to fight for it we see in a letter (II, 162-163) from Woodhouse to Taylor, in which Woodhouse talks about Keats's "bringing Old Angela in (only) dead stiff & ugly"; Keats, Woodhouse says, has refused to change the passage because "this Change of Sentiment" was "what he aimed at." 131 Various kinds of Intensity are also apparent In "The Eve of St. Agnes.” The entire first stanza, for example, with its specifio physical Images of oold, evokes by those images an intense reaction in the reader. The phrase describing the music which "flatter'd to tears this aged man and poor" is Intense beoause it presents so thoroughly and concisely the complex reaction of the old Beadsman, too old, too poor to Join the festivities, filled with gratitude for the moment of pleasure he obtains from the music, but struck with sorrow that he must go "another way" to sit among the ashes of penance. The description of "music, yearning like a God in pain" is also very apt, invoking thoughts of Orpheus and his music at the same time that it describes the mournful quality of the actual tune. The greatest intensity comes, of course, in the later scenes. Madeline enters her chamber silently, But to her heart, her heart was voluble, Paining with eloquence her balmy side. As she kneels beneath the magnificently colored window, the mixture of physical desirability (matching the physical yearning which her panting Indicates) and saintliness brought out by specific colors falling on parts of her body, make Prophyro react intensely: Full on this casement shone the wintry moon, And threw warm gules on Madeline*s fair breast, As down she knelt for heaven's grace and boon; Rose-bloora fell on her hands, together prest, And on her silver cross soft amethyst, 132 And on her hair a glory, like a saint: She seem'd a splendid angel, newly drest, Save wings, for heaven:— Porphyro grew faint: She knelt, so pure a thing, so free from mortal taint. Again the mixture of passion and tenderness In Stanza xxxvl— as Porphyro, "Ethereal, flush'd, and like a throbbing star," melts Into Madeline's dream, and Keats uses Imagery of the rose and violet whose odours mingle to suggest the gentleness and beauty of the consummation— Is a prime example of the Intensity which "makes all dis agreeables evaporate." There are also many examples of Intensity of epithet In the poem, the focusing of multi-valued meanings Into one precise descriptive term, generally a past participle. Porphyro, for example, hiding by the door of the enemy stronghold, Is "buttress'd from moonlight" (st.lx)--and In "buttress'd" are gathered all the bulky strength of the medieval pile, the danger of the youth's exploit, and the safety of the shadows which protect him. Bate offers many other examples: Keats, again, does not write "Icy gusts"; he solidifies the gusts, he makes them heavy, by calling them "Iced" (St. Agnes. xxxvil,3); and In the phrase lcfcd stream" (xxxll,i4 . ) the stream has been made momentarily static, but Its potentiality of flowing la none the less dynamically present. The power of warmth to bring about sleep Is concentrated In "poppled warmth" (xxvll,3), and all the connotation which Lebanon can convey has been condensed within "cedar'd Lebanon" (xxx,9). Similarly, In "sculptur'd dead1 1 (ii,5), "amooth-aculptur'd stone" (xxxill.9^. ^carved angels" (lv.71 ). and "oarven Imag'rles" (xxlvT^T, whatever energy la connoted by the verbs "sculpture" and "carve" has been momentarily 133 concentrated, contained, and atllled; but--as In "wreathed silver" (xxxl. 3)."shielded soutoheon blushed with blood" (xxiv,9), "spiced dalntles" (xxx,8), and "heart-stifled" (xxl11,§)--a dynamic energy, made temporarily still and static, has through this very concentration gained In strength, in intensity, and In the revelation of the entire peculiar character of the phenomenon they seek to desorlbe. (Stylistic Development. p. 96) Bate errs in italicizing "blushed" as a past participle; it is used as a verb: the "shielded scutcheon blushed with blood of queens and kings." Otherwise, his analysis is excellent and contains many other examples of the same sort, which show conclusively that the device was deliberate (pp. 91-93). Bate points out that "Instances abound" where Keats, in revising the poem, "consciously attempted" to Introduce such epithets. He gives the following illustrations (which we may, of course, check for ourselves in Oarrod's editions of the poems): "He follow*d her along a passage dark" (xii^.1) was altered to "He follow*d through a lowly arched way"; "Rose, like a spirit" (xxii,l4 .) became "Rose, like a mission*d spirit"; "with anguish spread thereon" (xxix,3) was replaced with "half-anguish* d. threw thereon"; and "A drooping lamp" (xl,6) was ohanged to "A chaln-droop*d lamp." "As is the wing of evening tiger-moths" (xxiv,6) was deleted, and all that may be said of the peculiar and distinctive quality of the substantive is concentrated within the newly-added epithet: "As are the tiger-moth*a deep-damask*d wings." The connotation of the epithet is indelibly stamped into the substantive in the transition from "o*er the silent carpet" (xxviii,8) to "over the hush*d carpet." and in the felicitous replacement of "where the fading moon" (xxlx,l) with "where the faded moon." And in the alteration, finally, of "bosom jewels" (xxvi,3) 13k to "warmed jewels," the jewels are not In the prooesa of being warmed, neither ia warmth made a aeoondary quality through the use of the mere adjective "warm"; warmth, rather, has been concentrated within them until they are Indeed weighted with this intensity of energy and this peculiarity of identity rendered static and concrete, (pp. 96-97) And as further evidence, he presents statistics laboriously gathered by word counts of epithets in various poems to show a deliberate shift in Keats*a technique from "an excessive use of the ^-ending adjectives" in the early poetry through Endvmlon. to the past participle in the works being written during this second period of Shakespearean Influence. The first book of Endvmlon. Bate tells us, has 29 per cent of its adjectives with "y" endings; "Isabella" has only 10.8 per cent; the first version of Hyperion, only 7.1 P®* cent; and "The Eve of St. Agnes," 7.6 per cent. By the time of writing Hyperion and "The Eve of St. Agnes," therefore, Keats was using only one-fourth as many such adjectives as In Endymlon. Instead of that annoying form, he was relying on past participles, the percentage of which, in comparison to the total number of adjectives, rises from 9.7 per oent In "Isabella" to 2lj..9 per cent In "The Eve of St. Agnes." Bate does not give the percentage of participles in Endymlon. but that it is very small is seen by the few participles which could be adduced as examples of intensity in Endymlon (above, p. 93) and by the fact that there is only one 135 example In Garrod of the kind of revision which Bate ehowa la common In NThe Eve of St. Agnes," the shift of "paly corpse" to "waned corps®" In II.I4.82 (see Garrod, p. 97 n.). One must agree that Bate proves his point here: past- participle epithets are certainly one form of Intensity, and they are widespread In the poetry after Endvmlon. particularly In "The Eve of St. Agnes." Though "The Eve of St. Agnes" uses the movement of Imagery and the Intensity which Keats found In his study of Shakespeare, It also has other debts to him. The first and most obvious Is the Idea for the story: its plot, Its characters, and its setting owe much to Romeo and Juliet. Though de Selincourt (p. 576) believes Boccaccio*s II Fllocolo. In the French version, was Keats<s main source, with old Angela owing something to the Nurse, and the Beadsman to the barefoot friar of Romeo and Juliet, both Miss Lowell (II, 159) and Finney (II, 5i|-3) Insist that Shakespeare*s play was the main source. The rich medieval settings and the feuds between the families are similar, and certain characters correspond: Porphyro and Romeo, Madeline and Juliet, Angela and the Nurse, Madeline*s relatives and Juliet*s. Finney also points out similarities In such incidents as Porphyro*s visit to Madeline during the course of a celebration at which it would mean death to him If he were discovered. He Is helped by the beldame, aa Romeo la helped by the nurae. Other parallela not mentioned by Finney are also present. The love la consummated In the heroine*a bedroom at great risk in both Romeo and Juliet and nThe Eve of St. Agnes.n The cell of Friar Lawrence may be a source for the "little moonlight room,/Pale, lattlc*d, chill, and silent aa a tomb" In stanza xlil of Keats*a poem— as may the tomb of the Capulets. The coarse jesting of Juliet's nurse may find Its counterpart in old Angela's laughter as she tells Porphyro of Madeline*s plans to follow the rites of St. Agnes that night (st. xiv-xv)— though Keats does not exploit the oontrast of true love with ribald desire as Shakespeare does. Tybalt may be the origin of "old Lord Maurice, not a whit/More tame for his gray hairs" (st. xii), for though Tybalt is too young to have gray hairs, he is, like Lord Maurice, the one relative the lover must fear most, and the adjective "tame" may have been suggested by the Prince of Cats. The parallels of charaoter, incident, setting, and tone seem too many for us not to accept Romeo and Juliet as the prime source for Keats's poem. And there are other, though lesser, debts to Shakespeare. Both de Selincourt and Finney point to the drinking in Madeline*s castle and that in Hamlet and Macbeth as parallels. Porphyro Is interrupted in his 137 hushed preparations In Madeline*s room by the opening and closing of a door which allows the sounds of revelry to Intrude momentarily: 0 for some drowsy Morphean amulett The boisterous, midnight, festive clarion, The kettle-drum, and far-heard clarinet, Affray his ears, though but In dying tone:— The hall door shuts again, and all the noise Is gone. (st.xxlx) De Sellncourt notes that Keats had told Charles Cowden Clarke that the line "came Into my head when I remembered how I used to listen In bed to your music at school” (p. lj-70). For the rest, de Sellncourt believes that the contrast between the ”*rude wassallers' In the castle and the emotion of his hero” comes from the contrast between Hamlet and his uncle, shown In the following passage which de Sellncourt quotes with Italics: The King doth wake to-night and takes his rouse, Keeps wassail, and the swaggering up-sprlng reels; And as he drains his draughts of Rhenish down, The Kettle-drum and trumpet thus bray out The triumph o£ his pledge. (I.iv.8-12) He might also have olted Hamlet*s statement that the custom Is one ”more honour*d In the breach than the observance” (I.lv.16) to point up the contrast In characters. De Sellncourt has Italicized the words indicated to prove his contention that Keats Is borrowing. We see the "kettle drum” In the passage quoted above, and In Stanza xxxlx "bloated wassallers” have been "Drown*d all in Rhenish and the sleepy mead." The phrase "bloat king," de Sellncourt 138 adds, was applied to Claudius in Hamlet {III.iv.l82), and the original reading of stanza xxxlx had "drenching mead" rather than "sleepy mead"— which leads us to Macbeth (I.vii.68): "Their drenched natures lie as in a death." That excursion gave Keats a hint for the drunken porter of stanza xli, who is "no distant relation to the guardian of Macbeth* s castle" (p. I 4 . 7O) . There are a few possible verbal echoes of Shakespeare also. Angela*s referenoe to a witch*s sieve (st.xiv) may come from Macbeth (1.111.8), as de Sellncourt thinks (p. 1^76), since Keats often seems to get such Information from Shakespeare, as we saw in Endymlon. Similarly, Porphyro*s dream of winning Madeline While legion*d faeries pac*d the coverlet, And pale enchantments held her sleepy-eyed. (st.xlx) probably gained its imagery from Mercutio*s speech (Romeo and Juliet. I.iv.70-71) on Queen Mab, who . . . gallops night by night Through lovers* brains, and then they dream of love. And the line in stanza vi, "Upon the honey*d middle of the night," as de Sellncourt suggests (p. 576), may be a reminiscence of Measure for Measure (IV.i.37): "Upon the heavy middle of the night." But those are all the probable echoes of Shakespeare. Finney presents a passage from Much Ado about Nothing (V. i.I4.—S) as a possible source for the sieve, and prefers Imogen*s prayer in Cymbellne for the fairy lore: From fairies and the tempters of the night Ouard me, beseeoh yei (II.ii.9-10) The passage in Cymbellne. though it contains an Intruder and a sleeping heroine, is nothing like Keats*s in mood or purpose; since so much of "The Eve of St. Agnes" is Indebted to Romeo and Juliet, it seems likely that de Sellncourt is correot here. Finney presents four other "eohoes": Madeline*s "azure-lidded sleep" (st.xxx), he thinks, came from Imogen*s sleep in Cymbellne: . . . white and azure, lac*d With blue of heaven*s own tinot. . . (II.ii.22-23) Though Keats mentions Imogen often (see Letters. I, 157, 387), and the scene is something like his, the Image is too common for us to asorlbe a debt here. The fifth line of the same stanza, "With jellies soother than the creamy curd," Finney believes came from The Winter*3 Tale (IV.iv. 160-161), and he quotes with italics: Good sooth, she is The queen of curds and cream. . . . "Soother," Keats*s own coinage, seems closer to "smoother" than to "sooth," and the connection with "creamy curd" indicates that that meaning is uppermost in his mind. "Curds" and "cream" are far too commonplace to be listed as a debt, particularly since the passages have little else in common. The line "Never on such a night have 1 1 4 . 0 lovers met” (st.xix) was suggested, Finney believes, by the passage In Merchant of Venice (V.i.l ff.) In whloh a series of allusions to famous lovers each begins with the phrase "In such a night." One may believe that Keats knew and enjoyed the passage without listing the common place phrase as a "debt." Finally, the lines In stanza xxv She seem'd a splendid angel, newly drest. Save wings, for heaven. • . . seem to Finney to come from Romeo and Juliet (11.11.26-28): Ot speak again, bright angel: for thou art As glorious to this nigirb, being o'er my head, As Is an winged messenger of heaven. • . . The mere coincidental duplication of such commonplace words as Finney italicizes Is not enough for us to see a debt— except the general debt of beauty and tender romance that all the love passages in "The Eve of St. Agnes" may have to Shakespeare's play. Thus In this poem there Is one prob able verbal echo, and four more possible echoes; but Keats's debt Is much deeper than mere words. He has used Shakespeare again for Information about fairies and witch craft, he has used him as a source for part of the story line, the setting, and the characters of his tale, and he has used him, possibly, for inspiration In writing tender love scenes. Most important, he has put Into his tale the Intensity and the movement of Imagery that he found In Shakespeare, and In doing so, he has made an allegory of his own desire for Fanny Brawne. Ikl Since Hyperion is unfinished, it is impossible to tell whether it would have had the movement of Imagery which Keats1s second axiom approves and which "La Belle Dame sans Merci" and nThe Eve of St. Agnes” contain, though the quiet opening might lead us to believe it would; it does, how ever, owe a considerable debt to Shakespeare. Hyperion was begun in August, 1818, was temporarily laid aside in September, and was revised until April, 1819; it therefore spans the period now under discussion and stands at the beginning of Keats's period of highest artistic development in the odes of 1819. Indeed, since The Fall of Hyperion, a revision of the original, was written from July to December, 1819, the poem— many phrases and the basic idea, at least--may be said both to begin and to end that most productive period of Keats's life. Though both versions are fragments, both contain some of Keats's greatest poetry. Murry, Finney, de Sellncourt, and others have pointed out that it is a "Miltonic" poem, with its wars of the gods and the great debate of the fallen Titans ob viously inspired by scenes from Paradise Lost, but it is also a deeply Shakespearean poem. Though Keats dropped it because, as he said, it had "too many Miltonic Inversions in it" (Letters. II, 167), it is also filled with Shakespearean technique. 11+2 Only two posaible echoes of Shakespeare*s phrasing have been noticed In Hyperion, the first having only a tenuous connection, at most. Finney cites the effective passage which intensifies the stillness of Saturn*s surroundings: No stir of air was there, Not so much life as on a summer's day Robs not one light seed from the feather'd grass, But where the dead leaf fell, there did it rest. (1.7-10) Line 9, Finney reminds us, was altered by Keats from "Robs not at all the dandelion*a fleece" (cf. Garrod, p. 21+9 n.). Believing that we can "trace the steps of the creative process in which Keats altered" the line, Finney quotes a passage from Trollua and Creaslda which Keats had marked: Blunt wedges rive hard knots; the seeded Pride That hath to this maturity blowne up In rank Achilles, must or now be cropt, Or shedding breeds a Nursery of like evil To over-bulke us all. (I.iii.316-320) The image of "seeded Pride," Finney says, so "stirred Keats's imagination" that the young poet wrote the following note in the margin of his folio: "Blowne up" etc. One*s very breath while leaning over these Pages is held for fear of blowing this line away-- as easily as the gentlest breeze despe&lka Robs dandelions of their fleecy Crowns* (Spurgeon, p. 157) Finney does not indicate that it is "blowne up" which elicits the note (and is doubly underlined by Keats); he also, on what authority I do not know, sets off the last six words to look like a quoted line of poetry, neglecting 1 1^3 to Indicate at all the canoeled word "despoils." Having thus set up the evidence, he continues: The verse, "Robs dandelions of their fleecy Crowns," Is obviously a variant of the rejected verse of Hyperion. "Robs not at all the dandelion's fleece." The image of the dandelion, through association, recalled Shake speare's Image of "the seeded Pride That hath to this maturity blowne up"; and Keats composed the verse which stands in Hyperion. "Robs not one light seed from the feather'd grass." (II, Slk) If all that were true, the only debt to Shakespeare would be "seed" from "seeded"— a very slight debt indeed; the remainder of the line, according to Finney, Keats got from himself. One clear verbal echo does exist, however, In the third book. De Sellncourt (p. 531) compares Keats's phrase, "any one particular beauteous star" (III.100), to All's Well That Ends Well: 'Twere all one That I should love a bright particular star. (1.1.96-97) The echo here seems certain, and the phrase Is one that Keats would remember for Its felicity of language. But one echo in 8814. lines is no great debt. The borrowing from Shakespeare in Hyperion la not, therefore, mere words and phrases but more vital elements. Here, as in Endymlon and "The Eve of St. Agnes," he borrows much of his knowledge of magic, fairies, and mythology. De Sellncourt points out that Keats found precedent for making Hyperion the god of the sun In two Shakespearean 1 1 +1 + plays, Titus Andronlcus (V.ii.56): "Even from Hyperion*s rising In the East"; and Tlmon of Athens (IV. 111.181+); ". . . heaven/ Whereon Hyperion*s quickening fire doth shine." And Finney (II, 502) believes that Keats*s con ception of Enceladus as "the fiercest and most warlike of the Titans" (as In 11.68-72) came from a passage In Titus Andronlcus: I tell you, younglings, not Enceladus With all his threatening band of Typhon*s brood, Nor great Alcldes, nor the god of war, Shall seize this prey out of his father*s hands. (IV.11.93-96) This kind of borrowing, it should be noted, is not an echo of words or phrases but rather the kind of Informational borrowing we have seen In earlier poems. There are also numerous other examples In Hyperion. De Sellncourt (p. 500) cites with approval the remarkable series of parallels which Finney (II, 519-521+) presents for all but one of the eight omens seen by Hyperlon--and those which "fright and perplex" mere mortals. For the "dog*s howl, or gloom-bird*s hated screech" (I.171), he quotes 2 Henry VI: The time when screech-owls cry and ban-dogs howl And spirits walk and ghosts break up their graves. (I.iv.21-22) He presents a similar passage in 3 Henry VI: The owl shriek*d at thy birth,-an evil sign; The nlght-crow cried, abodlng luckless time; Dogs howl*d, and hideous tempest shook down trees. (V.vi.l+l+-l+6) Here the linking of both signs so closely makes the debt very probable. The third omen, the "familiar visiting" of a dead person at the moment of his "passing-bell," Finney ascribes with less success to Macbeth, linking Lady Macbeth1s request that "no compunctious vlsltlngs of nature/ Shake my fell purpose" (I.V.I4 . 6-U7) and the later "owl that shriek'd, the fatal bellman" (II.ii.3) which startles the conspirators during the murder. But the "visitings" in Macbeth are pangs of conscience, not a ghostly phenomenon, and the "fatal bellman" merely implies a "passing-bell," so that this ascription seems quite improbable. Equally doubtful are Finney's attempts to explain the "prophesylngs of the midnight lamp" by a fusion of Macbeth's "prophesying with accents terrible" (11.111. 62) and the phrase "a prophesying fear" in Antony and Cleopatra (IV.xiv.120) to get the common word "prophesying^ the scene in Julius Caesar (IV.iii.275 ff.) where Brutus, by the light of a taper at midnight, sees the ghost of Caesar, which presages his death at Philippi, to give us the midnight prophecy by an artificial light; and Richard III (V.ill.180 ff.), where Richard, after dreaming of his past victims and their curses, awakens and remarks, "The light burns blue. It is now dead midnight." It is difficult to concede that Keats's simple image must be made up of such complicated patchwork. With the fifth omen and its surrounding imagery, Finney is more suocessful. For the "blood-red" oolor which "Flush*d angerly" through Hyperion’s palace, he points to similar portents of disaster in King John (III.i,326): "The sun*s o'ercast with blood; fair day, adieul" and to the morning of battle in 1 Henry IV (V.i.1-2): "How bloodily the sun begins to peer /Above yon busky hill." For the "association of pyramids with the palace" in lines 176-177, he points to a similar coupling in Macbeth (IV.i. 56). Since the word "angerly" (1. 182) came, according to de Sellncourt (p. 611), from Macbeth (III.v.l): "you look angerly"— though Finney (I, $22) ascribes it to King John (IV.i.82): "Nor look upon the iron angerly"— it is likely that the palaces and pyramids came from Macbeth also. The next omen, the "eagle’s wings" which "darkened the place" (I.I82-I83), came, according to Finney, from Julius Caesar (V.i.80 ff.), where "two eagles, which are birds of good omen, appear to the army of Casca"; when these "good omens" leave, ravens and other "birds of evil omen" appear and darken the army with their shadows, which seem "a canopy most fatal." Finney believes that Keats may have confused the eagles and the other birds, or made a conscious substitution because "the eagle, which is the bird of Jove, would be a bird of evil omen to Hyperion" (I, 523). It is difficult to believe that so sensitive a 1 1 * 7 poet as Keats would have confused such Imagery. The next omen, the neighing steeds, Is more clearly from Shakespeare. Finney cites Julius Caesar (II.11.23): "Horses did neigh, and dying men did groan," a part of Calpurnla's description of the dire portents In Rome on the eve of Caesar's assassination, and the passage In Maobeth where Duncan's horses "turn'd wild In nature, broke their stalls, flung out /Contending 'gainst obedience" (II.iv.16-17). Though Finney can find no source for the "savour of poisonous brass and metal sick" (1. 189) which Hyperion suffers, he offers Shakespearean sources for the earth quakes of line 200. He cites I Henry IV (III.1.13 ff.), where Glendower brags of the earthquakes at the time of his birth, and Macbeth (II.ill.65-66), where Lennox describes the shaking of the "feverous" earth on the night of Duncan's murder. He might also have listed Julius Caesar (I.ill.3-1*), since Keats obtained so many of the other omens there. The conceptions of Hyperion as Ood of the Sun and Enceladus as the fiercest Titan, and the several omens which seem to have come from Shakespeare, are examples of Keats's informational borrowing, particularly In the lore of mythology and the supernatural. But not only has he learned such faotual Information from Shakespeare; he has 1 1 * 8 also learned how to create certain effects. We saw In Endymlon how he based his "ocean-floor" passage and his description of a shipwreck on Shakespeare*s techniques; In Hyperion we have a much more sophisticated example of a close borrowing of specific techniques to create particular effects: for the picture of old, defeated Saturn Is drawn from King Lear, which we know profoundly affected Keats. We have seen how Keats reacted to King Lear In April, 1817, when he read It on the Isle of Wight, and again In January, l8ld, when he reread It; both times It Inspired a sonnet from him. De Selineourt believes that Keats was therefore "more or less consciously Influenced In his con ception of Saturn" by the similar character of Lear. Both have lost their kingdoms to ungrateful children, both have lost their vigor In old age, and both refer to themselves in the same terms. De Sellncourt points out that the epithet old is applied to Lear, at least twenty times, with deeply tragic reiteration; and his weakness, whether it is viewed with contempt, or pity, or love, or referred to by Lear himself in his utter misery, is always alluded to as the weakness of age. (p. U96) He refers us to such passages as the speech of Goneril: Idle old man, That still would manage those authorities That he hath given awayl Now, by my life, Old fools are babes again; and must be used With checks as flatteries,-when they are seen abused. (I.111.16-21) And Regan*s comment: 11*9 0, air, you are old; Nature in you atanda on the very verge Of her confine; you ahould be ruled and led By aome diacretion, that diaoerna your atate Better than you youraelf. (II.iv.lli.8-152) And Gloucester's reference to hia "poor old eyea" and hi8 "poor old heart" in one apeech (III.vii.57 and 62). De Selincourt reminds ua that Lear continually "harpa upon" hia own age. Finally, he cltea the "language and mood of Lear" in the following aeries of questions: Doth any here know me? This ia not Lear: Doth Lear walk thus? apeak thus? Where are hia eyea? Either hia motion weakens, his dlscernlngs Are lethargied— Hal waking? 'Tis not so. Who is it that can tell me who I am? (I.iv.2lj.6-250) Saturn, like Lear, ia "unaceptred" (1. 19); Thea calls him "poor old King" (1. 52), and Keata speaks of "old Saturn" (1. 89). And Saturn himself in a series of questions very like Lear's emphasizes hia own age and feebleneas: Look up, and tell me if this feeble ahape Ia Saturn's; tell me, if thou hear'at the voice Of Saturn; tell me, if this wrinkling brow, Naked and bare of its great diadem, Peers like the front of Saturn. Who had power To make me desolate? whence came the strength? (1.98-103) The same puzzled questioning of identity is common to both old men, and the questions are couohed in the same specific physical terms: the voice, the sensea of sight and sound, and the feebleness appear in both sets of questions. A few lines further, Saturn reiterates the questioning of his own identity: i5o I have left My strong Identity, my real self, Somewhere between the throne, and where I sit Here on this spot of earth. Search, Thea, searchI (1.113-116) He concludes that tragic speech with the question, "Theat Theal Theal where Is Saturn?" (I.I3I 4 .), which parallels Lear's line, "Doth any here know me? This Is not Lear." There seems little doubt that this conception of the old, unhoused, confused Saturn with his almost-lost Identity Is taken from Keats's strong reaction to Lear. But It Is taken with no verbal echoes other than the necessary one of the adjective "old." The technique of the questioning, the physical Intensity of the phrases used to describe age, the unadorned concentration of the lines— these are devices that Keats had learned from Shakespeare. The first picture we see of Saturn la filled with Intensity of mood, again provided by physically Intense epithets and phrases: Upon the sodden ground His old right hand lay nerveless, listless, dead, Unsoeptred; and his realmless eyes were closed; While his bow'd head seem'd llst'nlng to the Barth, His ancient mother, for some comfort yet. (1.17-21) Here the appeal to the physical senses, with the hand "unsoeptred," the eyes "realmless," and the head "llst'nlng to the Barth," Is very effective. "Unsoeptred" Is a sample of the Intense past participle whloh Bate Illustrates so well In other poems; here It makes physically apparent both the power Saturn once had when he wielded the sceptre and the violent action by which he was overthrown and the symbol of power wrenched from his hand. Now that the hand no longer holds the sceptre, it is useless and lies without feeling--"nerveless, listless, dead"--upon the ground. And in that dismal place where nature adapts her mood to Saturn's, even the ground is "sodden” like the grief of the despairing god. "Realmless," like "unsoeptred," has the quality of revealing past and future in the present scene, which such intense epithets often have; here it reminds us of Saturn's past glory as well as his present and future despair. Because his eyes, like his hand, are useless without his kingdom to survey, they are closed and un seeing. The emotional appeal of the earth mother is especially strong: it has both a human connotation of maternal love and protection, which implies Saturn's childish condition, and a reference to Qaea, whose union in the dawn of time with Uranus produced the Titans. But her era has passed; she has no power to help Saturn, and thus the hopelessness of his situation is brought home even more forcefully. The combination of these elements with the visual impact in the picture of the motionless hand, the closed eyes, and the head bowed in utter defeat makes a passage of great intensity. A few lines later, Thea comes silently and breaks the 152 stillness momentarily with "some mourning words" (1.1 4 - 9), after which the silence comes again: As when, upon a tranced summer-night, Those green-rob*d senators of mighty woods, Tall oaks, branch-charmed by the earnest stars, Dream, and so dream all night without a stir, Save from one gradual solitary gust Which comes upon the silence, and dies off, As if the ebbing air had but one wave; So came these words and went. . • . (1.72-79) The difference between poetry with intensity and without It may be clearly seen by comparing these lines with what Keats first wrote for lines 7k~7& In the holograph manuscript: The Oaks stand charmed by the earnest Stars: And thus all night without a stir they rest Save from one sudden momentary gust Which comes upon the silence and dies off As if the Sea of Air had but one wave. . . . (Garrod, p. 251 n.) "Tall oaks" gives us a more precise picture than the mere noun, and "branch-charmed" allows us to see the stars through the trees. The repetitive "Dream, and so dream" in line 75 is both more specific and more euphonious than the original; it also fits more appropriately with "tranced" and "branch-charmed" to give a feeling of un natural, dreamlike quietness. The "gradual solitary gust" is more appropriate to the metaphor of the single wave of sound than is "sudden momentary gust," in whloh "sudden" violates the image and "momentary" is unnecessary. Similarly, "Sea of Air" is superfluous, since the simile 153 la well established by "wave," and the shift to "ebbing air" adds to the specificity of the image and provides an additional tone of withdrawing quietness. By such delib erate and successful striving for intensity, Keats is putting into practice one of the major techniques he had learned from Shakespeare. Thus, though Hyperion may owe much to Milton, as Bate shows clearly (Stylistic Development, pp. 66-91), it also has a great deal of Shakespeare in it. Though it echoes only a phrase or two, it uses Shakespeare as a source for mythological and supernatural knowledge and copies the technique of creating a confused old man from Lear. It also shows some superb examples of intensity of epithets and of entire passages. It seems clear that even during the writing of this "Miltonic" poem, therefore, Keats kept Shakespeare and his techniques constantly in mind. This chapter has shown that the period of Hyperion was not, as Murry (Keats and Shakespeare, pp. 70-71; 166-167) suggests, a time when Keats deliberately deserted Shakespeare; the letters show a continuing interest in Shakespeare and a continuing study of the plays. During this period, as in the latter part of the Endymlon period, the tragedies and the more deeply humanistic comedies appeal more to Keats than the romantic fairy-tales like A Midsummer Night1s Dream and The Tempest. Though the 15U letters show only one new critical statement, that of the "life of Allegory," it is a very important concept which is put into practioe in two of the poems of the period, "The Eve of St. Agnes" and "La Belle Dame sans Merci," both evidently allegories of his love for Fanny Brawne. Those two poems also illustrate very well his second axiom, on the movement of imagery, and they and Hyperion also have many examples of intensity. In none of the three poems are there nearly so many verbal echoes as Finney tries to show, but there are more Important debts in matters of information about fairies, mythology, and the supernatural. The results of Keats*s study of Shakespeare during the preceding April and thereafter are thus still very much in evidence, even during the writing of the "Miltonic" Hyperion. 155 CHAPTER V: THE PERIOD OP THE ODES (MAY TO DECEMBER, 1819) The letters during the period of the odes still show an abiding Interest In Shakespeare. Of the fifty-two letters written between May and December, 1819, twelve (or nearly one-fourth) contain twenty-four references to or quotations from Shakespeare, Including each of the four types we have studied. There are four general references, five references to Hamlet, three each to Love*8 Labour1a Lost and Othello, two each to Twelfth Night and The Merry Wives of Windsor, and one each to Macbeth. King Lear. Romeo and Juliet. The Tempest, and Much Ado about Nothing. Thus Hamlet continues to be popular, appearing more often In this period than King Lear: Othello, which, like Hamlet, contains many violent passages on jealousy, Is used more often than before; and Love*a Labour*a Lost has a new appeal, possibly because of Keats*s love for Fanny Brawne, for he uses the play once In a striking way to compliment her. As has been true since the beginning of 1818, after Keats*s first special concern with A Midsummer Night*s Dream and The Tempest, the tragedies are more often referred to, though the margin here is only eleven to nine. Two of the general references are of some Interest. 156 Ia a letter of December 20 to his sister Fanny, Keats mentions a letter from Oeorge to his mother-in-law, which was "sealed with a Tassi*s Shakspeare such as I gave you" (II, 238). We do not know when he gave his sister the seal, but Rollins notes four letters which use such a seal; the latest is a letter to Taylor written August 31, 1819, in the middle of the period under study. The other refer ence of special Interest occurs in a letter written August 14, 1819, to Bailey: I am convinced more and more every day that (excepting the human friend Philosopher) a fine writer is the most genuine Being in the World— Shakspeare and the paradise Lost every day become greater wonders to me--I look upon fine Phrases like a Lover. (II, 139) The last sentence shows that his Interest in Shakespeare*s use of language is continuing; the term "fine Phrases," we may suppose, refers to the same kind of epithets and Imagery he marked and oommented on so excitedly in his April of study back in 1817— those which illustrate in tensity. Also of interest is the fact that when he thinks of the "fine writer," he thinks immediately of Shakespeare. Among the quotations in the letters of this period, we still find some merely witty uses, as when he tells Dilke on September 22, 1819, about his plans to write for periodicals instead of putting his hopes on Otho the Great. He says to Dilke: "Now an act has three parts— to act, to do, and to perform— I mean I should do something for my Immediate welfare" (II, 178); and a moment later, speaking of the trials of Otho, he adds: "Walt for the Issue of this Tragedy? No— there cannot be greater uncertainties east, west, north, and south than concerning dramatic composition" (II, 179). The first comment borrows from the gravedigger*s sophistry In Hamlet (V.1.12-13): nan aot hath three branches: It Is, to act, to do, and to perform"; the second echoes Love*s Labour*s Lost (V.11.566): "By east, west, north, and south, I spread my conquering might." Keats evidently enjoys sharing his knowledge of Shakespeare with his friends. In this group of letters there are eight quotations less obtrusively and more effectively used to convey meaning. Some are deliberate adaptations, such as when he tells Haydon on October 3, "Though at this present *1 have great dispositions to write* I feel every day more and more content to read" (II, 220), which uses a phrase from The Merry Wives of Windsor (III.1.22), "I have a great dispositions to cry.” Keats's use of quotation marks and the underlining of write Indicates the debt, and Haydon is expected to recognize the source. Whether he does or not, however, the words convey Keats's meaning exactly. At other times he does not mark his quotation, perhaps because the source is so well known that he Is quoting uncon sciously, as when he tells Dilke on September 22 that he 158 hopes his projected move to London will put him "In the reach of books and Information, of which there Is here [Winchester] a plentiful lack*1 (II, 179)* The last three words may oome from Hamlet (11.11.202), where Hamlet tells Polonlous that old men have "a plentiful lack of wit." Though the general references to Shakespeare and the uses of quotations In this period show us nothing new, the two allusive uses are of special Interest. Both are poignant In what they communicate by allusion to their original contexts; both are to Fanny Brawne and thus fore shadow the several such uses of Shakespeare that occur In the bitter letters of 1820; and though one la completely straightforward, the other illustrates Keats's proclivity In his later letters to convey by allusion an added meaning for himself alone. The second type comes first, when he shows Fanny on July 1, 1819, the Inadequacy of even a poet's language to tell his love: "For myself I know not how to express my devotion to so fair a form: I want a brighter word than bright, a fairer word than fair" (II, 123). Here, as Rollins (II, 123 n.) points out, Keats is recalling the language and rhythm of Blron's ornate love letter In Love's Labour's Lost: By heaven, that thou art fair, is most Infallible; true, that thou art beauteous; truth itself, that thou art lovely. More fairer than fair, beautiful than beauteous, truer than truth Itself, have commiseration on thy herolcal vassalI (IV.1.60-63) But he is recalling only the parts appropriate to his need; the remainder of the pompous phrases (Including the first two clauses above) he Ignores, and he makes what In the play Is a humorous misuse of language, Into a precise and beautiful expression of his love. But he also Intends, as In most of his uses of Shakespeare in letters to Fanny from this time on, a private meaning: "have commiseration on thy herolcal vassal!*1 In this letter, just before the lines echoing Shakespeare, he has said, "Ask yourself my love whether you are not very cruel to have so entrammelled me, so destroyed my freedom**— a problem which we see stated In the two odes to her and allegorised In **La Belle Dame sans Mercln and "Lamia." Here he seems to recognize his destructive but nonetheless glorious bondage and by allusion asks for pity. Another such private expression may also appear In the lines, though no one yet seems to have noticed It. The passage In Love*s Labour1s Lost accounts, perhaps, for "a fairer word than fair," but the other superlative, "a brighter word than bright," is a close echo of a phrase in Venus and Adonis with a powerful sexual context: Who sees his true-love In her naked bed, Teaching the sheets a whiter hue than white, But, when his glutton eye so full hath fed, His other agents aim at like delight? Who is so faint, that dares not be so boll To touch the fire, the weather being cold? (11. 397-1 *02) 160 That physical desire for Fanny Is allegorized In "The Eve of St. Agnes," and again in "Lamia"; here Keats seems to get a secret pleasure out of remembering the oontext of his borrowing and expressing by Inference private thoughts for himself alone. The other allusive quotation of this period, though It has no such private meaning, does have In full measure the pathos which fills the letters of Keats to his beloved, when his financial desperation, his failure as a poet (and, by 1820, his Illness) seemed to put marriage far off. After some weeks of self-inflicted absence In the fall of 1819, he gave In to his great need and visited her for three days. Back In London at his work, he wrote to her on October 19: On awakening from my three days dream ("I cry to dream again") I find one and another astonish1d at my Idleness and thoughtlessness— I was miserable last night. (II, 22I 4 . ) That misery shines through the rest of the brief and almost Incoherent letter. The quotation, from The Tempest, brings back to the reader the touching speech of Caliban, that most poignant monster, whose feeling and poetic expression In this speech and others like It demand our sympathy. Here he calms the fears of the drunken Trinculo and Stephano and reveals his Inner yearning for beauty: 161 Be not afeard; the Isle Is full of noises, Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not. Sometimes a thousand twangllng Instruments Will hum about mine ears, and sometimes voices That, If I then had waked after long sleep, Will make me sleep again: and then, In dreaming, The clouds methought would open, and show riches Ready to drop upon me, that, when I waked, I cried to dream again. (111.11.11)4-152) Keats must have felt that such happiness and beauty were to be his no more than Caliban1s— except In dreams. The three days1 visit with his beloved had given him a vision of the happiness he might expect in marriage, but it was only a dream, and so, "I cry to dream again"— how aptly and richly the quotation fits I Like those two allusive uses of Shakespeare, the critical statements also foreshadow the letters of 1820. They appear in a letter on June 9, 1819, to Sarah Jeffrey, who had advised Keats not to ship as a surgeon aboard an India merchantman, as he had thought briefly about doing. He tells her: Your advice about the Indlaman is a very wise advice, because It just suits me, though you are a little In the wrong concerning Its destroying the energies of Mind: on the contrary it would be the finest thing In the world to strengthen them— To be thrown among people who care not for you, with whom you have no sympathies forces the Mind upon Its own resources, and leaves it free to make its speculations of the differences of human character and to class them with the calmness of a Botanist. An Indlaman Is a little world. One of the great reasons that the engllsh have produced the finest writers In the world; Is, that the Engllsh world has Ill-treated them during their lives and foster*d them after their deaths. They have in general been trampled 162 aside Into the bye paths of life and seen the festerings of Society. They have not been treated like the Raphaels of Italy. And where is the Englishman and Poet who has given a magnifacent Entertainment at the christening of one of his Hero's horses as Boyardo did? He had a Castle in the Appenine. He was a noble Poet of Romance; not a miserable and mighty Poet of the human Heart. The middle age of Shakspeare was all oouded CcloudedJ over; his days were not more happy than Hamlet's who is perhaps more like Shakspeare himself in his common every day Life than any other of his characters--Ben Jonson was a common Soldier and in the Low countries, in the face of two armies, fought a single combat with a french Trooper and slew hira--For all this I will not go on board an Indla man, nor for examples sake run my head into dark alleys. I dare say my discipline is to come, and plenty of it too. (II, 115-116) Since he also believed that Shakespeare "led a life of Allegory” and that ”his works are the comments on it" (Letters, II, 67), he must here be reading the allegory he saw in Hamlet. Shakespeare is now the "miserable and mighty Poet of the human Heart," who knew the workings of the heart in all its miseries and triumphs and presented them honestly; and he is therefore greater than any "noble Poet of Romance." That attitude shows us why King Lear and Hamlet so quiokly superseded A Midsummer Night's Dream and The Tempest with Keats. The statement that Hamlet is, more than any other character, like Shakespeare "in his common every day Life" also helps to explain why Hamlet is so important to Keats from this period on. He evidently believes that Hamlet is the best allegory of Shakespeare's own tragedy, that Hamlet is like Shakespeare in attitudes, philosophy, and habits of mind because Shakespeare put so 163 much of himself Into the play In writing out his own miseries, Keats Is not saying, as Murry (Keats and Shakespeare, pp. 215-216) seems to think, that Hamlet and Shakespeare suffered Identical misfortunes, but that Hamlet's tragedy Is a symbolic treatment of the griefs that Shakespeare went through--partlcularly, as we shall see, In the matter of love. That Keats thought of himself as another Nmlserable and mighty Poet of the human Heart,” with similar tragedies to bear, becomes clear In later letters. And he, like Shakespeare, allegorized those griefs--ln "Lamia,” "La Belle Dame sans Mercl," and the great odes. But It Is Important, also, to see that Keats believed those griefs to be part of the making of a great poet: the "miserable" and the "mighty" go together. The poet of Romance, for all his nobility, does not equal the poet of the human heart, and cannot, because he has been treated too well. England has produced great poets like Shakespeare because England has mistreated them in their lifetimes and honored them only after their deaths. There is much comfort here for Keats. If Endvmlon has been attacked and his earlier Poems Ignored, If he has been vilified by the critics and left unread by the public, If he has lost a brother and become, like Hamlet (and hence like Shakespeare), trapped in a hopeless love, still he 1614 - will be found "among the English Poets" when he dies (see Letters, I, 39I 4). Keats evidently believed that one reason griefs are necessary for the great poet Is that, In order to accept those griefs, he must allegorize them In poetry. In The Fall of Hyperion, the new introduction shows Keats In the templ9 of Moneta, where he admits that he Is not yet a poet. The sorrows of the world are intensely felt by him, for he is allowed in the Inner temple, where none can come But those to whom the miseries of the world Are misery, and will not let them rest. . . . (I.148-H49) By framing the "miseries of the world," which are a part of Its truth. Into forms of beauty, the poet makes them acceptable to his audience and himself; he thus "pours out a balm upon the world" (1.201), for In the presence of intensity and beauty, "all disagreeables evaporate," for the audience as well as for the poet. In "Lamia," as in "The Eve of St. Agnes" and "La Belle Dame sans Mercl," Keats continues the theme of the miseries of love. There are in "Lamia" only three possible echoes of Shakespeare. Two are informational borrowings: the reference to Proserpine, who "still weeps for her Sicilian air" (I.63), which may have come from The Winter*s Tale (IV.iv.116), which mentions "Proserpina," and the idea of 165 the "passing-bell" In the phrase "a moment*s thought Is passion*s passing-bell" (11.39), which, as we saw In the discussion of a similar usage In Hyperion, may have come from Macbeth (II.11.3-1;) • The third Is one of the few echoes of Shakespeare*s words in Keats*s later poetry; In "Lamia" (11.160-162), Apollonius laughs, As though some knotty problem, that had daft His patient thought, had now begun to thaw, And solve and melt .... This seems to be an echo of Hamlet*s soliloquy: 0, that this too too solid flesh would melt, Thaw and resolve Itself Into a dewt (1.11.129-130) Much more important In "Lamia," however, Is the allegorical presentation of the destroying effect of Keats*s love for Fanny Brawne, which fills several poems of this period, as we have seen. Lamia, like Fanny Brawne, Is so appealing a figure, in spite of being a sorceress, that he Is caught up In her spell, despite his knowledge of Its results. And until "cold philosophy" intrudes, the idyll, even if it Is an Illusion, brings the happiness and the beauty of love, which are real although foredoomed. He weaves his sober knowledge of the destructive nature of that love Into a thing of beauty: What wreath for Lamia? What for Lyclus? What for the sage, old Apollonius? Upon her aching forehead be there hung The leaves of willow and of adder*s tongue; And for the youth, quick, let us strip for him The thyrsus, that his watching eyes may swim 166 Into forgetfulness; and, for the sage, Let spear-grass and the spiteful thistle wage Var on his temples. Do not all oharms fly At the mere touch of cold philosophy? There was an awful rainbow once In heaven: We know her woof, her texture; she la given In the dull catalogue of common things. Philosophy will clip an Angel's wings, Conquer all mysteries by rule and line, Empty the haunted air, and gnomed mine— Unweave a rainbow, as It erewhlle made The tender-person'd Lamia melt Into a shade. But If philosophy will destroy such a love by revealing one aspect of Its truth, the poetic Imagination, by making an allegory of that cold truth, can reveal through the beauty It has created another aspect of truth and come to accept It. That Keats here clearly prefers Lamia and the beauty of their love Is seen In the way he presents the "tender- person'd Lamia," who, after all, Intends no harm to the mortal she loves. Though "Lamia" contains few surface Influences of Shakespeare, It was written at the same time Keats worked on his first venture Into the drama, the tragedy of Otho the Great, which owes a great deal to Shakespeare. We have seen before how he used Shakespeare as a guide In writing particular types of descriptive passages, such as the "ocean-floor" scene In Endymlon and the description of dazed old Saturn In Hyperion. In Otho. he seems to be modeling the entire play after Shakespeare's historical tragedies. He evidently agreed to collaborate with Charles Brown on the work because of Brown's one-time success at writing a comic opera (see Rollins, I, 69); Brown was to furnish the plot while Keats made It Into dramatic poetry. His high hopes for the money-making possibilities of the tragedy are reflected In his letters of the period (see especially II, 1 1 4 - 3); the failure of the collaborators to get the play produced Is one of the several misfortunes of Keats*s last productive year. The project was doomed from the start: Keats was not the type of poet who could write to order, fleshing out scene by soene the skeleton Brown provided him. As a result, evidently, he depended on Shakespeare as a guide much more closely than In any other work of this period. Finney has collected over forty passages from Otho that are parallel "either In phraseology and Imagery or In phraseology and Idea" to various passages In Shakespeare (II, 666). He does not list all forty, and some he does list are Inaccurate, such as his statement that Keats borrowed from Macbeth Ludolph*s "dagger In the air which leads him to the door of the chamber of his faithless wife" (II, 6614-). But there Is no dagger In the air In Otho: the only dagger Ludolph sees Is the very real one he draws from his belt (V.v.178). Perhaps Finney was misled by Ludolph*s almost Incoherent babbling Just before he draws the dagger: "I see lt--I see It— I have been wandering!" (V.V.I7I 4 .), a line which describes his 168 understanding of his condition, not any vision of a dagger. But though we cannot accept all of Finney*s forty parallels, there are some obvious debts. There are four simple echoes of phrases of Shake speare, which de Selincourt points out (pp. 553-555). Ludolph*s phrase Hedge o* the world” (1.111.52) probably comes from Antony and Cleopatra: "from edge to edge /0* the world" (11.11.117-118). The description of the sycophants who crowd the court as sickeningly as "the discoloured poisons of a fen" (II.1.22) seems to owe some thing to Coriolanus*s description of people "whose breath I hate/ As reek o* the rotten fens" (III.111.120-121). The Image of the towers which "new-klss*d the parted clouds" In Otho (II.1.133) may be drawn from Mercury "New- lighted on a heaven-kissing hill" In Hamlet (III.lv.59). And the phrase "to melt In the visionary air" (IV.1.85) and its echo "melted Into air" (V.i.21j.) both recall The Tempest with its visions "melted Into air, Into thin air" (IV.l. 150). But most of the debts are more sophisticated borrow ings, examples of Keats*s learning how to do specific things from Shakespeare. When he wants to describe Ludolph*s mental Illness, and the Impossibility of a doctor*s helping him, he says: 169 *713 not In medicine, Either of heaven or earth, to cure, unless Pit time be chosen to administer. (V.lv.3-5) And a moment later a physician agrees that "his troubled mind/ May cure Itself” (V.IV.33-3I 4 .). Macbeth, In a play which had much Influence on the writing of Otho. asks the doctor to help Lady Macbeth: Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased, Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow, Raze out the written troubles of the brain. . . • (V. III.I4 .O-I4 . 2) To which the doctor answers: ”Thereln the patient/ Must minister to himself” (11. I J . 5-I4 . 6) • The debt here seems clear. And Otho begins, like Much Ado about Nothing, right after the victorious conclusion of a foreign war; Ludolph, like Claudio, has been a hero in battle. He has fought, like Posthumus In Cymbellne. In disguise, and Is similarly rewarded when his disguise Is discovered. In Act III of Otho. Ermlnia Is falsely accused of Immorality by a whisper*d tale About a midnight gallant, seen to climb A window to her chamber nelghbour*d near. (111.11.1^0-342) She is defended by Abbot Ethelbert, as Friar Francis defends Innocent Hero In Much Ado about Nothing after Don John has accused her of a similar midnight philandering: Myself, my brother, and this grieved count Did see her, hear her, at that hour last night, Talk with a ruffian at her charaber-wlndow. (IV.1.90-92) 170 And when Ludolph discovers that Auranthe, his wife, and not Ermlnia, Is the guilty woman, he bursts forth, Am I not married to a paragon w0f personal beauty and untainted soul"? A blushing fair-eyed purity? A sylph, Whose snowy timid hand has never alnn'd Beyond a flower pluck'd, white as Itself? (V.11.21-25) The Irony here, as Finney suggests (II, 663), seems to owe something to that In Claudio's harsh speech to Hero In Much Ado: Behold how like a maid she blushes heret 0, what authority and show of truth Can cunning sin cover Itself wlthalt . . . But fare thee well, most foul, most falrl farewell, Thou pure Impiety and Impious purityI (IV.1.35 ff.) Though Keats does not use Shakespeare's oxymorons, the contrast between the purity he Ironically desorlbes and the evil which has been revealed Is as strong as that In Shakespeare. Keats has used the blushes and the words "fair" and "purity"; and the Images of the sylph and the flower may have come to him from another speech by Claudio In the same violent scene: You seem to me as Dlan In her orb, As chaste as Is the bud ere It be blown. (IV.1.58-59) After Auranthe's evil has been revealed and Conrad and Albert have died, the short expository scene (V.iil) In which Siglfred, Gonfred, and Theodore discuss the events Is typically Shakespearean, owing much to Macbeth's similar 171 scenes (see II.lv and III.vl). Keats writes: 1st Knight. Was ever such a night? Slglfrea. What horrors more? Things unbelleved one hour, so strange they are, The next hour stamps with credit. (V.ill.1-3) Finney (II,661j.) believes that these lines echo the dis cussion of Ross and the old man In Macbeth: Threescore and ten I can remember well: Within the volume of which time I have seen Hours dreadful and things strange; but this sore night Hath trifled former knowing. (II.iv.l-l4 . ) They also echo the lines of Ross In Act IV, when he is asked what ”the newest grief” In Scotland is, and he answers: That of an hour*s age doth hiss the speaker: Each minute teems a new one. (IV.ill.175-176) Both in the shortness of his scene (16 lines) and In the phrasing and imagery, Keats seems to be taking a lesson from Shakespeare here. Similar evidence of learning from Shakespeare1s techniques occurs when Keats turns to Richard II for guidance In presenting Auranthe*s self-pity in defeat. She wails: I do not know the time When I have wept for sorrow; but methlnks I could now sit upon the ground, and shed Tears, tears of misery. 0, the heavy dayI How shall I bear my life till Albert comes? Ludolphl Erminlal ProofsI 0 heavy dayI Bring me some mourning weeds, that I may *tire Myself, as fits one walling her own death: Cut off these curls, and brand this lily hand, 172 And throw these Jewels from my loathing sight,— Fetch me a missal, and a string of beads,— A cup of bitter*d water, and a crust. . . . (IV.1.87-98) In Richard II. the defeated King says: For God*s sake, let us sit upon the ground And tell sad stories of the death of kings. (III.11.155-156) And a moment before, he has spoken of his "rainy eyes" (1. II 4. 6) . The tears and the act of sitting upon the ground to mourn are the same In both plays, and Auranthe*s lines beginning "Bring me some mourning weeds" are remi niscent of later words of Richard: 1*11 give my jewels for a set of beads, My gorgeous palace for a hermitage, My gay apparel for an almsman*s gown, My figured goblets for a dish of wood, My sceptre for a palmer*s walking-staff. . . . (III.111.1U7-151) But even In these close parallels, which seem obviously to be the result of deliberate study of the way Shakespeare gains certain effects, there Is very little copying of words; Keats has progressed too far by now, even In this work-a-day effort so contrary to his usual methods of composition, to borrow phrases wholesale. V/hat he borrows are types of Images: Richard*s "almsman*s gown" and "palmer*s walking-staff" become Auranthe*s "mourning weeds" and "missal"; both have a rosary, though one Is a "set of beads" and the other a "string of beads" (the closest echo In phrasing); and Richard*s "figured goblets" go for a 173 "dish of wood," as Auranthe's "Jewels" provide "a cup of bltter'd water, and a crust," The borrowing here seems rauoh like that at the beginning of his study of Shake speare, In April, 1817, when he turned to Richard III and The Tempest for Images of the ocean-floor and the ship wreck In Endymlon. In his Introductory soliloquy, too, Keats seems to be following Shakespeare, this time Richard III, which begins with Gloucester* s magnificent curtain-raiser: Now Is the winter of our discontent Made glorious summer by this sun of York; And all the clouds that lour*d upon our house In the deep bosom of the ocean burled. Now are our brows bound with victorious wreaths; Our bruised arms hung up for monuments; Our stern alarums changed to merry meetings, Our dreadful marches to delightful measures. Grlm-vlsaged war hath smooth'd his wrinkled front. . . . (I.1.1-9) Otho also opens with a summary of the momentous events Just concluded and gives us an Immediate understanding of the evil character of Conrad, the prime mover of the action: So, I am safe emerged from these broils I Amid the wreck of thousands I am whole; For every crime I have a laurel-wreath, For every lie a lordship. Nor yet has My ship of fortune furl'd her silken sails,— Let her glide onl This danger*d neck Is saved, By dexterous policy, from the rebel*s axe; And of my ducal palace not one stone Is bruised by the Hungarian petards. Toll hard, ye slaves, and from the mlser-earth Bring forth once more my bullion, treasured deep, With all my Jewell*d salvers, sliver and gold, And precious goblets that make rich the wine. (1.1.1-13) Shakespeare uses the effective image of the sun and the storm which carries through the first four lines; Keats uses the Image of shipwreck (with the storm implied), from which only Conrad*s "ship of fortune" Is saved, and carries his Image through five lines. Then both ohange to expressions of relief at victory and safety, machinations for the future, and plans for celebrations. Richard speaks of "victorious wreaths," Conrad of a "laurel-wreath," and both mention the brulslngs of battle. The verse form is similar, too, except that Shakespeare here uses none of the caesuras which filled his later poetry and which were therefore familiar to Keats. But both use much alliter ation, as in Keats*s "ship of fortune furl*d her £ilken sails," and Shakespeare*s "Our dreadful marches to delight ful measures," and In other phrases throughout both pas sages. There is parallelism in both: In Keats*s "For every crime. . ." and "For every lie. . ."; and In Shakespeare*s three lines, "Our bruised arms hung up. . .," "Our stern alarums changed. . .," and "Our dreadful marches. ..." The contrast In these lines between the engines and activities of war and their peaceful counter parts is matched by Keats*s similar contrast of Conrad*s evil deeds with his undeserved rewards. These devices Keats may well have taken from Richard III, but the cadences, particularly the use of caesuras, he evidently 175 obtained from later plays, especially Macbeth. That debt is seen more clearly as we observe the way he used Duncan in Macbeth as a model for kingly language. When Otho explains how he will benefit from being lenient to his enemy, he uses twice the image of marble oolumns: And thus a marble column do I build To prop my empire's dome. Conrad, in thee I have another stedfast one, to uphold The portals of my state; and, for my own Pre-eminence and safety, I will strive To keep thy strength upon its pedestal. (I.ii.160-165) Though the metaphor is different, the idea is the same as in Duncan's speech to Macbeth (who, like Conrad, is the King's worst enemy): I have begun to plant thee, and will labour To make thee full of growing. Noble Banquo, Thou hast no less deserved nor must be known No less to have done so, let me enfold thee And hold thee to ray heart. (I.iv.28-32) Shakespeare's technique here of following a raid-line caesura with a new sentence or phrase which is run-on to a caesura in the following line, so that the line divisions and the thought divisions often fail to coincide, is followed closely by Keats in Otho*s speech above. In Otho. and in the fragment King Stephen, he seems to be using Shakespeare's later plays as his model for blank verse. That impression is confirmed when we compare his metrical characteristics with Shakespeare's. The most important of the metrical statistics used to study the authenticity and probable dates of Shakespeare*s plays are (1) the number of prose lines; (2) the number of blank verse lines; (3) the number of pentameter rhymes; ( I j . ) the percentage of run-on lines; ( 5) the percentage of feminine endings; and (6) the percentage of "speech endings," or speeches which end in the middle of a line.^ Of these, the first is of no value in studying Keats because the only prose in either of his plays is Auranthe*s short note in Otho (II.ii.55-62); and the number of blank verse lines is also insignificant because, except for that note, both plays are entirely in blank verse. The paucity of rhymes is interesting but of little value in studying Shake speare* s influence on Keats: in the 1826 lines of Otho and the 19U- lines of King Stephen, there are only sixteen rhyming lines, so few as to seem entirely accidental. Nowhere does Keats adopt Shakespeare*s technique of using a couplet to end a speech or a scene, nor do his few rhymes fall into any recognizable pattern. But though the first three characteristics have little significance for a comparative study, the last three are very useful. 1Thomas Marc Parrot, William Shakespeare: A Handbook (New York, 193^), pp. 2I 4.O-2I 4. 7; see also E. K. Chambers, William Shakespeare; A Study of Facts and Problems (Oxford, 1930); II, 397-^08. The information on Shakespeare*s metrics which follows is from Parrot*s tables, and I have used his methods to arrive at my figures for Keats*s metrics. The number of run-on lines in Otho varies from 18.33 per cent In V.lv to 36.69 per cent In IV.11; the average for the entire play Is 28.31 per cent. In King Stephen. they vary from 27.77 per cent In I.11 to 31.03 per cent In I.iv, the average being 29.89 per cent. The percentage for both plays together Is 28.6-6 per cent, and In neither play does any scene except the two extremes In Otho. listed above, vary more than six percentage points from that norm. Among Shakespeare*s plays, the percentage varies from a low of 8.1 In The Taming of the Shrew to a high of 6-6*3 in Henry VIII. with a generally consistent Increase from early plays to late. Thus the three parts of Henry VI have 10.U P©r cent, 11.i j . per cent, and 9.5 per cent run-on lines; the two parts of Henry IV have 22.8 per cent and 21.1 ; per cent; and The Tempest has 6.1.5 per cent. Richard III, a model for the opening soliloquy of Otho. has only 13.1 per cent; Richard II. a model for Auranthe*s soliloquy (IV.1.87-98), has 19.9 per cent. The great tragedies are much closer to Keats*s plays: Hamlet has 23.1 per cent; Lear. 29.3 per cent; and Macbeth. 3 6 .6 per cent. The number of Shakespeare*s lines containing feminine endings varies from 5.1 per cent in 1 Henry IV to 8 7 .6 per cent in A Winter*s Tale. The Henry VI plays contain 8.2 per cent, 13 .7 per cent, and 13 .7 per cent; the two parts of Henry IV contain 5.1 per cent and 16.3 per cent; and 178 Henry VIII contains ij.7.3 per oent. Though less consist ently than the run-on lines, the feminine endings Increase with some regularity In the later plays of Shakespeare. At first glance, Keats does not seem to have followed Shakespeare closely here: King Stephen contains only 5*67 per cent, and Otho has only 9.03 per cent. All his prob able models have more: Richard III has 19.5 per oent; Richard II. 11.0 per cent; Hamlet. 22.6 per cent; King Lear. 28.5 per cent; and Macbeth. 26.3 per cent. But Bate points out that Keats evidently made a deliberate effort to reduce the feminine endings in his poetry: the couplets of his first volume contain 2l± per cent, Endymlon has 5*25 per cent, Hyperion has only 1.9 per cent, and they are "almost non-existent in the more serious verse written after Hyperion until after the conclusion of Lamia" (Stylistic Development. p. 77). The percentages of feminine endings in Keats's plays represent a reversal of that trend and may therefore reflect the Influence of Shakespeare. In Shakespeare's early plays, very few speeches end In the middle of a line; the Henry VI plays have 0.5 per cent, 1.1 per cent, and 0.9 per cent of their speeches ending thus. Such plays of his mid-career as the two parts of Henry IV show an Increase to llj.,2 per cent and 16.8 per cent. Among the late plays, Cymbellne has 85.0 179 per cent; The Winter*a Tale. 8 7 .6 per cent; and Henry VIII. 72.1+. per cent. Keats* s probable models vary greatly: Richard III has only 2,9 per cent; Richard II. 7.3 per cent; Hamlet. $1,6 per cent; King Lear. 60.9 per cent; and Macbeth. 77.2 per cent. Though Keats does not reach such extremes, his two attempts In the drama show the Influence of Shakespeare*s later plays, for Otho has 1+8 .38 per cent of Its speeches ending In mld-llne, and King Stephen has 1+3.10 per cent, the two together averaging 1+7.90 per cent. Though Keats copied some of his rhetorical devices, par ticularly In his soliloquys, from the Richard plays, his metrics seem much closer to Shakespeare*s later plays. Though few critics have found much to admire In Otho the Great, most of them have a good word for King Stephen — and those who do, point out Its debt to Shakespeare. De Selincourt*s comment Is typical; he says that no author ”has reproduced with greater success the spirit which pervades the martial scenes In the early historical plays of Shakespeare. Indeed, reading the three brief battle scenes which open the fragment, one might well think him self to be reading Shakespeare, for the same excitement, p P. 555. See also Murry, Keats and Shakespeare. p. 202; Lowell, II, 362; Colvin. Keats, p. 179: and Bernice Slote, Keats and the Dramatic Principle (Univ. of Nebraska, 195&)* P* lll|V 180 bustle, high courage, and vaunting language are there that we find In the battle scenes of Richard III and the various Henry plays. But again, the debt Is not one of borrowed words and phrases but of borrowed techniques; even Finney (II, 730) can find only two possible echoes In the play. For the first, he quotes the First Captain*s description of Stephen: "He sole and lone maintains/ A hopeless bustle mid our swarming arms" (I.11.10-11) and that of the Second Captain, who calls Stephen "a fierce demon *nolnted safe from wounds,/ And mlsbaptlsed with a Christian name" (1.11.32-33). He Invites our comparison with Shakespeare*s description of Faulconbrldge In King John: That misbegotten devil, Faulconbrldge, In spite of spite, alone upholds the day. (V.iv.^-5) And he compares Stephen*s cry on the battlefield with Richard III*s similar plea. Stephen cries: "0 for a swordl/ I’m faint— a biting swordl A noble swordl— " (I.ill.5-6); though Keats has changed the item called for, the structure of his line is something like that of Shakespeare’s: "A horsel a horsel my kingdom for a horsel" (V.Iv.7). We are also reminded of Prince Hal’s search for a fresh weapon In 1 Henry IV (V.lil.li.0 ff.). But the parallels here are not very close, and there are no others listed by the scholars; yet every line of the play reminds us of Shakespeare. lQl The entrances and exits, the "alarums” off-stage, the description of the battle from a hill, and reports from messengers— all these techniques are borrowed from Shakespeare's battle scenes. Stephen's first speech, for example, as he points to his fleeing soldiers and says, . . .see, seel Yonder my chivalry, my pride of war, Wrench'd with an iron hand from firm array, Are routed loose about the plashy meads, Of honour forfeit. 0 that my known voice Could reach your dastard ears, and fright you morel Fly, cowards, flyl (I.i.3-9) seems modeled after Julius Caesar, as Cassius stands on a similar hill to view a similar rout: 0, look, Titinius, look, the villains flyl Myself have to mine own turn'd enemy: This ensign here of mine was turning back; I slew the coward, and did take it from him. (V.iii.1-10 And a few lines later, Cassius is warned to flee, just as Stephen is. But Stephen is made of sterner stuff; instead of committing suicide like Cassius, he makes a boast (I.i.27-36)— which he admits is "a brag"— much like those of Hotspur (see I Henry IV. IV.i.112-123; V.ii.93-101; V.iv.68 ff.); and then he fights like Macbeth (in both Act I and Act V) against great odds. His exploits are reported, like Macbeth's, by a Captain and a lesser soldier, and in similar terms. The Captain says of Stephen: 182 He sole and lone maintains A hopeless bustle mid our swarming arms, And with a nimble savageness attacks, Escapes, makes fiercer onset, then anew Eludes death, giving death to most that dare Trespass within the circuit of his swordl (1.11.10-15) As In Macbeth, the second report Is fresher news of the same sort; the "2nd Knight” describes Stephen thus: • . .he Is no man, But a fierce demon, *nolnted safe from wounds, And mlsbaptized with a Christian name. . . . He shames our victory. His valour still Keeps elbow-room amid our eager swords, And holds our bladed falchions all aloof. His gleaming battle-axe, being slaughter-sick, Smote on the morion of a Flemish knight. . . . (1.11.31 ff.) So Macbeth, In the first of the reports which "came as thick as hall” (1.111.97), la described as equally unawed by odds, for when Macdonwald was suddenly reinforced, Macbeth, Disdaining fortune, with his brandish*d steel, Which smoked with bloody execution, Like valour*s minion carved out his passage Till he faced the slave. . . . (1.11.17-20) In the second report, Macbeth, similarly outmanned, wins against "terrible numbers" (I.11.51), so that he Is called "Bellona*s bridegroom" (I.11.54)• We aee here, both In Macbeth and In King Stephen, the same kind of caesuras followed by run-on phrases that we saw In Otho. Macbeth "carved out his passage" with "brandish*d steel" hot from killing, as Stephen first keeps a deadly "circuit" clear with his sword, and later with a "gleaming 183 battle-axe” which is "slaughter-sick,” makes ”elbow-room." Both fighters seem charmed: Macbeth Is "Bellona's bride groom, lapp'd In proof,” while Stephen Is ”a fierce demon, •nolnted safe from wounds.” And Stephen, a few lines later, wishes for a sword from "Bellona's gleaming armoury.” (1.111.2). The repetition of the name of the Goddess of War Is the only echo here, but It Is clear that Keats Is following Shakespeare's techniques and Images closely. How closely he Is following Shakespeare may be seen by comparing Caroline Spurgeon's discoveries about Shakespeare's imagery^ with the imagery In Keats's dramas. The most striking fact to emerge from such a study Is the abundance of Keats's images. By Miss Spurgeon's count, there are 6512 images In the 101,8^8 lines of the ^Shakespeare's Imagery. And What It Tells Us (Oxford, 1935; Boston, 1956). In order to compare Keats's 369 images with Shakespeare's 6512. I have converted Miss Spurgeon's figures (In the 195° edition) for numbers of Images Into percentages of the total Images In the canon or in particular plays, using her table on p. 361 and her charts on unnumbered pages In the back of the book. In counting Keats's Images and assigning them to categories, I have followed as closely as possible the methods she discusses on pp. 359-360; and I have used the definition of an Image which she offers on p. 5: ”every kind of simile, as well as every kind of what Is really compressed simile— metaphor,” Including not only sensory imagery but analogy as well. Thus, in Otho. both the visual Image of sycophants "Curling, like spaniels," around the King's feet (1.111.82) and the analogy of Albert's plots to eggs "Fresh hatch'd in my ambition's eagle-nest” (1.1.39) are counted as Images. 181* . thirty-seven plays in the Shakespeare canon, an average of 176 images per play, or one image for every 15.61* lines. Richard II has 21*7 images in 2755 lines, an average of one for every 11.15 lines; and Richard III has 23I * in 3600 lines, or one for every 15.38 lines. Hamlet has 279 in 3762 lines, one for every 13.1*8 lines. King Lear has 193 in 3205 lines, or one for each 16.60 lines. Macbeth has 208 in 2081* lines, or one for each 10.02 lines— second in concentration only to Trollus and Cresslda. which has 339 in 3329 lines, an average of one for each 9.81 lines. Otho. however, has 315 images in 1826 lines, a concentra tion of one image for each 5.79 lines; and King Stephen has 51* in its 191* lines, an even greater concentration of one image for each 3.59 lines. It is not unusual in Otho to read such crowded lines as those in which Ludolph refers to Auranthe as a demon in one line and follows with images of a sacrificial animal, a criminal at the bar of justice, a stinging insect, a worm, and a scorpion: . . . that demon? Not sot Not She is in temple-stall, Being garnish*d for the sacrifice, and I, The Prince of Justice, will immolate her Upon the altar of wrathl She stings me throughl— Even as the worm doth feed upon the nut, So she, a scorpion, preys upon my brainl I feel her gnawing heret (V.v.152-159) Similarly, in King Stephen we see mixed the images of a hunted beast in a snare, an eagle flying in the face of a storm, and a swimmer fighting a flood: 185 Now I thank heaven I am In the tolls, That soldiers may bear witness how my arm Can burst the meshes. Not the eagle more Loves to beat up against a tyrannous blast, Than I to meet the torrent of my foes. (I.1.27-31) Such Image-packed passages, the first containing six different Images In seven lines, and the second containing three In five lines, are matched by various passages In Shakespeare. Hamlet, for example, In his most famous soliloquy, asks Whether *tis nobler In the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, Or to take arms against a sea of troubles, And by opposing end them? (III.1.57-60) Macbeth, too, mixes his images In profusion; he fears that the virtues of Duncan Will plead like angels, trumpet-tongued, against The deep damnation of his taking-off; And pity, like a naked new-born babe, Striding the blast, or heaven*s cherubim, horsed Upon the sightless couriers of the air, Shall blow the horrid deed In every eye, That tears shall drown the wind. (I.vii.19-25) Though Keats nowhere so mixes his metaphors that we get such incongruous pictures as that of a new-born babe "striding the blast," he does seem to have been so Impressed with the more heavily laden passages of Shakespeare that he packed his own lines with such Imagery, not noticing that Shakespeare also has long passages with very little Imagery. From Miss Spurgeon*s Chart V, which shows "The Range 186 and Subjects of Shakespeare*a Images in Their Exact Pro- portion,” one can figure the percentage of images referring to particular subjects. Making a similar compilation for Keats*s plays and comparing the two provides added evidence of the influence of Shakespeare on Keats*s attempts at drama. The following chart shows how closely Keats*s percentages and Shakespeare*s match in the eight major categories presented by Miss Spurgeon: % in % in i a in % in Category Otho Stephen both Shakespeare Nature 23.2 18.5 22.5 17.5 Animals 19.0 18.5 19.0 15.9 Domestic 21^.8 1.9 2 1.J+ 16.9 Body 29.8 18.5 27.9 16.3 Daily Life 18.7 21^.1 19.5 20.7 Learning 18.1 20.k 1 8. k 4.0 Arts 2.9 5.6 3.3 b. 0 Imaginative^- , 8.3 llp+TF 2 0. 1 4. 127.9 10.0 114. 2.0 8 4 113.7 Though these general categories are less useful than certain of their specific subdivisions, the chart reveals some interesting parallels. The fact that all the columns ^In this category, both Miss Spurgeon and I have included personifications, abstract analogies, and other imaginative images which do not properly fall into any of the other categories. 187 add up to more than 100 per cent is a result of linages referring to two or more objects. The greater figure for Keats may Indicate both some variation In Miss Spurgeon's and my methods of assigning Images and the greater pro liferation of images In Keats's work. Since there are many more such double images In Keats, It is natural that in most categories his figures will be higher. The highest percentage in Shakespeare is under "Daily Life," which is also the highest for King Stephen. Second for Shakespeare is "Nature," which is third for both Otho and King Stephen and second for the combined imagery of the two. Third for the imagery in Shakespeare is "Domestic," which is second for Otho. Fourth for Shakespeare is "Body," which is first for Otho. third for Stephen, and first for the two combined. Thus, though the imagery does not coincide exactly, there are close correspondences. Parallels in specific images show the influence more clearly. The following chart compares Shakespeare's and Keats's uses of certain specific images and groups of images. The classifications, adapted from Miss Spurgeon's study, include all such images or groups of images which account for 5 per cent or more of the images in Otho. They are arranged according to the order of percentages in Otho. 188 Type of Image % in Otho % in Stephen % in both % in Shakespeare Sickness & Medicine 11.7U 5.55 10.81+ U.22 Religion & Superstition 9.21 5.55 8.67 2.81+ Personifi cation 8.25 20.37 10.03 7.29 Pour-footed Animals 8.2 5 li.ii 8.67 7.1U Death 7 - 9i+ 1.85 7.05 • 81+ War 7.62 1I 4..81 8.67 2.76 Human Body 7.62 1.85 6.78 2.61 Stinging In sects, Rep- 5.81 tiles, Monsters 5.55 5.69 3.38 Celestial Bodies 6.35 3.70 5.96 2.61 Mythology 5.71 7.U1 5.96 3.92 Miss Spurgeon (p. 316) tells us that the dominating image In Hamlet is that of sickness and medicine, there being twenty such images in that tragedy, as when the King compares his neglect of Hamlet’s madness with that of "the owner of a foul disease" who, "To keep it from divulging, let It feed/ Even on the pith of life" (IV.i. 21-23). There are ten such images in Macbeth, most of them containing the idea that the country itself is sick, as when the beleagured tyrant says to the doctor: If thou couldst, doctor, cast The water of my land, find her disease, And purge It to a sound and pristine health, I would applaud thee to the very echo. (V.111.50-53) Richard II has ten such Images, Richard III and King Lear have nine each, and Corlolanus has seventeen--and all these plays, as we have seen, were used by Keats for other elements In Otho. There are 275 such Images In all of Shakespeare, or I;.22 per cent, but the percentage In Hamlet is 7.17 P®r cent. In Otho. thirty-seven of the Images, or II.7I 4. per cent, refer to sickness or medicine, and In King Stephen, three, or 5.55 per cent, are on that topic. For example, Otho calls victory "the best physician for the spleen" (1.11.8); Ludolph tells Sigifred, "You have medlcln*d me/ With good advices" (II.1.9-10); and Auranthe calls Conrad "A master plague in the midst of miseries" (V.1.2). Though such Images may have come naturally to Keats, with his medical training and his experience with illness among his family and friends, the thirty-seven such Images in Otho may also show the influence of Shakespeare's wide use of the same imagery. Related to sickness are the stinging of insects, the biting of snakes, the ugly presence of toads, and attacks of monsters. There are in Otho ten references to stinging Insects, three to reptiles, and five to fabulous monsters whose presence means death. In one, as we have seen, 190 Ludolph thinks of Auranthe as a "scorpion” who "preys upon" his brain so that he can "feel her gnawing" there (V.v. 158-159). In a similar image, Richard II thinks of his defecting nobles as "Snakes, in my heart-blood warra*d, that sting my heart" (III.ii.131); and Macbeth cries out, "0, full of scorpions is my mind, dear wife!" (III.ii.36). Albert tells Keats's villains that he would "sooner crush and grind/ A brace of toads, than league with them" (IV.i. 163-l6lj.); Othello compares Cassio and Desdemona to "foul toads" in a "cistern" (IV.ii.6l). Ludolph uses an image of a cockatrice and a spider for Auranthe: 0 cockatrice, I have youI Whither wander those fair eyes To entice the devil to your help, that he May change you to a spider, so to crawl Into some cranny to escape my wrath? (V. 11.36 —1+0) A similar image appears in Macbeth when the young sons of Duncan fear to remain in Macbeth's castle, where our fate, Hid in an auger-hole, may rush, and seize us. (II.iii.27-28) That such images are common in Shakespeare is clear from Miss Spurgeon's Chart V, which indicates 90 references to insects, 80 to reptiles, and 50 to fabulous monsters such as the cockatrice. The percentage of Shakespeare's total images dealing with such subjects is 3-385 Otho*s per centage is 5. 8 1. The number of personifications and the references to four-footed animals show a close correspondence of Keats's imagery to that of Shakespeare's plays in general, but how closely the Imagery of Otho is related to Macbeth in particular may be seen in two more types of images not shown on the chart. The first, references to devils and demons, is related to those of sickness and evil creatures. In Macbeth, the appearance of the three witches in the first scene and their great Importance to the machinations of the plot keep us aware of the forces of Evil throughout the play. But even omitting all references to and appear ances of the witches, there are eighteen Images of demons or devils in Macbeth, most of them applied to the tyrant himself: he has lost his ’ ’ eternal Jewel’ ’ to "the common enemy of man" (III.i.68-69) and is called "devilish Macbeth" (IV.ill.117), a "hell-kite" (IV.iii.2l8) who bears "a hotter name/ Than any is in hell" (V.vii.6-7). Those eighteen images make up 8.65 per cent of the total Images in Macbeth: there are seven similar Images in Otho. a percentage of 2.2 2, but they are all in the latter half of the play, so that their effect is doubled. Most of them are applied to Auranthe and Conrad, with their "devil's parley" (IV.i.133) and "demon's plot" (IV.i.138). Auranthe's beautiful eyes can "entice the devil" (V.ii. 3 8), and she is "that demon" who, like a scorpion, has been preying on Ludolph*s brain (V.v.l52 ff.). The images 192 are not so striking as those In Macbeth, but their effect In the latter half of the play, combined with the Images of sickness and evil creatures, reminds us strongly of Shakespeare1s play. One Image In Macbeth so Impressed Keats, as we have seen, that he used It three times In the letters, slightly misquoting each time Macbeth*s image for freedom: "as broad and general as the casing air" (III.lv.23). He uses the same image of the freedom of air six times in Otho. often in striking ways. Ludolph, after the rebellion, sues for forgiveness, asking for a "lenient banishment," for permission to pass "to the wide air again" (II.i.82- 8lj.). When Albert dies, Ludolph laments that his intended victim has escaped vengeance and is now "free as the dusk air" (V.ii.31). Old Otho, worried over his son*s illness, is advised to walk outside, where "the refreshing air/ Will blow one half of your sad doubts away" (V.iv.59-61). And in two striking reverse-images, Ludolph speaks of dying "a suffocating death" in stifling stillness (V.i.l8-30), and his last words— and the last words of the play— are "Father, what sultry airi" (V.V.I9I 4 . ) . After the battle in King Stephen. Gloucester speaks of lifting up "bruised visors" to "take the flattering freshness of the air" (I.ii.1-2). Although Keats may have obtained his image of the free, refreshing air elsewhere, the fact that he 193 quotes the passage from Macbeth three times in his letters (I, 201; I, 269; and II, 82) is evidence that this, too, Is a borrowing from Shakespeare. Much more vital, however, than the kind of borrowing we see in Otho and King Stephen are Shakespeare's pervasive influences on the odes. The "Ode to Psyche” was written in April, 1819, the "Ode to Autumn" In September, and all the others during the month of May. All were written, therefore, before King Stephen, and all but one before Otho the Great. Though not the last works of Keats, they are the greatest, and they naturally show the most Important influences. Though they have very few echoes of words or phrases, they owe subtle and profound debts to the poet from whom Keats learned his greatest lessons: the concepts of Intensity, movement of imagery, the oneness of Truth and Beauty, Negative Capability, and the accept ance of grief by allegorizing it. Even the indefatigible Mr. Finney ha3 found only two "echoes" in the odes, and both are doubtful indeed. He believes that the "Ode on a Grecian Urn" owes something to the first quatrain of Shakespeare's Sonnet XII, which Keats quoted with such approval in his letter to Reynolds on November 22, 1817 (see above, p. 57). The "lofty trees" which are "barren of leaves" are the source, 1 9 1 4 - Finney thinks (II, 639-6I 4 .O), of the picture of the trees in Keats*s ode: "nor ever can those trees be bare.” ”Bare” and "barren” are close, both images have the quality of focusing past, present, and future in the moment, and both poems are partially about "the mutability of life," as Finney says, but the picture of trees is too commonplace for us to call this a "reminiscence." Even less valid is his comment (II, 709) on the deeply moving "Ode to Autumn": The phraseology of the beautiful image of Autumn "Sitting careless on a granary floor," his rslol "hair soft lifted by the winnowing wind," was derived from a passage in Shakespeare*s Henry IV. Part I rslol (IV.i. 19l*-195) — We shall be winnow* d with so rough a wind That even our corn shall seem as light as chaff. . . The Keats who was capable of the magnificent performance of the odes of this climactic year certainly did not need to turn to Shakespeare to learn that winnowing goes on at harvest-time, and that the wind can have that effect, and that what is winnowed is grain (or "corn," in British terminology). The poem was inspired by real "stubble plains" which he saw during his autumn walks at Winchester (see Letters. II, 16?); surely so observant a poet as Keats was also aware of the processes which made that stubble. Nowhere in this poem does Keats use the word "corn," which Finney has italicized, and the "winnowing wind" which plays so gently with the long hair of Autumn surely is not related to "so rough a wind" as Shakespeare describes--a wind which blows the grain with the chaff, a wind used as a metaphor for the King*s suspicious wrath against rebels (In 2 Henry IV. not 1 Henry IV. as Finney tags It). The comparison of Shakespeare1s lines with Keats*s seems as invalid as the concept of Autumn here as male, evidently the Roman God of Autumn, despite the feminine qualities of the hair "soft-lifted” and the feminine tone of the whole. Richard Harter Fogle^ points out that the Image of the gleaner is apt to be feminine, as in Ruth "amid the alien corn" in the "Ode to a Nightingale." Keats must also have had in mind Ceres, who as Goddess of Agriculture would naturally have such habits and provide such beauty as Autumn here, as he learned in the masque of The Tempest, where Ceres is called Juno*s "bounteous sister" and sings this song: Earth*s increase, foison plenty, Barns and garners never empty, Vines with clustering bunches growing, Plants with goodly burthen bowing. (IV. 1.110-111*) A few lines later he found "Naiads, of the windring brooksand "sunburnt sicklemen" who come "from the 5The Imagery of Keats and Shelley (Chapel Hill, North Caro 1 ina, 19f>l|J, p. £8 n. &L. 128. Craig (p. 1266 n.) conjectures either "wandering" or "winding" for "windring." Keats read "wand*ring" in his edition and underlined the couplet in which it appears (Spurgeon, Keats and Shakespeare, p. 80). 196 furrow” (11. 131^-135); he could therefore link Ceres with the bounty and most of the activities which we see In his ode. Regardless of his Intention with that Image, how ever, It Is clear that the debt of this ode~-and the others— to Shakespeare lies much deeper than mere verbal echoes. One element of that debt Is, Indirectly, the form of the odes, the marvelously effective and appropriate stanza which Keats worked out for himself from his experiments with the sonnet form. We have seen how his study of Shakespeare, begun In April, 1817, led to a shift from the Petrarchan form, which he had used exclusively until that time, to the Shakespearean form In January, l8l8. After the first Shakespearean sonnet, ”When I Have Fears," he wrote only four Petrarchan sonnets, one In February and three in July, l8l8; he wrote a total of sixteen sonnets in the Shakespearean form. But skilled as he had become in that form, he was not satisfied with it. In a section of his long journal letter to George and Georgians, written April 30 and May 3, 1819 (II, 10lj.-108), he presents two variations on the Shakespearean form: the first sonnet "On Fame," with the rhyme scheme abab odcd efeg gf: and "To Sleep," with the rhyme scheme abab cdcd be efef. He then gives his newly composed "Ode to Psyche" and follows it with the important statement: 197 I have been endeavoring to discover a better aonnet stanza than we have. The legitimate does not suit the language over-well from the pouncing rhymes--the other kind appears too elegaic--and the couplet at the end of it has seldom a pleasing effect— I do not pretend to have succeeded--it will explain itself-- If by dull rhymes our english must be chain*d And, like Andromeda, the Sonnet sweet, Fetter*d in spite of pained Loveliness; Let us find out, if we must be constrain*d Sandals more interwoven & complete To fit the naked foot of Poesy; Let us inspect the Lyre & weigh the stress Of every chord & see what may be gained By ear industrious & attention meet, Misers of sound & syllable no less, Than Midas of his coinage, let us be Jealous of dead leaves in the bay wreath Crown; So if we may not let the Muse be free, She will be bound with Garlands of her own. His comments make his experiments clear: he wants first to get rid of the end couplet, which Garrod says "not even Shakespeare manages effectively” (Keats. p. 86), and second, to eliminate the ’ ’ elegiac” effect of the three alternate-rhyming quatrains of the Shakespearean sonnet. The pentameter quatrain in abab was often used, as Bate (Stylistlc Development, p. 128) points out, for such poems as Keats*s ”0n Death,” and it had been generally spoken of as the ”elegiac stanza” since its use in Gray*s popular ’ ’ Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard.” Three such stately stanzas together tended, Keats felt, to give a too-solemn tone to all Shakespearean sonnets. The Petrarchan form, on the other hand, displeased him because of the "pouncing rhyme,” the interweaving of lines which have the effect of couplets, as lines 2-3, b~5» an(* 6~7 In the octavo: abbaabba. The mild changes from the traditional Shakespearean form in the first two experi ments, "On Fame” and ”To Sleep,” did not satisfy him either; though both get rid of the concluding couplet, both contain two "correct” quatrains and lose something of the special organizational effect of three quatrains to advance the thought in three stages and a concluding couplet to clinch the idea. His third experiment is therefore extreme, with the rhyme scheme abc abd cab ade de. This effect of four units (of three lines each) to advance the thought while a final non-rhyming pair of lines clinches it, somewhat in the manner of the Shakespearean couplet, was not satisfying, either: ”1 do not pretend to have succeeded,” he says in his explanatory note— and he never used the form again. In the midst of this experimentation with the sonnet form lies the ”Ode to Psyche," framed in the letter between the first two experimental sonnets and the last. G-arrod, in his lectures at Oxford in 1925 and in his volume Keats in 1926, was the first to notice the significance of the location of the "Ode to Psyche”--for that ode, like the rest of the great odes of 1819, la, in its stanza form, a continuation of the experimentation with the sonnet. It is as though Keats realized that all his experiments would 199 not make a better sonnet form, but that the elements which had attracted him to both forms could be fused Into a stanza uniquely suited to his mature utterances. Garrod*s Is still the best discussion of the ode stanza, though Bate (pp. 125 ff.) has a lucid account which goes beyond a corroboration of Garrod to demolish completely the suggestions of M. R. R i d l e y , 7 who attempts to prove that Keats, in his comments on the weaknesses of the sonnet, was talking about the couplets formed In ternally by the Petrarchan octave and the "pouncing rhymes" of the alternating abab quatrains of the Shakespearean form. Ridley thus twists "legitimate" to mean "Shake spearean" rather than "Petrarchan," a position which Bate proves to be at odds with critical literature of Keats*s day. Garrod analyzes the rhyme scheme of the "Ode to Psyche" thoroughly to show that each of the four stanzas of the printed version (the letter-version divides the same lines Into only two stanzas) begins with a Shake spearean octave, except that the third stanza has the variation abab cddc Instead of the usual abab cdcd and there are only three feet in lines 6 and 8 of stanza 11, 7 1 Keats*s Craftsmanship: A Study In Poetic Development (Oxford, 1933), PP. 202-20^. 200 The first fourteen lines of stanza i make a complete Shakespearean sonnet except that line 12 is short and the pattern of the sestet is a variant, effe ef. Stanza ii (except for the two short lines) is a normal Shakespearean sonnet, without a concluding couplet. And the fourth stanza contains a Shakespearean sonnet in its first fourteen lines, except for a variation in the placement of the couplet, which comes here after the octave instead of the sestet: abab cdcd ee fgfg. Varied as these stanzas are in length and rhyme-scheme, they all seem based on the experiments with the Shakespearean sonnet. They are, Garrod believes, "less the variety of the master in lyric than the vacillation of one who handles his instrument perplexedly" (p. 8 9). But if Keats is perplexed in the "Ode to Psyche," he is not in the remainder of the odes: all follow essen tially the same stanza form, and none but the "Ode to a Nightingale" shows varying line lengths. Even in that ode, the variations are regular: the eighth line of each stanza has only three feet. Except for a slight variation in the "Ode to Autumn," the odes after the "Ode to Psyche" all have a ten-line stanza made up of a Shakespearean quatrain followed by a Petrarchan sestet. The form for the "Ode to a Nightingale," the "Ode on Melancholy," and the "Ode on Indolence" is abab cde cde; the "Ode on a Grecian Urn" has 201 a slight variation In the sestet: abab cde dee. The "Ode to Autumn,” written four months after the others, has an eleven-line stanza; it differs from the others in providing two rhyming lines to replace line 9 of the "normal” ode stanza. The first stanza has the form abab cde dcce: the other two are in the form abab cde cdde. The variation between the first and the latter two stanzas is accidental, Garrod thinks; and both forms provide the same added line without forcing a new rhyme sound. Despite the variations, all the odes retain (1) the Shakespearean quatraih; (2) a Petrarchan sestet (plus, in the "Ode to Autumn,” one extra line); and (3) a last line which rhymes with line 7* They all effectively eliminate both the "pouncing rhyme" of the Petrarchan octave and the elegiac effect of repeated Shakespearean quatrains, along with the unpleasing couplet. Like the sonnets from which they grew, therefore, the odes of Keats owe much of their structural effectiveness to the study of Shakespeare, Into the ode form, he put all of importance that he had learned from Shakespeare: the four major odes reveal, more than any other poems of Keats, the various forms of intensity; they show us the relationship of truth and beauty which that intensity reveals; they present state ments of Negative Capability and demonstrate various facets of the concept in action; they show most clearly the 202 concept of movement of imagery, the moat important of hia poetic axioms; and they also ahow— though not ao well aa "La Belle Dame aana Merci," "The Eve of St. Agnea," and "Lamia"--the habit of allegorizing aorrowa to make them acceptable. Several of those elements are found in the "Ode to a Nightingale." The aching numbness of the poet contrasted to the "light-winged" bird*a "full-throated ease" begins for us one of the most intense emotional experiences in literature. In stanza ii, he illustrates what he saw in Shakespeare's sonnets— "fine things said unintentionally, in the intensity of working out conceits." Hia purpose, after all, ia not to hail the glories of wine, but nowhere in literature do we have any more evocative picture of the delights of drinking than the "beaded bubbles winking at the brim"— in which we see and feel the richness of the liquor before it is consumed; and the "purple-stained mouth"--in which is concentrated the physical pleasure of the drinker after the glass has been drained. The care fully chosen and concrete despairs of the third stanza condense all the tragedy of life--especially Keats*s life-- into ten short lines. Where in poetry is a more poignant line, in the light of the poet's recent experience at the death-bed of his brother, and of his own death which he feared would not be long in coming, than "Where youth grows 203 pale, and speotre-thin, and dies"? And the act of poetic intensity in the next stanza, in which he leaves the real world of pain for a moment "on the viewless wings of Poeay" to Join the bird in its ideal world of intense beauty, is— next to the even greater flight of fancy in the "Ode on a Grecian Urn”— the best example we have of that "intensity which makes all disagreeables evaporate" in the face of beauty. The sights and sounds and odors of stanza v, as the poet experiences the world of the bird within the "verdurous glooms" of the forest, are conveyed by language exemplifying the physical intensity which Bate sees as the most vital element in Keats’s poetry. And the total im pression of that experience is summed up in one eplthet--a past participle of the sort he was particularly fond of— which relates the moment of forgetfulness to the real world of death and to the following stanza, for the darkness of the tree is an "embalmed darkness." The sixth stanza, with its gentle longing for quiet death, is muted with a re strained intensity which makes us think of the line about death from "Why Did I Laugh Tonight?": "But Death lntenser--Death is Life’s high meed." The death-wlsh builds quietly to the lines, To cease upon the midnight with no pain, While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad In such an ecstasy! 20 1 4 . And suddenly the poet realizes how much of beauty he would be leaving: Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears In vain— To thy high requiem become a sod. The sound and multiple connotations of that final— and very lntense--word "sod" make death suddenly no longer appeal ing, and the desire to die Is past. Now the poet, In stanza vll, contrasts his own mor tality with the eternal existence of the beauty of the blrd*s song— a beauty which for a moment has made "all disagreeables evaporate" in his Intense reaction to it. The plight of lonely Ruth is made vivid by the specific physical picture we get of her gleaning the "alien corn"; but that grief Is transformed by the beauty of the Imagery. Particularly forceful In this stanza is the line "No hungry generations tread thee down," with Its dual con notations. In one meaning, "generations" concentrates all the busy procreative activity of mortal creatures, in contrast to the calm Immortality of beauty Illustrated by the eternal song of the nightingale; and the epithet "hungry" thus connotes both sexual hunger and the intense and always denied desire of mortals for Immortality. But the line has a more deeply personal— and poignant— meaning for Keats. His mother and one brother had died of tuberculosis, and the poet himself, with his medical knowledge, surely felt that he had only a short time before 205 the disease claimed him. Is he not in this line thinking of the heritage of sickness he had reoelved from the "hungry generations" before him? The griefs stirred up by that Intense term are forgotten momentarily, however, in the beauty of the blrd*s song, which leads Keats out of himself to contemplate Ruth and "faery lands forlorn." But the intensity of the passage is broken by the word "forlorn." Keats is brought back from his contemplation of beauty to the real world; the flight of intensity which has made a thing of beauty of his grief and thus taken him out of pain for a few brief moments, has failed him in the end: Forlornl the very word is like a bell To toll me back from thee to my sole selft Adieu! the fancy cannot cheat so well As she is fam'd to do, deoelvlng elf. Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades Past the near meadows, over the still stream, Up the hill-side; and now »tls buried deep In the next valley-glades: Was It a vision, or a waking dream? Pled is that music:--Do I wake or sleep? "Fled is that music" is a perfect example of the "setting of imagery" which leaves the reader in "the luxury of twilight." It seems probable that one reason the Nightingale ode, despite Its great beauty and force, does not entirely succeed in relieving Keats's sorrows is that it is not entirely objective; he has not entirely "allegorized" his grief. He has achieved that empathlc element of Negative Capability which allows him to imagine himself into a 206 position by the bird*a side, so that he experiences In rich physloal detail the "verdurous glooms" and "soft incense," but he has failed to lose all his own identity in that process. Though stanza ill objectifies to some extent the death of his brother and his troubles with Fanny Brawne, in stanza vi, after the flight of intensity to the bird's side, he still reflects intensely on his own griefs without objectifying them--or, in his expression, making an "allegory" of them, as he did in "La Belle Dame sans Merci." By an act of intensity, he is able to make a thing of beauty and thus gain some relief; but it is not so great as that he receives from the more thoroughly objective odes, such as the "Ode on Melancholy." The "Ode on Melancholy," like the Nightingale ode, contains a quiet intensity of mood, and like that ode, it contains a rejection of the death-wish. But though in the Nightingale ode Keats loses himself for a moment in the beauty of the bird's song and the Intense power of the poetic imagination, in the "Ode on Melancholy" he reaches an acceptance of the sorrow which he has found to be an inevitable accompaniment of life. And again, that accept ance comes through the creation of beauty. The technique is more successful than in "Ode to a Nightingale" because the griefs here, though highly personal, have been com pletely objectified. Though they are those which have come 207 to Keata during the laat few months, they are universalized, hence allegorized, and can be accepted because they are framed In beauty. The three stanzas of this short poem exemplify very well the movement of Imagery Keats discussed In his second "axiom." The first stanza presents In specific Images a denial of the death-wlsh; death Is not the answer because It will "drown the wakeful anguish of the soul." The poet prefers to face the griefs of life, accept the "melancholy fit" when It falls--because he has learned that the con templation of beauty will assuage that grief. The Imagery of stanza 11 builds through descriptions of natural beauty to the beauty most Intense of all for Keats at this time— the beauty of woman, for if thy mistress some rich anger shows, Emprlson her soft hand, and let her rave, And feed deep, deep, upon her peerless eyes. Now the intensity of Imagery has reached a climax: Keats Is ready to present the truth that his months of love for Fanny Brawne have taught him: that joy and sorrow are Inextricably mingled In this life. Even that beauty the contemplation of which had been such joy, which had allowed him to accept whatever truth he found in life, which had "made all disagreeables evaporate," was itself as fleeting as joy. The picture here of joy, "whose hand Is ever at his lips / Bidding adieu," Is especially Intense, 208 for Into it is packed the ephemeral quality of all pleas ures, no matter how Intense and "aching"; even in the very nature of pleasure, he now realizes, pain is present: Ay, in the very temple of Delight Veil*a Melancholy has her sovran shrine, Though seen of none save him whose strenuous tongue Can hurst Joy*s grape against his palate fine. . . Yet, if pain is so much a part of joy, then the opposite must be true: it is only the Intensely alive person, the poet, for example, who knows the inner temple of Melan choly, because only he has known the greatest joys. Keats realizes here the great worth of experience: he accepts grief because it comes as a result of the same experience that brings joy. The "mistress" of stanza ii tells us that his thoughts may be partially, at least, on love and his mingled delight and despair in his relationship with Fanny Brawne. And here as in "The Eve of St. Agnes" and "Lamia," he chooses to know the full pleasure of love despite its inevitable ending in despair. That despair, he has learned, can finally be transmuted into beauty and be accepted. After reaching that moment of highest in tensity of mood and climax of thought, the Intensity drops off into the quiet acceptance of the last two lines: His soul shall taste the sadness of her might, And be among her cloudy trophies hung. That intensity of mood, also, it should be noted, has brought together the idea of beauty and the truth of its 209 ephemeral quality, and In that union of beauty and truth, Keats has told us, lies the poet's ability to acoept what experience brings to him. Thus, In the "setting of Imagery" In the last two lines, we have an Illustration of Keats's second axiom, and the entire stanza illustrates the oneness of beauty and truth and the Idea of acceptance which are parts of the Negative Capability concept. Keats's third "axiom," on the naturalness of great poetry, says that It must come to the poet "as naturally as the Leaves to the tree." That natural flowing of one's experience Into poetry Is best seen In the last of his odes, "To Autumn," whloh was written spontaneously after an autumn walk In the "stubble fields" of Winchester on September 19, 1819. Two days later he tells Reynolds: I never lik'd stubble fields so much as now— Aye better than the chilly green of the spring. Somehow a stubble plain looks warm . . . this struck me so much In my Sunday's walk that I composed upon It. (II, 167) He enclosed the ode In a letter (II, 170) to Woodhouse written the same day as that to Reynolds. The experience of the walk was evidently transmuted Immediately to poetry; what results Is a poem which flows naturally out of ex perience— thus Illustrating the third axiom— and which Is organized Into a movement of the imagery which illustrates the second axiom. There Is, on the surface, no Illustra tion of Negative Capability, of the ability of the poet to move out of himself, because the poem, although 210 objectively presented, Is a reaction of the poet to his own surroundings. There Is no allegory of his agonies here, either; rather the poem Is a quiet, calm acceptance of all that experience has to offer. Contrasted with the lush vegetation of Endvmlon and the springtime verdure of the n0de to a Nightingale," this poem searches out and In tensifies the beauties of fall, when the colors are muted and the tempo of life slowed down. Keats had not overcome his problems; the letters of the period still show his financial worries and his frustrations with Fanny; but he had finished "Lamia" the month before, and was at the moment engaged on a revision of "The Eve of St. Agnes"; he had allegorized In those poems the wprst of his griefs, and now for a moment was able to accept quietly the vicissi tudes of dally experience. The peaceful "Ode to Autumn," therefore, though it does not Illustrate that act of allegorizing grief and accepting It by framing It in beauty, does show the relief that such functioning of Negative Capability can bring. The poem is a quiet one; we do not get here the intensity of mood that we see In the griefs of the "Ode to a Nightingale" or the "Ode on Melancholy." But there Is. Intensity of Imagery throughout the three short stanzas, for all the attributes of autumn that could be known to a sensitive, sensuous poet like Keats are packed Into those three stanzas. The first stanza presents intensely the "mellow fruitfulness" of the season: its rich harvests come from a "conspiracy" of sun and season and result in an almost excessive bounty. The conspirators "load and bless" the vines (my Italics throughout); they cause the apple boughs to "bend with apples" on the "moss1d cottage-trees." The fruit is not merely ripe but as ripe as can be: filled "with ripeness to the core." The sun and the autumn "swell the gourd" and (in an excellent example of an intense verb) "plump the hazel shells/ With a sweet kernel," so that they seem to be bursting with their store. And the "flowers for the bees" are "budding more./ And still more." so that the bees1 cells are "pter-brlmm1 d" with honey, and it seems to us, as to the bees, that the bounty of autumn will never cease. In this stanza Keats has said all that can be said about the physical gifts of autumn, the harvest time. The physically Intense lines and phrases almost overload the stanza with the sense of bounty. So thorough is that exploration of the tangible rewards of autumn in stanza i that we almost lose sight of the fact that the stanza, like the whole poem, is addressed to &n abstraction, the season itself, barely personified at first. But in the phrase "bosom-friend" and the act of conspiracy with the sun we are permitted slight glimpses of the figure of the personified season, and the physical 212 bounties, we realize, are couched In transitive verbs, actions of which the season (with the sun) Is the subject. We are thus unobtrusively prepared in the first stanza for the stronger personification in the second, the intensifi cation of imagery which allows us to see vividly the figure of Autumn at her lazy tasks. For though the purpose of the first stanza is to present the fecundity of autumn, the purpose of the second Is to show Intensely the slowing of the pace of life in that season. Autumn is therefore clearly personified, addressed, and pictured for us "sitting careless on a granary floor" with her hair "soffc- lifted by the winnowing wind" or "sound asleep" on a furrow only "half-reap*d" because the reaper has dozed in the midst of the task. Or she is seen "with patient look" watching "the last oozlngs hours by hours." Time seems unimportant now; one may sleep at one's work, the oozings come long hour after long hour, and all is "drows'd with the fume of poppies." By the references to "oozings," "granary floor," and the "furrow," we are reminded of the wealth of autumn's bounty in the midst of the drowsiness induced by the prevailing imagery. Both the figure of Autumn and the drowsiness are carried over to the third stanza. The personification continues with the first two lines, and the music of Autumn is presented as peaceful, soft music in a deepening 213 twilight: Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they? Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,— While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day, And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue; Then In a wailful choir the small gnats mourn Among the river sallows, borne aloft Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies; And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourne; Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft; And gathering swallows twitter In the skies. Here the fruitfulness of Autumn Is shown by the fullness of Its beauty and Its peacefulness, and the drowsy gentleness of the music adds to the mellowness of the mood. The movement of imagery has taken us naturally from a contem plation of Autumn1s bounty in the first stanza to the heightened imagery of the personification of the drowsy goddess In the second, while the Intensity of emotion rises through the recognition of the gifts which this season, too, has to offer, to the first two lines of the last stanza, where the music of Autumn Is realized to be as lovely as the more lively "songs of Spring." That truth is then Illustrated In five specific songs of nature, as the imagery falls off Into the quiet appreciation of that music. The serenity of the poet who could thus accept the less flamboyant beauties of nature and enjoy the more peaceful season of autumn as well as the excitement of the spring in which he had written his other odes, shows In action the ability to see "Beauty in all things," and the 211+ ability of that beauty to comfort and assuage his sorrows. The poem thus Illustrates his concern with beauty, the power of beauty to provide peace, Intensity of language and mood, movement of Imagery, and those aspects of Negative Capability which allow the poet to enjoy equally all aspects of experience because he can transmute their truths Into some form of beauty. Each of the three odes discussed In detail so far has Illustrated some of the poetic elements which Keats found in his study of Shakespeare. But one ode, written at the climax of his creative outburst In May, 1819, Illustrates all that he had learned from Shakespeare. Not only does the "Ode on a Grecian Urn" exhibit Intensity and movement of the Imagery, but It also states a basic tenet of Negative Capability and illustrates the rest. In addition, written as it was In the period when he was allegorizing his sorrows, this poem, too, has elements of the alle gorical treatment of grief and longing in It. The poem opens with a quiet contemplation of an Imagined urn, a "still unravlsh'd bride of quietness." That phrase appears to have a dual reference to the un broken urn and to the unkissed girl on the urn; with its evocation of the centuries of "silence and slow time" during which the urn has lain buried in the rubble of Greece, It Is a prime example of that Intensity which calls 215 up the past while referring strongly to the present. The scenes of Intense activity caught In suspension forever on the urn are themselves supreme examples of the con trolled passion which Is for Bate the prime element of Intensity. What more Intense moment, for example, could be Imagined than the moment of anticipation just before the physical contact of a kiss? It Is that warm and throbbing Instant In which Keats*s lovers are caught forever In the cold marble of the urn: Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss, Though winning near the goal--yet, do not grlevej She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss, Forever wilt thou love, and she be fair! The Intensity of the moment for the Imagined lovers, by Its relation to beauty and truth which Keats points out, causes the disagreeable facts of unfulfillment on the one hand, and of fading beauty and love on the other, to cancel each other out, so that as he presents the complete truth of the situation, Its beauty becomes apparent and "all disagreeables evaporate"--for us as well as for the lovers. And If, as Is very possible, he Is here allegorizing the frustrations of his love for Fanny, which seemed Impossible of consummation in marriage, then it provided comfort for him, too, since the frustration is framed In beauty. That he is thinking of his own love Is made more probable by the reference in the next stanza to the "more happy, happy love I" of the two marble lovers, which is "For ever warm 216 and still to be enjoyed" and is therefore far above ordi nary human passion that results only in the physical re actions of "a heart high-sorrowful and cloy*d,/ A burning forehead, and a parching tongue." So Keats, by allegoriz ing his frustrations in a work of art, can become, like the figures on the urn, forever a part of an ideal love. Another example of allegorizing appears in the second stanza. It is built up to by the rising intensity of the short, excited questions at the end of stanza 1, which mention the "pipes and timbrels" on the urn. After the questions, stanza ii opens with a statement that applies both to the situation at hand— the pipes on the urn, after all, cannot be heard, and Keats can therefore Imagine a sweeter melody for them than any real pipes could play— and to the condition felt by all creative artists: that the untold stories, unsung poems, unheard melodies within the imagination are always greater works of art than their approximations, which are all that can finally be com municated. Yet he tells the pipes to play on, for there is communication, though it cannot be stated, between the unheard melody of the piper (and hence of the sculptor who created him) and the listening spirit of the sympa thetic poet. Certainly the endless ramifications of this truth make its compressed expression in the poem an apt example of intensity; but there seems to be allegory in 217 the llnea, too. Keats, like the piper, has songs within him more beautiful than any that he can communicate to the reader; but perhaps, to the sympathetic spirits of a few listeners, the poem behind the poem which Is printed may pipe "ditties of no tone." And to the poet himself, though he may never write all the poems within him, they are still there as things of beauty to comfort and sustain. But the most profound act of Intensity In the poem appears In stanza lv. The poet has Imagined an urn and peopled It with pipers, lovers, and a religious procession. Now he wonders: What little town by river or sea shore, Or mountaln-bullt with peaceful citadel, Is emptied of this folk, this pious morn? Then, suddenly but very naturally, comes a supreme act of the Intense Imagination caught up In Its own workings, for the little town becomes real for Keats as he imagines Its streets emptied forever because its populace Is caught forever on the urn. The town, neither on the urn, with Its pictured populace, nor In the real world, Is caught In a limbo forever, and It haunts the reader with Its plight as the lines describing It haunt us with their intensity: And, little town, thy streets for evermore Will silent be; and not a soul to tell Why thou art desolate, can e*er return. The Intensity of Imagination here exhibits that empathlc element of Negative Capability which allows the poet to go 218 out of himself to imagine what other people and things— like the town--must experience, and Is similar to that in the "Ode to a Nightingale," when he Imagines hlmaelf in the forest with the bird. But here It Is even stronger and more successful, for where In the Nightingale ode he decides that "the Fancy cannot cheat so well/As she Is fam'd to do," in this poem we have a triumph of imagina tion: the Imagined urn, and hence the poem which shapes and contains it, has a message of comfort: Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought As doth eternity: Cold Pastorall When old age shall this generation waste, Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st, "Beauty is truth, truth beauty,"— that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know. Here Keats is trying to state poetically his concept of Negative Capability, the uses of intensity, and the relationships of beauty and truth. The poem, in its flights of intensity, particularly those concerned with the feelings of the lover and the desolation of the town, has illustrated the first two aspects of Negative Capability: the author's ability to negate self and hence to enter into the feelings and reactions of other people and objects. The acceptance we see here of the plight of the lovers, the townspeople, the town, illustrates the next two aspects: that the poet enjoys writing about good and bad and can accept either in his life, so long as he 219 writes and lives with "gusto," or Intensity. And the ode Illustrates how that can be: by showing the truth of the lovers* plight, he reveals Its beauty; by describing the town*s desolation In poetry, he makes a thing of beauty of it; and by the relationship of the beauty he has found or created to the truth that Inheres In the plights, he has made those sorrows acceptable. As we have seen, the Intensity of the poet's experience and of the language with which he describes It makes any truth acceptable both to the poet and the reader, providing comfort to both. Thus the urn by showing to future generations the relation ship of beauty and truth,® as Keats has shown them to us, will be "a friend to man" In the midst of future woes. The contemplation of the urn has led Keats to a position In which he need no longer be "reaching after fact & reason" (Letters. I, 196); he is teased "out of thought" by his contemplation of the urn's beauty. He therefore must accept the truth of the urn* s statement and realize that ®The speech of Oceanus in Hyperion (11.173 ff.) foreshadows the statement of the urn: Oceanus, by the beauty of his successor, has learned that "*tis the eternal law/ That first in beauty should be first in might" (11. 228-229), and he advises the Titans to "Receive the truth, and let It be your balm" (1. 21^.3), because to bear all naked truths, And to envisage circumstance, all calm, That is the top of sovreignty. (11. 203-20^) 220 It "is all/ Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know"; for once we have seen that beauty and truth are one, we r need no further knowledge. The poem also illustrates the movement of imagery which Keats learned from Shakespeare. We begin and end our contemplation of the urn with an address to the urn Itself: in the first stanza it is a "Sylvan historian" which, Keats thinks at first, will tell him merely a "leaf-fring*d legend." The first stanza is concerned with a physical description of what Keats sees as he slowly examines the pictures of "Tempe or the dales of Arcady," with their "men or gods," their "maidens loth," their physical intensity. The middle stanzas describe and comment on the specific scenes depicted on the urn, in creasing in intensity to that extreme flight of imagination which conjures up the desolate town in stanza iv. We have reached a peak of intensity; the movement of the poem must show a "setting of imagery" which will leave us "in the Luxury of twilight." And so it does: in the last stanza we return from the imaginary world of art to the real world of man with its woes, in which the urn will remain an eternal comfort because of its message of beauty and truth. The philosophical utterance, too, is an emotional retreat from the poignant contrasts between the ideal world of art and the "heart high-sorrowful and cloy*d" of the poet 221 that we see In the middle stanzas. Though the Intellectual message of the poem builds to a climax In the last two lines, the Intensity— the "rise, the progress, the setting of Imagery"— exhibits the same movement as that In the "Ode to a Nightingale." Thus the "Ode on a Oreolan Urn" Is an epitome of the poetlo concepts Keats had learned from Shakespeare. It and the other odes of 1819 are the peak of his achievement, and though they are unique In form and content, they owe much, as we have seen, to the study of Shakespeare. This chapter has shown that Shakespeare was still very Important to him and was used In the letters in the same ways as before. The references in the letters show that Hamlet was still of most Importance, with Othello and Lovets Labour*3 Lost, perhaps because of his love for Fanny Brawne, assuming a new significance. The most important references to Shakespeare In the letters of this period are two allusive references in letters to Fanny Brawne, which foreshadow the letters of 1820 to be discussed In the next chapter. Also foreshadowing the next chapter are the continued comments on the "life of allegory": Keats believed Shakespeare to be a "miserable and mighty Poet of the human Heart," whose "middle age" was "all clouded over"; and the misery of Shakespeare was necessary for his becoming a great poet. So Keats, in his own griefs, wrote some of his greatest poetry; and he wrote It, as he believed Shakespeare did, by making allegories of his sorrow. Though he also wrote In this period a complete tragedy and a fragment of another, both of which owe much to Shakespeare, he was closest to his "preslder" In the odes. Their form Is drawn partially from the Shakespearean sonnet, and each of the great odes Illustrates several of the major poetic concepts which Keats developed from his study of Shake speare; the "Ode on a Grecian Urn," In fact, demonstrates them all. Among those concepts is the Idea of turning grief Into great poetry through allegory, shown especially In the "Ode to a Nightingale" and the "Ode on Melancholy." He was evidently successful In such attempts, for they produced great poetry and also provided him with a way to make his griefs acceptable. But within a few months the strength to write poetry deserted him; he could no longer have the pleasure of creating or the relief from sorrow which he could find by making a poem out of his misery. When that comfort was taken from him, his life turned bitter Indeed, and the uses of Shakespeare In the letters reflect that bitterness. 223 CHAPTER VI: THE LAST LETTERS: 1820 After the "Ode to Autumn," written In September, 1819, Keats wrote no great poetry; after abandoning the Incon sequential t t The Cap and Bells; or The Jealousies," whloh he worked on from November, 1819, to February, 1820, he wrote no poetry at all. The Influence of Shakespeare In this last period Is to be traoed, therefore, only In the letters; and there It Is found In full measure, for Shake speare appears in letters throughout 1820 and was used by Keats to describe his torment In the last letter he wrote, on November 30, 1820, from Italy. Shakespeare or his works are referred to In sixteen of the seventy-one letters he wrote during l820--about the same ratio as In the previous period. In those sixteen letters are twenty-three refer ences or possible references; five are to Shakespeare him self, and eighteen refer to or quote particular plays. As had been his habit since the beginning of 1818, after the waning of his early Interest In the comedies of romance and fairies, he was mainly interested in the deeper plays. There are in this last period eight references to tragedies: two to Hamlet. Including the most Important of his final statements; three to the lovers* tragedy, Romeo and Juliet, which In some ways, particularly In its theme 22k of "star-cross*d lovers," seemed to mirror his own grief; and two to Trollus and CressIda and one to Othello, both of which, as we have seen, appealed to him because of their themes of jealousy. In all his references to these tragedies, he is mainly concerned with the themes of jealous love, of untimely death, and of malevolent fate. The sense of Impending death which seemed constantly to be with him after his severe hemarrhage on Pebruary 3, 1820, evidently sparked an Interest In another group of plays, the Henry plays, the first two of which present Falstaff and the last of which contains Dame Quickly*s evocative description of Falstaff*s death. Keats refers to the oyole five times: to 1 Henry IV three times, to 2 Henry IV once, and to Henry V once. Three of those references are to Falstaff*s death and one to Justice Shallow*s comments on the Inevi- tabillty of death. Thus twelve of the references In this last period are either to the tragedies or to the theme of death In the Henry plays. There are also five possible reminiscences of comedies, all slight: two of A Winter* s Tale and one each of The Merry Wives of Windsor. Much Ado About Nothing, and A Midsummer Night*s Dream. Strangely enou^ ., there are no references to King Lear in this final period, as there are none to The Tempest: but the estab lished trend toward the serious and philosophical plays Is 225 here oontlnued and accentuated. Of the five general references to Shakespeare, four are of Interest mainly because they show Keats's continuing conoern for all things connected with his "presider." The picture of Shakespeare which he had so auspiciously found In his room on the Isle of Wight and which had been given him by his landlady, appears again In a letter to Oeorglana Keats on January 13; Keats thanks her for the tassels she had sent him to hang It by: "I do not remember ever to have thank'd you for your tassels to my Shakspeare there he hangs so ably supported opposite me" (II, 2I 4 . 2); and two days later, in the same letter, he speaks of his irritation because an Irish servant had told him that "her Father in Ireland was very much like my Shakspeare only he had more color than the Engraving" (II, 2l|.3). On March l | . , in a letter ohldlng his friend Dllke about his Illegible pen manship, Keats says, "Look at Queen Elizabeth's Latin exercises and blush. Look at Milton's hand— I cant say a word for Shakespeare" (II, 272). He may have seen the almost incomprehensible signatures on Shakespeare's will at Somerset House, but he may mean that he cannot say a word about Shakespeare's handwriting slnoe he has never seen an example of it. His reference here, almost in passing, merely shows the special place Shakespeare holds in his hierarchy of greatness. A more touching reference appears 226 in a letter to Fanny Brawne on February 27; be tells her he has been reading "two volumes of Letters written between Rosseau fale 1 and two Ladles" and wonders what Rousseau would have thought about "our little correspondencet" He continues with a meaningful statement: "I don't care much--I would sooner have Shakspeare'a opinion about the matter" (II, 266). How Important Shakespeare's opinion Is to him will be apparent from previous comments and from the remainder of this chapter, for In this final period, especially, he seems to feel closer to Shakespeare the man than to Shakespeare the poet; that Is, he Is more concerned with Shakespeare's attitudes and attributes than with his poetic technique. As late as August, 1820, In another letter to Fanny, he Is able to say, "Shakspeare always sums up matters In the most sovereign manner" (II, 312)— and he proves It with a poignant quotation from Hamlet. That letter will be discussed In detail later; here It Is enough to see that Shakespeare Is still, In Keats's mind, a supreme authority on matters of love and life. The quotations and references to plays are used in this period In the same ways as before: some are allusive quotations, In which the context from which they are taken enriches Keats's meaning; some are allusive quotations whose contexts seem to supply private, additional meanings for Keats alone; and some are simply used quotations or 227 adaptations which seam to spring to his pen almost unbidden as he writes. The borrowings from the more serious plays are generally allusive; but all borrowings from the lighter plays, and one from 1 Henry IV. are used simply and almost Incidentally. The first Is an adaptation from A Midsummer Night*a Dream (IV.1.32): "Let*s have the tonga and the bones." In a letter to his young sister Fanny, Keats describes Carlo, Mrs. Brawne's dog, and his bullying of the small lap-dog of "two old maiden Ladles." He says of Carlo: nI shall desire him to peruse the fable of the Boys and the frogs: though he prefers the tongues and the Bonesn (II, 2 5 2 4 . ) • This punning adaptation of Shakespeare oomes only five days after his first hemorrhage on February 3, and the quiet courage It displays la a mark of the man. A similar usage, though with no humorous Intent, appears In a letter to Brown on June 21: nI hope the weather will give you the slip; let It show Itself, and steal out of your company" (II, 299). The last clause Is a not-very-Imaginative adaptation of Much Ado About Nothing (III.111.60-62): "If you do take a thief. . . let him show himself what he Is and steal out of your company." A poignant adaptation appears in a letter to Hunt on August 13, the day after Keats left the Hunts to stay with the Brawnes because a letter of his had been opened (see Letters II, 313 and 313 n.). His Illness had made him so irritable that he acted impulsively, and his note to Hunt shows an awareness of his erratic behavior: "I hope to see you whenever you can get time for I feel really attach*d to you for your many sympathies with me, and patienoe at ray lunes" (II, 316). The strange usage is evidently, as Rollins (II, 316 n.) believes, an adaptation from The Merry Wives of Windsor (IV.ii.21): "your husband is in his old lunes again,” or The Winter*s Tale (11.11. 30): "dangerous unsafe lunes i* the King." Though these adaptations may be unconscious, the final such simple use of a quotation is deliberate. In a letter to Brown on September 30, he says, "I thought I would write *while I was in some liking* or I might become too ill to write at all" (II, 3M0 • T*1® phrase he quotes is from 1 Henry IV (III.111.5): "1*11 repent, and that suddenly, while I am in some liking." The speaker is Falstaff, in whom Keats seems particularly interested in this last period. Except for a late possible adaptation of a phrase from The Winter*a Tale, which is also an echo of Romeo and Juliet and will therefore be taken up with the references to the tragedies, these are all the appearances of comedies in the last letters. The remainder of the references to the plays, all from tragedies or the Henry plays, are used seriously, and all have strong added meanings to be gained by recalling the 229 oontexts from whloh they are taken. They all illustrate one or more of the three prevalent themes of this final period: Jealous love, malevolent fate, and untimely death. Since they also show a chronological movement from the kind of acceptance of life that we saw during the period of the odes, to a thorough despair, they can best be studied chronologioally. The first such reference comes three weeks before the hemorrhage that changed completely Keats's outlook. On January 13, he writes to Georgiana: "I fear I must be dull having had no goodnatured flip from fortune's finger since I saw you" (II, 239). Though Rollins (II, 239 n.) cautiously says only, "Possibly he had in mind Hamlet. 111.11.75#" it seems probable that he does Indeed have In mind--and expects Georgians to recall--Hamlet*a description of his only friend, Horatio: A man that fortune's buffets and rewards Hast ta'en with equal thanks: and bleat are those Whose blood and judgment are so well commingled, That they are not a pipe for fortune's finger To sound what stop she please. . . . (111.11.72-76) That passage seems almost a definition of one element of Negative Capability, that which allows the poet to live "in gusto, be it foul or fair" (see above, p. 70), to take whatever life has to offer with equanimity and to exper ience life to the full regardless of its Joys or sorrows. That concept, with the rest of the Negative Capability 230 complex of attitudes and abilities, Is Illustrated In the odes, as we have seen; and both In the odes and In his statements of the concept, we have seen that one reason the poet can so face experience Is that he oan transmute his sorrows Into beauty through the act of allegorizing them, of forming them Into poetry. So long as he could write poetry, he had that ability— but what poetry did he write after the hemorrhage on February 3? At the moment of writing the letter, however, he could not foresee his doom; his flip phrasing in the allusion seems to indicate that he was determined to take "fortune's buffets and rewards," like Horatio, "with equal thanks." The "good- natured flip" is a kind of goodhumored downgrading of "buffets and rewards," and it is a term which naturally goes with "fortune's finger" (an exact echo of Hamlet's phrase)• The lightheartedness of the allusion is an Indication that at the moment Keats can do as Horatio does. If Georgiana remembers the passage, she will enjoy the wit and the likeness; if not, Keats has at least had the pleasure of identifying himself privately--by both word and action--wlth Horatio. But on February 3 came the hemorrhage. As he looked at the blood, Keats, calling upon his medical training, said: "I know the colour of that blood;— it is arterial blood;— I cannot be deceived in that colour;— that drop of 231 1 blood la my death-warrant;— I must die." Though he some times regained hope of life, the threat of death was ever with him after that. He evidently suggested almost Immediately to Fanny Brawne that they break their engage ment, which she refused to do; and some time during that painful month he wrote the following: My sweet love, I shall wait patiently till tomorrow before I see you, and In the mean time, If there Is any need of such a thing, assure you by your Beauty, that whenever I have at at any time written on a certain unpleasant subject, it has been with your welfare impress'd upon my mind. How hurt I should have been had you ever acceded to what is, notwithstanding, very reasonable! How much the more do I love you from the general result! .... My greatest torment since I have known you has been the fear of you being a little Inclined to the Cressld; but that suspicion I dismiss utterly and remain happy In the surety of your Love. . . . (II, 255-256) We have seen that fear directly stated In the "First Ode to Fanny," allegorized to some extent in the other odes, and hinted at in his uses of Shakespeare In previous letters. It comes out more and more clearly In later letters of this period, especially in a later allusive use of Trollus and Cresslda. But here, for a moment, his mind Is at rest on that score: Fanny has proved her love by refusing to break the engagement. Charles Brown, Life of John Keats, ed. Dorothy Hyde Bodurtha and Willard Blasell Pope (London, 1937); also included In The Keats Circle. II, 52-97# from which this quotation Is taken (it, 73-7)0 • 232 During the same month, In a letter to Rloe written on February H4 . and 16, he Introduces the second theme which pervades the Shakespearean allusions In this final period: the theme of death— and here, as at the very end, It Is by a reference to Falstaff, He says, recalling his hemorrhage and the fear of death It brought: How astonishingly does the chance of leaving the world Impress a sense of Its natural beauties on us. Like poor Falstaff, though I do not babble, I think of green fields. (II, 260) He is remembering, of course, the death of Falstaff as reported by Dame Quickly in Henry V (II.ill.13-26): • • . for after I saw him fumble with the sheets and play with flowers and smile upon his fingers* ends, I knew there was but one way; for his nose was as sharp as a pen, and a* babbled of green fields. *How now, Sir Johnt* quoth I; *what, manl be o* good cheer.* So a* cried out, *God, God, Godl* three or four times. Now I, to comfort him, bid him a* should not think of God; I hoped there was no need to trouble himself with any such thoughts yet. So a* bade me lay more clothes on his feet: I put my hand Into the bed and felt them, and they were as cold as any stone; then I felt to his knees, and they were as cold as any stone, and so upward and upward, and all was as cold as any stone. A few lines later, he refers to the stagecoaoh ride which led to the chill that brought on his hemorrhage, and says that If he ever rides a coach In winter again, his friend may "bring me down with a brace of bullets and I promise not to *peach*N— evidently an adaptation again of Falstaff, who says in 1 Henry IV (II.11.14-7)1 "1*11 peach for this." His preoccupation with Falstaff here, especially with Falstaff*s death scene, may Indicate that he is not so 233 sanguine about his recovery as other letters pretend. A month later, In another letter to Fanny Brawne, comes another poignant use of Shakespeare, this time a reference to 2 Henry IV (III.ll.lt.1 f.): Day by day If I am not deceived I get a more unrestraintd use of my Chest. The nearer a raoer gets to the Goal the more his anxiety becomes so I lingering upon the borders of health feel my Impatience Increase. Perhaps on your acoount I have Imagined my Illness more serious than it Is: how horrid was the chance of slipping Into the ground Instead of Into your arms— the difference is amazing Love--Death must come at last; Man must die, as Shallow says; but before that is my fate I feign would try what more pleasures than you have given so sweet a creature as you can give. (II, 277) This reminiscence, coupled with that of Falstaffs death, indicates that Keats Is thinking of death more than he admits; though he has pushed aside the thoughts of his doom In the pleasure of making plans for his future with Fanny, the inevitability of death hangs over his letter. Though he may not admit It consciously, he seems to know he, too, like all Shallow*s friends, and like Falstaff, Is soon to die. Further evidence of that knowledge appears In another letter to Fanny written about the same time, in March: I am much better to day— Indeed all I have to complain of is want of strength and a little tightness in the Chest. . . . I Imagine you now sitting in your new black dress which I like so much and if I were a little less selfish and more enthouslastlc I should run round and surprise you with with a knock at the door. I fear I am too prudent for a dying kind of Lover. Yet, there is a great difference between going off In warm blood like Romeo, and making one*8 exit like a frog in a frost. . . . (II, 281) 2314 - Keats seems to say here that dying romantically In a lover*s suicide, like Romeo, would be more acceptable than the kind of slow, wasting, unpoetlo death that lay In store for him. He Is "a dying kind of Lover," but by being prudent, he may prolong his life a bit. Whether he knew he was dying or not, his references here to Shakespeare add depth and poignancy to his statements. Though he seemed to Improve rapidly In March, by May he was 111 again, and by June he was hemorrhaging fre quently (see Letters. II, 300, 305)* The next three uses of Shakespeare In his letters are from plays concerned with love and jealousy, and all reflect the passion and jealous despair he now felt. All three are allusive uses of Shakespeare: when we recall the contexts of his refer ences, a much deeper meaning Is revealed to us than Keats*s words alone would convey. In a letter to Fanny written In May, for example, he echoes Othello: Yesterday and this morning I have been haunted with a sweet vision— I have seen you the whole time In your shepherdess dress. How my senses have ached at ltl How my heart has been devoted to ltt How my eyes have been full of Tears at ltl (II, 290) There Is poignancy enough on the surface of that letter, but when one recalls the allusive force of the echo, one must be profoundly affected. The source Is Othello*s terrible confrontation of the Innocent and puzzled Desderaona (IV.11). He accuses her of being "false as 235 hell” (1. 39), and when her only answer Is a series of amazed questions, he weeps with the line, "0 Desderaonal Away! away!" (1. I 4 .I). The Innocent girl, still puzzled, asks, "Why do you weep?" (1. l±2), and Othello In a speech almost to himself says that he could stand "sores and shames," "poverty," "captivity," even the scorn of a cuckold, But there, where I have garner*d up my heart, Where either I must live, or bear no life; The fountain from the which my current runs, Or else dries up; to be discarded thence! (11. 57-60) And when Desdemona expresses the hope that Othello "esteems me honest," her tortured husband answers In a terrible bitterness: 0, ay, as summer flies are In the shambles, That quicken even with the blowing. 0 thou weed, Who art so lovely fair and smell*at so sweet That the sense aches at thee, would thou hadst ne*er been born! (11. 66-69) Keats*s comments contain the devoted heart and tear-fllled eyes of Othello as well as the aohlng senses; his words seem a summary, perhaps unconscious, of the entire scene In Othello. He evidently does not expect Fanny to catch the allusion, for the tenor of his letter Is tender and not jealous, but here, as In most of his allusive uses of Shakespeare with Fanny, the connotations of the context are a private statement to himself. Perhaps, since he could not write poetry, he Is attempting to use this poetic 236 means to "allegorise" his griefs and so oome to accept them. The same kind of torment appears in the most striking of all his allusive quotations of Shakespeare. It is painful in what it says, hut even more painful in what it hints at by the allusion. In June, 1820, he wrote the following words, almost incoherent at times with grief and jealousy: My dearest love, I am affraid to see you, I am strong but not strong enough to see you. Will my arm be ever round you again. And if so shall I be obliged to leave you again. My sweet Lovet I am happy whilst I believe your first Letter. Let me be but certain that you are mine heart and soul, and I could die more happily than I could otherwise live. If you think me cruel— if you think I have slelghted you— do muse it over again and see into my heart— My Love to you is "true as truth* s simplicity and simpler than the Infancy of truth" as I think I once said before How could I sleight you? How threaten to leave you? not in the spirit of a Threat to you— no— but in the spirit of Wretchedness in myself. My fairest, my delicious, my angel Fannyt do not believe me such a vulgar fellow. I will be as patient in illness and as believing in Love as I am able— (II, 293-2914-) "As believing in Love as I am able"--the phrase almost gives the allusion away (for surely he would not have written it if he had thought Fanny would understand all he was saying). The extent of his private statement is dear in the context from which he obtained the quotation: that story of a wanton and the youth she destroyed, Trollus and CressIda. Troilus, just before the consumma tion of their love, speaks to CressIda: 237 0 that I thought it oould be In a woman— As, If It can, I will presume in you— To feed for aye her lamp and flames of love; To keep her constancy in plight and youth, Outliving beauty's outward, with a mind That doth renew swifter than blood decayst Or that persuasion oould but thus convince me, That my integrity and truth to you Might be affronted with the match and weight Of such a winnowed purity in love; How were I then uplifted! but, alas I 1 am as true as truth's simplicity, And simpler than the Infancy of truth. (III.il.165-177) That the two Shakespearean lovers go almost immediately to their bed (provided by the helpful Pandarus) is an emblem of Keats's own very strong physical passion, evident in the passage from the letter above, in "The Eve of St. Agnes," in "Lamia," and in many other poems and letters. Here especially he seems to long for the possibility of physical consummation of his love. But even stronger are his Jealousy and his grief at the thought that, though he can never have Fanny, someone else surely will when he is separated from her— as Cresslda turned immediately to Dlomedes when taken from Trollus. Keats had told Fanny in February that he had often feared she was too much "inclined to the Cressid" (II, 256); and In the quotation here he is saying the same thing, but saying it in a veiled way, more to himself than to her (cf. Murry, Keats and Shakespeare, p. 218). Here the quotation will stand meaningfully without reference to its context— but it stands falsely, for it does not say what Keats means 238 without its surrounding context of bitter and passionate jealousy. That same torment is evident in August, 1820, two months later, in what Rollins (II, 311 n.) believes to be the last letter to Fanny written by Keats— and again he uses Shakespeare to convey his torment: I wish you could Invent some means to make me at all happy without you. Every hour I am more and more con centrated in you; every thing else tastes like chaff in my Mouth. I feel it almost impossible to go to Italy--the fact is I cannot leave you, and shall never taste one minute*s content until it pleases chance to let me live with you for good. . . If I cannot live with you I will live alone. I do not think my health will Improve much while I am separated from you. For all this I am averse to seeing you— I cannot bear flashes of light and return into my glooms again. I am not so unhappy now as I should be if I had seen you yesterday. To be happy with you seems such an impossibllltyt It requires a luckier Star than mlnet it will never be. . . . If my health would bear It, I could write a Poem which I have in my head, which would be a consolation for people in such a situation as mine. I would show some one in Love as I am, with a person living in such Liberty as you do. ShakBpeare always sums up matters in the most sovereign manner. Hamlet*s heart was full of such Misery as mine is when he said to Ophelia nOo to a Nunnery, go, gol" Indeed I should like to give up the matter at once— I should like to die. I am sickened at the brute world which you are smiling with. I hate men and women more . . . (II, 311-312) "Shakspeare always sums up matters in the most sovereign manner"— again Keats turns to his master, with whom he now feels the closest kinship, for help in saying what is in his embittered heart. The allusion he is using here is a most forceful and complex one: the cynical bitterness and heartbreak of Hamlet as he pours out upon poor, weak 239 Ophelia his revulsion at the ugliness of life, the frailty of women, and the wantonness of beauty (111.1.89 ff*). The scene is prefaced by the great soliloquy "To be or not to be," in which Hamlet speaks of "the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune" (1. 58), catalogues the ills of society, and expresses the same death-wlsh that Keats vents in his letter. Then Ophelia enters, returning his "remembrances" of love and serving as decoy for her skulking father. Hamlet is enraged by the betrayal of his love, and thinking as much of his weak mother*s Infidelity to his father*s memory as he does of Ophelia*a duplicity, he bursts forth with such terrible lines as these: . . . the power of beauty will sooner transform honesty from what it is to a bawd than the force of honesty can translate beauty into his likeness. . • . (lll.i.lll-lllj.) And a few lines later, he shouts: Get thee to a nunnery: why wouldst thou be a breeder of sinners? I am myself indifferent honest; but yet I could accuse me of such things that it were better my mother had not borne me. . . . What should such fellows as I do crawling between earth and heaven? We are arrant knaves, all; believe none of us. Go thy ways to a nunnery. (III.i.122-133) And, as he leaves, he reviles all women: I have heard of your paintings too, well enough; God hath given you one face, and you make yourselves another: you jig, you amble, and you lisp, and nick name God*s creatures, and make your wantonness your ignorance. Go to, 1*11 no more on*t; it hath made me mad. . . . (111.1.348-1514. ) Keats must have had all those passages in mind when he wrote that Shakespeare summed up his feelings so well; for 2 1 4 .0 all those ideas are condensed in his letter: the death wish, the world-weariness, the disgust with women, and the feeling of betrayal at the hands of his beloved. Perhaps he was also thinking of that terrible curse with which Hamlet leaves Ophelia: If thou dost marry, 1*11 give thee this plague for thy dowry: be thou as ohaste as loe, as pure as snow— thou shalt not escape calumny. Get thee to a nunnery, go: farewell. Or, if thou wilt needs marry, marry a fool; for wise men know well enough what monsters you make of them. To a nunnery, go, and quickly too. (III.i.139- 1U6) Certainly there is in this letter, as in all the last letters to her, a strong jealousy of whoever may win Fanny after he has lost her. He concludes with the touching line: "I wish I was either in your arms full of faith or that a Thunder bolt would strike me.” Like Hamlet— and Trollus— he wants to believe in his beloved, to be "full of faith,” or to die. How much physical jealousy and physical longing enter into his bitterness at the end is seen in a passage on Fanny in a letter to Charles Brown on November 1, 1820, from Italy— a passage filled with the sense of physical loss as well as jealousy, and a passage again linked with Shakespeare: My dear Brown, I should have had her when I was in health, and I should have remained well. I oan bear to die— I cannot bear to leave her. Oh, Godt God! God! (II, 35D 2k 1 Rollins points out (II, 351 n.) that even here, Keats seems to have in mind the death of Falstaff, described so vividly by Dame Quickly in the passage from Henry V (II.iii.13-26) and alluded to in the letter to Rloe in February; she tells her listeners that Falstaff "cried out, *God, God, Godt* three or four times." There is no allusive link here to make us certain of the echo, and the epithet is one that might have occurred naturally to the distraught Keats; but we know that he knew the passage well, and it is one that would often come to his mind in his travail. In his comment on the irony of his meeting Fanny and falling in love so soon before falling health doomed that love, Keats is railing against the perversity of fate that seemed to plague him. At the beginning of this last period, before his fatal hemorrhage, he spoke in light terms about "Fortune*s finger"; but after the extent of his misfortune became apparent, he lost that Horatlan ability to suffer "fortune*s buffets and rewards" with equanimity. Now he cries out against the harshness and cruelty of his doom. His last letter contains another Shakespearean reference which continues that theme. At the end of that cruel November in Italy, he wrote a bitter letter to Brown, describing how his ship to Italy and the ship bearing Brown back to London had passed each other in the channel; the Irony of their being so close without 2 1 * 2 being aware of it must have struck him as being in line with the fate marked out for him, for he says, "There was my star predominanttB (II, 359). Rollins footnotes this clause as follows: "The Winter*s Tale. I.ii.201-202, *a bawdy planet, that will strike/Where *t is predominant*" (II, 359 n.); and he takes no note at all of the similar allusion in the last letter to Fanny Brawne (see above, p. 238), in which Keats says that to be happy with her evidently "requires a luckier Star than minet" Though Miss Spurgeon (Keats*s Shakespeare, pp. 27-28) tells us that Keats had read The Winter*s Tale, the whole range of his letters shows only this and one other possible quota tion or citation from that play, the use of the word "lunes" in the letter to Hunt (II, 316) In August, 1820— a word which may have been remembered from The Winter* s Tale (II.ii.30). It seems likely, therefore, that though Keats may have obtained the word "predominant" from The Winter*a Tale, he Is thinking also of Romeo and Juliet, with its "star-cross*d lovers" (Prol. 6) who died for each other. There are nine quotations from and allusions to Romeo and Juliet in the letters, two besides this one in this final period; and the context of Romeo*s outcry, "Then I defy you, Stars!" when he hears of Juliet*s supposed death (V.I.21*) fits the allusion in the letter to Fanny very well. And certainly Keats, in his last days, 21*3 when even the pleasure of seeing Brown for a few moments was perversely denied him, must have felt "star-cross*d." These, then, are the last letters of Keats* They reveal the same ways of using Shakespeare as the earlier letters, and the tendency of the tragedies to outnumber comedies in total references and outweigh them in the force and implications of the references continues. What is new here Is the despair; it is Illustrated In the three prevailing themes of untimely death, jealous love, and malevolent fate* During the year of the odes he had achieved, as we have seen, a kind of acceptance of whatever life might offer, an acceptance that was a part of the Negative Capability concept and came from his study of Shakespeare. We saw in the last chapter that one reason he could accept bad and good In his life was that he could allegorize his griefs Into forms of beauty, In such poems as "The Eve of St. Agnes," which Is an allegorical con summation of his love, a consummation that In the real world must have seemed far off; In "La Belle Dame sans Merci," which allegorizes his jealousy, his passion, and his fear of the wasting qualities of love; In "Lamia," which allegorizes his choice of love despite the knowledge that it might destroy him; and In the odes, all of which have allegorical elements. In the "Ode to a Nightingale," he managed momentarily to escape his grief at the loss of his brother and the problems of his new love; in the "Ode on Melancholy" he achieved completely the difficult task of uniting truth and beauty, of showing that sorrow comes as an inevitable partner of joy, that both are a part of experience and hence come most deeply to him who exper iences most deeply. In the "Ode to Autumn" we see a calmness and a peace whioh came only after he had achieved the acceptance he sought. And in the nOde on a Grecian Urn" we see stated the ways by which such acceptance may come: through the Intense creation and contemplation of beauty and truth, until they become one. "The excellence of every Art," he had told his brothers in December, 1817, "is its intensity, capable of making all disagreeables evaporate, from their being in close relationship with Beauty & Truth" (Letters. I, 192). And shortly after that, he had come to the realization that "with a great poet the sense of Beauty overcomes every other consideration, or rather obliterates all consideration" (I, 191+) . Later, he realized that "Shakspeare led a life of Allegory; his works are the comments on it" (II, 67)# He had learned that the poet, by living intensely, could experience life to the full and accept sorrows with joy, because through the intensity of poetic activity he could allegorize his griefs and by a realization of beauty come to accept their truths. That profound truth he put into practice during the period of the odes; why, then, did he give way to despair in this final period? The answer lies in his last letter to Fanny. "If my " S V l" health would bear it," he tells her, "I could write a Poem which I have in my head, which would be a oonsolation for people in such a situation as mine" (II, 312). And he refers Immediately to Shakespeare*s Hamlet, for Shakespeare "always sums up matters in the most sovereign manner." Reading and referring to such passages in Shakespeare do provide some comfort, as he thinks his poem— If he could write it--would be "a consolation" for other, later lovers in his position. But it is not enough comfort; Hamlet is Shakespeare*s allegory of his own grief, and In the in tensity of creating It, he evidently assuaged that grief. Such activity made him, Keats says elsewhere, "a miserable and mighty Poet of the human Heart" (Letters. II, 115)-- a statement in which the might must be stressed as much as the misery. But the intensity of creation by a poet must always be greater than the Intensity of recreation by the reader; though Shakespeare*s lines provide some comfort, it is not enough: immediately after quoting Hamlet*s words, Keats tells Fanny, "Indeed I should like to give up the matter at once— I should like to die." The tragedy of Keats*s last year, therefore, is the tragedy not only of a dying youth but of a silenoed poet, who could no longer 21+6 create the beauty which was necessary for him to be able to aooept his fate. And yet Shakespeare was still with him. Even at the end, it was Shakespeare he turned to for help in expressing his grief, Shakespeare who was still the model of "the miserable and mighty Poet of the human Heart" that Keats would like to be. The fact that only the first of those adjectives applied to Keats at the end was a failure not in the model or the student, but in his health alone. Had his fatal Illness not been so debilitating, had he been able to write with his full powers even after he knew he was doomed, what great allegory of death might not have come from his eloquent pen? The Influence of Shakespeare was pervasive in the life and development of Keats from the very start of his true apprenticeship, an apprenticeship which began in April, 1817, and was signaled by his letter to Haydon taking Shakespeare as his "presider." Before that, we find only six conventional appearances of Shakespeare in the letters and only a few references or echoes in the poetry, all of which show only a conventional veneration of Shakespeare without any great understanding. But April, 1817, is a turning-point; after that the letters and poems show many Shakespearean Influences which indicate a deep impact on the attitudes toward life and poetry as well as on the poetic technique of Keats, We have examined four uses of Shakespeare in the letters: general refer ences to Shakespeare which show a continuing interest in the man and his work throughout the period from April, 1817, to the last letters; quotations used either as a garnish on the style or as a powerful aid to the expression of thought; quotations and references used allusively, to convey by recalling the oontext in Shakespeare a greater meaning than Keats<s words or the quotation alone could supply— and often to obscure the depth of Keats's thought as much as to heighten the communication; and the numerous critical commentaries on lines from Shakespeare, which led to the formulation of Keats's own critical and philo sophical concepts based on his study of Shakespeare. One other aspect of the use of Shakespeare in the letters may now be summarized: the extent of the reading which the quotations and references indicate. The following dis cussion is based on all 192 quotations, echoes, or references to Shakespeare in the letters, rather than merely those cited in this paper. As might be expected, Hamlet is the work most quoted or referred to, with nineteen references altogether. Again as expected. King Lear follows, with fifteen. In third place is The Tempest, with thirteen references (eight of which are in 1017) $ followed by A Midsummer Hlghfs Dream with ten (eight of which are also in 1017)* Tied for fifth place are Trollus and Creasida and Romeo and Juliet, with nine each. Macbeth is referred to eight times, as are 1 Henry IV and The Merry Wives of Windsor— both plays with Falstaff, one of Keats*s favorite characters. Othello and Twelfth Might both have seven, 2 Henry IV has six, and Henry V has five. These twelve were evidently the most impressive for Keats; the others are mentioned as follows: Measure for Measure (1^), Much Ado About Nothing (3)» As You Like It (3), Richard III (3), Corlolanus (2), The Winter*s Tale (2), Antony and Cleopatra (2), Julius Caesar (2); and The Merchant of Venice. Two Gentlemen of Verona. Riohard II. Henry VIII. 2 Henry VI. 3 Henry VI. King John, and Cymbellne. each one time only. Of the poems, the Sonnets receive four references, Venus and Adonis two, and the Rape of Luoreoe and other poems sometimes attributed to Shakespeare, none at all. Among the plays, the follow ing are not mentioned in the letters: The Comedy of Errors, Titus Andronlcus. 1 Henry VI. The Taming of the Shrew. 111*8 Well That Ends Well. Tlmon of Athens, and Pericles. In this oatalogue, it must be remembered, eaoh possible reference is oredited to a play, and if one reference may be to two plays, both are credited; there is necessarily, therefore, some duplication. In addition, 2^9 auoh statistics fall to take Into consideration the Im portance of certain extended quotations or discussions compared with mere echoes or casual references; the general trends indicated by the listing, however, seem valid. Miss Spurgeon (Keats*a Shakespeare, p. f>) points out that the most read plays In the seven-volume edition Keats read and marked on the Isle of Wight were The Tempest and A Midsummer Night*s Dream. The first appears five times In the letters of April, 1817, and the second appears four times In that month; each appears eight times during the year 1817. After that, The Tempest appears four times In 1618 and once In 1819, and Dream appears only twice, once in 1818 and once in 1820. Hamlet, on the other hand, appears only once before that April of study and only three times during 1817. But It recurs six times in l8l8, seven times In 1819, and twice In 1820. King Lear appears five times in 1817, six in l8l8, and four In 1819. Thus a pattern appears in the four most quoted or cited plays: the lighter comedies are more Important at the beginning of his study, but as he comes to know the depth of Shakespeare*s thought and the power of tragic conoepts, Hamlet and King Lear assume a greater importance. A glance at the oitations of the other plays will bear out this trends for of the next nine most cited or quoted plays, all but two, The Merry Wives of Windsor and Twelfth Night. 250 are histories (1 and 2 Henry IV and Henry V) or tragedies (Trollus and Cresslda. Romeo and Juliet. Othello, and Macbeth). The histories are evidently especially appealing to Keats because they, like The Merry Wives of Windsor, contain Falstaff (or the affecting description of his death, in Henry V). And those histories, like the oomedy Twelfth Night (which contains a pale copy of Falstaff In Sir Toby), are filled with tragic or dramatic moments when a "miserable and mighty Poet of the human Heart" would be seen at his most powerful. The lefcser comedies and the farces are either quoted very little or completely ignored. From the evidence of the number of echoes, allusions, or quotations, then, we can bolster the evidence of Keats*s own comments and habits, to show that he became progres sively more Interested In those plays of Shakespeare which are conoerned with high drama and tragic moments, which develop profound philosophical and emotional truths through vivid characterization and intense poetry. And he Is interested both from the point of view of the practicing poet who Is learning techniques from the master and from the point of view of the youth who needs guidance In developing a philosophy of life. As practicing poet, he pioked up first, specific techniques for presenting particular effects, as In the shipwreck and ocean-floor scenes of Endymlon. the characterization of aged Saturn in Hyperion, and the battle scenes in his two attempts at drama. Though there are some echoes of Shakespeare*s phrases in his poetry, especially the early work, they are not nearly so numerous as the source-hunters have tried to show; even in the borrowing of specific effects, he usually used his own phrasing. He also found in Shakespeare and was profoundly impressed by the poetic attribute of intensity, that element of art and poetry which enables the artist to reconcile truth and beauty, to "make all disagreeables evaporate” from the intensity of the presentation. Intensity is found to some degree In Endymlon and to a greater extent in Hyperion, and had become a major element of his craft by the spring of 1819 and the writing of "The Eve of St. Agnes,” "Lamia,” and the odes (which owe their form to his experiments with the Shakespearean sonnet). His famous formulation of Negative Capability also seems to have come directly from his study of Shakespeare, for he presents it as a prime attribute of Shakespeare which permitted him to put down his glorious "half-seeing” without forcing it into a system of thought or reaching for unattainable answers. The various elements of negation of self, of empathy, of acceptance of good and evil in one's characters and one's own experience, and of acceptance of those partial truths which come to the Intensely working intuitive imagination 252 without "irritable reaching after fact and reason"--all are seen illustrated in the various great odes; and one, "The Ode on a Grecian Urn,” seems to compress all he had learned about the relationship of beauty and truth, about in tensity, and about Negative Capability. Shakespeare is also the source of the idea of acceptance of the world*s wrongs which flows out of Negative Capability: for the poet has the ability to see the whole, to see beauty and truth and present what he sees objectively, without judging. From that idea comes the belief that all men of worth, particularly Shakespeare, live lives of allegory, and that Shakespeare*s works are allegorical comments on his personal situation by which he was able to frame grief in a form of beauty and so accept it. That allegorizing Keats also practiced, especially in the poems of 1819, and it allowed him, too, to come to terms with dark experience. But in 1820, after his hemorrhage of February 3, he could no longer write, and all that he had learned from Shake speare was not enough to assuage his despair at dying "like a frog in a frost" without knowing the happiness that his love for Fanny Brawne had promised. The terrible bitter ness and jealousy of the last letters might never have been if he had been able to write the poem he told Fanny he had in mind to write "if my health would bear it." But even at the end, It was Shakespeare he turned to, for Shakespeare 253 had written such poetry, and though it was not enough, it was some comfort to the dying Keats. But it is painful and perhaps unfair to remember the Keats of 1820. His poetic life was over in 1819, the peak of his development, when he oame to full flower as a poet in his own right partly as a result of the study of Shakespeare. He should be remembered not as the apprentice of Endymlon or the hack writer of Otho or the bitter, dying youth of the last letters, but as the accomplished poet who gave us the dark beauty of the "Ode to a Nightingale," the serenity of the "Ode to Autumn," the philosophical peace of the "Ode on Melancholy," and above all, the message of the "Ode on a Grecian Urn." For that poem is not only an epitome of all Keats had learned from Shakespeare and a supreme statement of the value of art, but it is an emblem of Keats's poetry itself, of which we can say, as he said of the urn: When old age shall this generation waste, Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st, "Beauty is truth, truth beauty,"— that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know. BIBLIOGRAPHY BIBLIOGRAPHY 255 Arnold, Matthew. Essays In Criticism: pie Study of Poetry; John Keats: Wordsworth, ed. Susan &. Sheridan, feoston sa~ e t i re ' « g o 7 o . i s § & . Bate, Walter J. Negative Capability: The Intuitive Approach In Kieaba. Cambridge, Mass., . The Stylistic Development of Keats. New York, l9i|5. Briggs, Harold Edgar, ed. The Complete Poetry and Selected Prose of John Keats. New York, c. 1951. Chambers, Edmund K. William Shakespeare: A Study of Facts and Problems. 2 vois. Oxford, 1930. Colvin, Sidney. John Keats: His Life and Poetry. His Friends. Critics, and After-frame. 3rd ed.London, 1926. . Keats. 2nd ed. London and New York. 1BH9T ----- Craig. Hardin, ed. The Complete Works of Shakespeare. Chicago, c. 1961:------------ --------------- Finney, Claude Lee. The Evolution of Keats*s Poetry. 2 vols. Cambridge, Mass., 1936. Fogle, Richard Harter. The Imagery of Keats and Shelley. Chapel Hill, North Carolina, 19514-. Garrod, H. W. Keats. Oxford, 1926. . ed. The Poetical Works of John Keats. Oxford, 1939. Hewlett, Dorothy. A Life of John Keats. 2nd ed., rev. New York, 1950. Jack, Ian. "'The Realm of Flora' in Keats and Poussin," Times Literary Supplement. April 10, 1959, pp. 201 and 2l£. / 256 Keats, John. The Complete Poetry and Selected Prose of John Keats. eel. Harold Mgar Briggs. New fork, o. i95>l • _________ . The Letters of John Keats. I8lli-l821. ed. HyderEdward Rollins. £ vols. Cambridge, Mass•, 1958. ___________ . The Poems of John Keats, ed. Ernest de Selincourt, 5th ed. London, 1926. . The Poetloal Works of John Keats, ed. H. W. Garrod. Oxford, 1939. Lowell, Amy. John Keats. 2 vols. Boston and New York, 1925. MacGlllivray, J. R. Keats: A Bibliography and Reference Guide. Toronto, 191+9 • Milnes, Richard Monckton. Life. Letters, and Literary Remains of John Keats. New York. 1SU.8. Muir, Kenneth, ed. John Keats: A Reassessment. Liverpool, 1958. Murry, John Middleton. Keats and Shakespeare: A Study of Keata* Poetic Life from lm6 to lb20. London. 1925. The Mystery of Keata. London, _____________________ . Studies In Keats. London, 1930. _____________________ . Studies In Keats. Old and New. London, 1939. Parrot, Thomas Marc. William Shakespeare: A Handbook. New York, 1931*.. Rayaor, Thomas H., ed. The English Romantic Poets: A Review of Research, rev, ed. New York. i95o." Ridley, M. R. Keats*a Craftsmanship: A Study In Poetic Development! Oxford, 1933* Rollins, Hyder Edward, ed. The Keata Circle: Letters and Papers. l8l6-l87o. 2 vols. Cambridge, Mass., i9M>. 257 . ©d. The Letters of John Keats. lBlk-18211 ITvols. Cambridge, Maas., I95». d© Selincourt, Ernest. Preface, The Poems of John Keata. ed. Ernest de Selincourt, 5th ed. London, 1926. Shakespeare, William. The Complete Works of Shakespeare. ed. Hardin Craig. Chicago, c. 1561. . The Dramatic Works of William Shakespeare. 7 vols. Chiswick, England, I8II4 .. Slote, Bernice. Keats and the Dramatic Principle. Univ. of Nebraska, I95B. Spurgeon, Caroline P. E. Keats1a Shakespeare: A Descrip tive Study Based on New Material. 2nd ed.. rev. London, 1929. . Shakespeare's Imagery. And What It "7Fe I1 s"Us.~~2ncTed. Rollon,“1 ^ 7 ------- ----------- "James Tassi." Encyclopedia Brltannlca. 1959 ed., XXI, 830.

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Asset Metadata

Creator Gross, George Clayburn (author)

Core Title Keats'S 'Presider': The Influence Of Shakespeare On Keats

Degree Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Program English

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag Literature, General,OAI-PMH Harvest

Language English

Contributor Digitized by ProQuest (provenance)

Advisor Briggs, Harold E. (committee chair), Christensen, Francis (committee member), Robb, J. Wesley (committee member)

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c18-284855

Unique identifier UC11358831

Identifier 6305051.pdf (filename),usctheses-c18-284855 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier 6305051.pdf

Dmrecord 284855

Document Type Dissertation

Rights Gross, George Clayburn

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the au...

Repository Name University of Southern California Digital Library

Repository Location USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus, Los Angeles, California 90089, USA