This dissertation has been microfilmed exactly as received ® 8-15,324 GOOD, Donald William, 1933- THOMAS LOVELL BEDDOES: A CRITICAL STUDY OF fflS MAJOR WORKS.

The Ohio State University, Ph.D., 1968 Language and Literature, general

University Microfilms, Inc., Ann Arbor, Michigan

Copyright by Donald William Good

1968 THOMAS LOVELL BEDDOES : A CRITICAL STUDY OF HIS MAJOR WORKS

DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor ef Philosophy in the Graduate Scheel ef The Ohl® State University

By Denald William Good, B.A., M.A,

-Sr

The Ohio State University 1968

Approved by

AW. Tj Adv I ser * Department ef Eng Engli 1ish VITA

August 13, 1933 Born, Winchester, Virginia.

1955 B.A., Berea College, Berea, Kentucky. 1956 Teaching Assistant, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge.

1957 M.A., Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge. 1958-1962 Teaching Assistant, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio* 1963-1966 Instructor, The Ohio State University Columbus, Ohio.

1 9 6 6 - Assistant Professor of English, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

VITA...... il

INTRODUCTION...... 1

CHAPTER I. THE IMPROVISATORE...... 10 11 . TOE BRIDES* TRAGEDY AND TWO FRAGMENTS ...... 37 1H. DEATH*S JEST-BOOK ...... 107 IV. A SUMMARY...... 179

BIBLIOGRAPHY...... 195

i n INTRODUCTION

Thomas Lovell Beddoes, who, according to S. C. Chew, "was a good poet and ought to have been a great one,"*was perhaps the most promising of the poets that represent the period between the decline of the Romantics and the flourish­ ing of the Victorians. From his first appearance in print to the present day he has stirred Interest, provoked contro­ versy, and prompted many an ’’appreciation,” but he has re­ mained somehow elusive. Because Beddoes* life was eccentric and many details are not known, the approaches to his work have been speculative and often narrowly particular. Studies have been written on his alleged Darwinism, on his ’’father fixation,” on his position as "the last of the Elizabethans," and although not without some value, such approaches tend to emphasize various aspects of his life and work at the expense of others equally or more important. Most of these brief studies tend to isolate him from his own time, from other writers, and from the nineteenth-century milieu. The very earliest nineteenth-century criticism, brief reviews in the London Magazine, the Ed Inburgh Rev lew, and Blackwood * s , emphasized Beddoes* shortcomings: "There is a want of earnestness very often In his play";^ "our author frequently makes his huntsmen and servants talk good courtly

1 2 language”;-' "he does not subdue his scenes sufficiently to the end and purpose of the play";^ "he has evidently never once attempted to make his characters speak n atu rally "^

"no power whatever in character delineation."^ Years after his death in 18 JI4.9 , critics were s t i l l enumerating the same shortcomings: no proportions in dramatic structure, plots too involved, no character delineation. But in all of the criticism there was a briefly mentioned but real appreciation for Beddoes* strength of language and the power of his imagery. The comment that "he strews flowers in our path, and sets us bright images for our admiration" is an example of this early praise of Beddoes* style and diction.? In all of this criticism there is no attempt to get at the cause of the generalized impression, no attempt, unless a single quoted line is an attempt, to understand just what it is that has fascinated the succeeding readers of Beddoes. One might think that a man of such interests and eccen­ tricity would be explored fully in the twentieth century, what with our interest in Freud and the unconscious life and the progression of our own literary movements with their marked attention to symbolism and imagism. But once again the emphasis has been on Beddoes* peculiar behavior, his travels, his connections. There have, of course, been brief and segmented treatments that bear more directly on Beddoes as a poet. They are usually one of three types: the influ­ ence of other writers and of other philosophies on particular 3 passages in Beddoes; plot and character analyses aimed at proving a preconceived thesis; or brief studies ir. singular themes, i.e. revenge, horror, death, father-son conflict. Such studies are well represented by Mrs. Crosse's doting Q comments, Lytton Strachey's claim for Beddoes as the last of the Elizabethans,*^ Oliver Elton's concern for Beddoes* fatalism ,*0 Edmund Blunden's comparison of Beddoes with the great Romantics,*1 G* R. Potter's inquiry regarding Beddoes* belief in the evolution of species,and F. L. Lucas' article claiming, if dubiously, that "no one since Dryden has so recaptured the splendor of blank verse as a medium for dialogue, freeing it from that marmoreal s t i f f ­ ness which Milton imposed. Since 19U3* the greater part of the criticism has pro­ vided glimpses into the "man behind the poetry." We have claims of sadism and grandiose egoism,1^ of a retreat to a completely surreal world,of homosexuality,1^ of a general spiritual m alaise,and of a father fixation.1^1 All of these studies have drawn, for one reason or another, on the major biography written in 1935 by H. W. Donner: Thomas Love 11 Beddoes: the Making of ji Poet (a biography which su­ perseded Royali Snow's more interestingly written although less complete biography of 1928). Often dogmatic, certainly tiring, and apparently with not much sympathy for the Roman­ tics or Romanticism, Donner has nonetheless drawn together many of the facts about Beddoes* life, a difficult task in k

light of the poet’s travels, his strong sense of independence, and the mysterious handling of his papers after his death. A good part of the biography, necessarily, is an account of Beddoes1 childhood and schooling, his self-imposed exile to Germany, his many political activities, and his suicide. Beddoes as poet is, of course, the raison d1etre for the

biography; yet the many tasks of the biographer prohibit Donner from concentrating mainly on the poetry. The dis­ cussions of poetry are most often limited to analyses of prosody and to summaries of narrative and dramatic plots. Some of Donner's final judgments seem to overstate the

case for Beddoes and do him more disservice than would a more restrained and precise appraisal: for example: "It may, therefore, be seriously questioned whether Beddoes does not

deserve a place among the great Romantics, side by side with Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Lord Byron, Shelley and Keats." And "There is in his later poetry no morbidity, no skeleton complex, no flaw" [Italics m ine].^ The most recent study of Beddoes is a dissertation by C. A. Hoyt (Studles in Thomas Love 11 Beddoes, Columbia University, 19&1). Once again, however, we have a narrowed study regarding the influence of the Gothic and Elizabethan traditions of Beddoes’ work. Hoyt not surprisingly discovers a resemblance between the plots and characters of Beddoes and those of Maturin, Beckford, Beaumont and Fletcher, and Harston. He then attempts to account for the differences 5 between Beddoes and his predecessors on psychological grounds: "In all probability, the father's death coming when Beddoes was only five, was not apprehended by the child other than as abandonment or betrayal.Ergo: the central theme of Beddoes1 work is a father-son conflict. Other assumptions, seemingly exaggerated, would tend to limit the effectiveness of the dissertation. For example 1) that the markedly gro­ tesque early poetry (with melting flesh, spouting blood, lovers fondling ghastly skulls--all very serious) is "expressive of a thoroughly normal and familiar childish P 1 glee in the presence of the horrible." And 2) that, "in his later life and in a new spirit of stoical acceptance, Beddoes made a gradual reconciliation with death." 22 It seems to me that the evidence will not support this. Both the poetry--which becomes more probing, more ambiguous--and his suicide suggest that we are not dealing with a stoic who was finally "celebrating the peace and happiness to be found in the grave. From this review of previous criticism, then, it seems clear that the markedly disparate conclusions are the result of over-particular preconceptions on the part of scholars; and while almost all such conclusions are inter­ esting and some downright ingenious, 1 believe there are yet other important approaches which are as valid, which are certainly more relevant, and which, in the end, would come nearer to explaining the literary value and genuine appeal of his work. 6 The purpose of this present study is to examine and interpret, in light of his own changing and developing thought, a large part of the Beddoes canon, to investigate the major problems that confronted Beddoes as a working poet, and, finally, to provide a critical estimate of his measure of success. To date,the scholarly studies have made serious use of the poetry only where it might illuminate the Beddoes biography. The emphasis in this study is the other way round. 1 hope to make use of the outward biographical details only as they might help us to understand a particular poetic approach or critical opinion. In short, I hope to follow the life of these poems from the beginning to the end and to record this experience as essential to a basic understand­ ing and appreciation of Beddoes. The organization of the material is, overall, chronolo­ gical, and the body of each cfapter is about the poetry itself: what happens in it, what It means, and how well it succeeds. At the conclusion of the study a pattern will have evolved from the whole that will allow the reader to return to any part of the canon with a clearer Insight and a renewed appreciation. By basing the study as nearly as possible on the poetry itself, I hope to bring Beddoes back to his proper place In the great line of English poets, wherefrom, it seems to me, he has been removed by critics eager to prove pet theories and substantiate ingenious and limited theses. Implicitly, if not explicitly, I hope to show that Beddoes was a writer with very strong ties to 7 the problems, literary and otherwise, that beset his age. His work reveals strains of the waning Romanticism as well as anticipations of another era. he was a poet somehow caught in the crossfire of personal ambition and social re­ sponsibility, of an intensely rational outlook and an agoni­ zing knowledge of things beyond scientific proof. Whatever the exact results will be, 1 hope this study clarifies more precisely than previous criticism Just what It is in Beddoes' work that has held readers' Interest for over 1E>0 years. FOOTNOTES FOR THE INTRODUCTION

*S. C. Chew, '’The Nineteenth Century and After (1789- 1939)." Literary History of England, ed. A. C. Baugh, (New York, ------^B. W. Procter, "The Brides' Tragedy," London Magazine, (February 1823), 1+21 • 3 Ibid. ^•B. W. Procter, "Brides' Tragedy," Edinburgh Review, (February 1823), 177. ^John Wilson, "Review of Brides' Tragedy," Blackwoods, (December 1823), 723. ^"Brides' Tragedy," London Magazine, (December 1823), 645. ^Procter, London Magazine. 177. ®Mrs. Andrew Crosse, "Thomas Lovell Beddoes," Temple Bar. Cl (March 1894), 357. ^Lytton Strachey, "The Last Elizabethan." Books and Characters French and Eng 1ish (London, 1922), 237-^6£ an idea he might have gotten from Mabel Collins, Dublin University Review, IV (November 1879), 513. ^Oliver Elton, "Chapter XXI," Survey of Eng 1 lsh Literature, II (London, 1912), 299-304. ^Charles Edmund Blunden, "Beddoes and His Contempora­ ries," Votive Tablets (New York, 1932), 292-303. ^C-. R. Potter, "Did Thomas Lovell Beddoes Believe in Evolution of Species7" MP, XXI (August 1923), 89-100.

13f . L. Lucas, Studies French and English (New York, 1923), pp. 217 2^1. ^Hiram Kellogg Johnson, "Thomas Lovell Beddoes," Psychi- atric Quarterly, XVII (1943), 447-488. Johnson's theory refuted in part by H. W. Donner, "Echoes of Beddoesian Rambles: Edgeworths town to Zurich," Studia Neophilologica, XXXIII (1961), 219-264.

8 9 ^Geoffrey Wagner, "Centennial of a Suicide," Hori zon, XIX ( 19U9), 4-17ff. Aside from this particular reference, the article emphasizes the political aspects of Death’s Jest-Book. *6john Heath-Stubbs, The Darkling Plain (London, 1950), PP. 3 7 - U 8 . ------l^Louis O. Coxe, "Beddoes: The Mask of Parody," The Hudson Review, VI (Summer, 1953)* 252-265- l8Charles Alva Hoyt, "Poetry of Thomas Lovell Beddoes," Stud ia Neophllologlea, XXXV ( 1963, no. 1), 63-103.

!9 h. W. Donner, Beddoes (Oxford, 1935), 369,382. ^^Hoyt, Stud ie s, p. 21.

21Ibid. . p. 53- 2^Ibid. 2^Ibid. CHAPTER 1

THE IMPROVISATORE

When he was eighteen, Thomas Beddoes published one of

the two volumes of poetry that he was to publish during his lifetime. It consisted of a trilogy entitled The Im- prov i satore and a few other incidental poems. In this small volume we have the seed of nearly every idea that appears in Beddoes' later poetry.* If we are to understand fully the more mature productions of the poet, it will be necessary to make a close examination of these youthful efforts. The improvisatore is a group of three narrative poems or fyttes held very loosely together by a "songster wight" who sings them to three different audiences. The "improvised" quality is emphasized by the fact that neither the minstrel nor the audience serves any real dramatic purpose, and the

three narratives would scarcely suffer if the induction to each fytte were eliminated. The first of the three, "Albert and Emily," a kind of

Gothic pastoral, begins easily enough: "'Twas on the evening of a summer day." The first four stanzas establish an idyl­ lic setting: clouds disappear, birds sing, the sun produces

a "flush of gladness in the west," flowers abound along a

10 11 sleepy streamlet that flows through the sheltered valley, "the dimpled current seemfs ] to sm ile,” and the isle that Is to be the center of the action is "like a gem in living silver set." Despite this peace and contentment, however, a remarkable combination of images casts an air of occult terror and morbidity over the entire scene: There was a flush of gladness in the west, The sun was sinking from the realms he blessed; Huge snaky wreaths of mist were twining round In spires, the steaming incense of the ground. 11. 9-12. The scene here, while obviously of this earth, also suggests the awesome mystery of another world. Even in this early poetry Beddoes achieves a nice, if conventional, ten­ sion by contrasting imagery or by introducing unexpected, though not inappropriate, imagery. The sun’s blessing, for example, suggests a natural rite . The incense, produced in this case by a cooling rather than a heating process, empha­ sizes the unearthly, even unnatural, quality of the scene. The excessive use of the alliterative, hissing js and the choice of the word snaky, with its associations of evil, fear, deception and ugliness, constitute the same kind of unexpected image and modify considerably the generally plea­ sant picture of mist rising from the earth. It is as if the world of the supernatural refuses to he contained, and simply spills over into the world of identifiable objects.

The four stanzas of introduction, though rather mechani­ cal in construction, indicate Beddoes' ability to depict 12 objectively a scene of natural beauty and at the same time Imbue it with a discordant sense of horror. To a degree he has suspended time and place: it is summer anywhere in a valley anywhere. It is a world in which elfin ears hear the ringing of the harebells, and Flora sports and drops some jewels from her loosened hair. It is a setting of much color, much motion, much life that is not human. If it is true that in his later work the "frontiers between the living and the dead are very poorly kept,"^ it Is true that in this very early poetry Beddoes anticipates that vague division. Certainly the aura of the supernatural world is as real in these early stanzas as the "songster wight" who is supposedly singing them. Into this liquid and gaseous world of mist, incense, steam, and water are introduced Albert and Emily. Beddoes devotes five stanzas to the description of the maid, one to her betrothed. It is a curiously speechless world (especial­ ly In light of later Beddoes characters who do not know when to be quiet).3 it is the world of a youthful poet recording his sensuous impressions rather than the characters' thoughts or conversation. On this day before their wedding, Albert "speaks" in sighs and she "answers" with a smile. The reader Is never r.ade privy to any dialogue, which, along with any possibility of playful love-making, seems to embarrass Beddoes. Emily attempts to hide her "softness from the lover at her side" and he timidly stares into her "streaming crystals." 13

The god of love he finds cradled in her eyes, protected, secure, not genuinely sensual. Then in detail Beddoes describes her eyes, her lips, her bosom, voice, and hair. In her heart pure love had fixed his sovereign seat; All ignorant of cold disdain or smart, Responsive to her lover's sighs it beat. 1 1 . 6 2 -61+. Albert is described as a fair, wise, and noble youth. He is, so it would seem, a slightly more complicated character than Emily (though this is never borne out in his actions): he is touched by pain, despondency, and, with the knowledge of these, pride. In this quasi-Edenic setting, then, we have the maiden "wondrous fair," devoted, beautiful, trapped by herlover’s sighs. We have firs t love, innocent love, ideal love un­ marred by knowledge of what pain and heartbreak love can bring; we have two human beings, scarcely distinguished from one another, isolated from the world, from experience, from prior knowledge of the affa.rs of others, and cut off geographically from land by the "dimpled current." Too, even this early in Beddoes' work are we aware of an intense interest in the working out of the combined idea of death and love. The actual persons are minimized. There is little action, little individualized characterization; hence the interest is thrown on the psychological and philosophical implications inherent in the rather static scene.

In poetic preparation for the ultimate terror, darkness Ik descends. The emphasis here is on the unpleasantness of the scene: the breeze fans "the songsters into nightly death," and night blots "nature's beauties into naught." The lovers are engaged in gentle play and Albert sings to Emily. It is interesting to note that, considering Beddoes' later prac­ tice of introducing the songs themselves, we are not made party to the song. Instead there are two stanzas that dwell on the inadequacy of language to reveal the feelings of the heart, and Beddoes asks the reader to infuse the imagined song with feeling and meaning:

Art Is all in vain. My young and feeble hand Drops from its nerveless grasp the poet's wand. Then let your feelings tell them all in thought. 11. 38-U1. For some unknown but innocent reason the lovers decide to stay here for the night and soon both are asleep: the thin moonlight kissed their eyes to rest, And, like a mother's blessing, pure and meek, It hovered o'er them in their silent nest. 11. 166- 168. The entire aspect of Nature begins to change, and with a self-conscious stylistic skill Beddoes captures the speed and the chaotic quality of the approaching storm. But in their dreams, which thickly came and sweet, They knew not with what sudden sweep a fleet Of clustering clouds, cumbering the stars, were driven And scowled upon their slumbers from high heaven: They poured unnumbered, until the sky Was blotted everywhere; there seemed to stare At intervals, an hideous bloodshot eye, That threatened them with flickering doubtful f 1 are . 11. 169-176. All nature seems Informed with a different kind of energy.

What was once peaceful, harmonious, and orderly becomes ghastly and terrible in its power. The imagery suggests warring elements, almost as if it will be the human element vs. the forces of nature. There follows a dreadful stillness every sound was hushed On earth and sky, as if the hand of death Had with wild grasp all life and motion crushed. 11. 190- 192. In a stanza built on marked and somewhat mechanical contrasts Beddoes describes Emily's reaction to the coming storm. Everything that she has been dreaming contrasts strongly with what she wakes to find. So that in this con­ text, her reaction to a terrible downpour, which under ordinary circumstances would seem exaggerated, is one that has at least a partly logical basis. Albert now awakens, and the intensity of their reactions indicates that they recognize in the physical elements of rain, wind, and lightning a force that is not only destructive but also in­ trinsically evil. What follows is a graphically detailed

account of the berserk fury of nature. With an ability that would improve over the years, Beddoes strongly contrasts the powerful and wild forces with the helplessness and gentleness of the lovers. Ail the details rush to the in­ evitable destruction of the two who are characterized by despair, distraction, paleness, terror, grief-blighted voices and freezing fear. The fury and lightning of the storm are described by a yawning, grinning, uncouth mouth and fiery 16 grave, with the overtones of a thing consumed, devoured and smothered, Albert is struck and killed by lightning, at which point Emily in a frenzy begins to have hallucinations. She collapses over her charred lover. The bridesmaids find the pair the next morning; and Emily embraces the "loath­ some lump." Albert is buried, and for three months Emily lives a life of madness in the woods, having been isolated by forces beyond her control, forces of enchantment and wizardry as they manifest themselves in the natural elements. She dies looking "as if stern death had heard her simple prayer,/And kissed her beauty into stoniness." She is buried next to Albert; and a lily and a rose grow spontaneously from the grave and fill the air with a "downy perfume." The improv1satore who related all this to the feasting merrymakers wanders away from the crowd, meets "fair Agnes," to whom he sings the next fytte, "Rodolph the Wild." Once again Beddoes describes a bucolic setting, "afar from glit­ tering show and boisterous halls." As in "Albert and Emily," approaching night is cast in the image:'; of coolness and death: clouds are "mist-clad mourners," ocean is the "grave and cradle of short-lived time." The opening stanzas are saturated with words like pall, mourners, grave, death-song, ghost, murdered, wal1ings and die. Seated by the Side of a lake amidst all this pleasant gloom is a "lovelorn wight" who tunes his lyre and sings a love song. The imagery here is typical of Beddoes: birds, flowers, zephyrs, sunbeams.

The love is pure and uncomplicated. When he is finished 17 singing, however, he hears a distant song begging him to follow, follow. The song is irresistibly seductive, and apparently forsaking his lovely Anna and thinking of nothing but himself and his own momentary satisfaction, he is en­ ticed "to trace the music to its source." His own unreason­ able passion at this moment has its counterparts in the natural elements. A column of fire shoots out of the lake and bids him follow. In the midst of this natural chaos, another song promises him that he will view "forms you n'er saw." And as he stepped, fresh buds bloomed at his feet, And tiny voices whispered in his ear, Whilst fragrant gales wept music, him to greet, And all was sweetness he could see or hear. 11. 183 - 166. The voice and vision of love leao the anxious youth to a cavernous paradise filled with jasmine, incense, amorous air and maidens. The mistress of the cave beckons him with weird words of love: Her words were drops of music; as they swept, Clammy with odour, folds of softness crept Snakily round his soul; he tried to brush Off from her lips that love-enamelled flush. 11. 361-366. One evening at twilight he steals into the village and dies on a grassy mound where he had played as a child.

The transition to the third fytte is as abrupt as was that from the first to the second. "Fair Agnes" trips off and the songster wight runs into "ancient Margaret" to whom he sings the third and final song, "Leopold." Unlike the lti other two, "Leopold” opens on a most horrifying scene. With camera-like technique Beddoes scans a battlefield cov­ ered with gore, warm blood, and broken bones, while the souls of the dead wind aloft like a misty snake. Amongst the dead wanders a reverend hermit, Hubert, who discovers an infant alternately whining and playing in the blood of his dead mother. The hermit, whose "heart was the pure shrine/Of all that's beauteous, kindly and divine," res­ cues the infant and returns with him to his cell. As the babe grows, it becomes clear that the child is not reacting to the kindly spirit of Hubert or the natural

goodness of the environment. The boy lacks any sense of authority and discipline. His only playmate was the "stormy blast." A Byronic figure of mystery and defiance, he stays very much to himself and ponders questions about eternity, the brevity of life, and escape from "the sepulchral jaw/ Of loitering eternity," representing the first time that words and thoughts of a truly reflective or philosophical kind appear In Beddoes' work.

Leopold, corrupt in mind and spirit, feels most at home in a corrupt, ugly and evil landscape. One day In such surroundings a "word-shaping sound" tempts him to power, "to ride among the deep and dally with the lightning." The key to power, however, must be the death of Hubert, which, as one might suspect, scarcely poses a problem. He returns to Hubert's cell, and in a scene much like that when Hubert had gazed on the innocent babe, "Leopold stood and gazed 19 upon the slumber of the good,” After the murder, Leopold is transported into the heavens where he wanders for cen­ turies, a kind of raw and pure element in himself, Beddoes indulges himself here in a way in which he never does again. No earthly figure again changes his nature from natural to supernatural. Coming in the midst of this supernatural journey is a heraldic tribute to womankind: a flower among sin and wickedness, a voice of rapture, a star in the night, our guardian angel. The next stanza is back to Leopold who has returned to earth. He peers through a window and sees a “beauteous daughter of mankind. . . . He saw--he saw and loved." He returns the next night and finds "the beauty racked with pain." Then he again flies off into the a ir: away, away he flew Over the waves that roared, the storms that blew, The clouds that lowered, t i l l the cave was nigh, The fatal cave with its dun canopy Of venomed mist. 11. 377-361. In the midst of an epic storm, he lets forth one final horrifying cry. "The storm was hushed. Men tell not where he went." And in this vague way, with no commentary from the minstrel, Beddoes brings an end to the trilogy.

As might be expected, this early work received scant attention: "Fits indeed," cried one contemporary critic, "hysterical decidedly."^ And we must admit that at firs t sight It seems to hold little promise. As narrative it is tiresome, a result in part of scant variation in perspective 20 or point of view. In "Albert and £mlly" the reader is drawn rather doggedly through stanza after stanza of little or no action. In "Rodolph" there is poetic confusion as to whether we are dealing with a realistic narrative with em­ blematic overtones, or merely a confused tale filled with every conceivable horror. "Leopold," with much unmotivated action, is Jumbled and incomplete. The major characters themselves are indecisively drawn. We are not concerned with who they are or what kind of persons they are. Rarely are we concerned about what will happen to them; nor do we really fear that good people will suffer or that the evil ones will not get their just punishment. Our interest is not engaged in their growing, maturing, or changing character. Aside from these larger questions, the poems are mechanical in their construction and careless in their diction and prosody. Despite all this, however, there are indications of remarkable talent and of the turns that that talent was to take during the next twenty-five years. First, regardless of the fact that the poetic characterization is weak, the trilogy maintains such a striking unity of tone and approach that we are led to conclude that the lack of characteriza­ tion and action may be as much a matter of the poet's choice as the poet’s deficiency. Like Shelley's Prometheus Unbound, though comparable in no other way to that work, Beddoes' Improvisatore is a drama of the mind rather than of outward 21 action. This will become Increasingly clearer when, after examining other works by Beddoes, we take a backward glance at this narrative. In these early poems the emphasis is s tric tly on "the fatal impingement of the other world on this one,"^ This is not to be construed narrowly, as Strachey suggested, to mean that Beddoes is at this time pre-occupied with death in The Improvisato re.^ On the contrary, if there is a preoccupation, it is with the meaning of this life, dis­ agreeable and brief though it may be. Just what are we to make of it? Leopold says it this way: What Is this life, that spins so strangely on That ere we grasp and feel It, it is gone? Is it a vision? Are we sleeping now In the sweet sunshine of another world? 11. 179 - 182 . Not one of the characters in The Improv isatore can recon­ cile himself to the often inexplicable features of this earthly life . Emily goes mad and finally dies because her idealized love is unrealized. Rodolph, unwilling to accept common earthly limitations, is driven mad. Leopold, whose case is more ambiguous partly because more poorly stated, is constitutionally unable to realize the restriction of this world and, as a ferocious inhuman creature, seeks an­ swers and finds oblivion In the elements. The principal characters are temperamentally incapable of dealing with traumatic but nonetheless human experience. Derangement as well as death becomes their lot. 22 It may be possible to understand these situations as an exploitation of the unnatural and horrible. If it is that, it is that and more. Especially looking ahead to Beddoes' other work, we can see in these early poems an exploitation of the macabre that emphasizes not so much the macabre its e lf as it does the chaotic, unpredictable, and lonely plight of the struggling individual. In Beddoes' later work, these forces may change or become modified, but the conflict between the individual and nearly all the world outside him remains the issue that informs the poetry. Here the macabre is the means to the end; later it will be per­ sonal ambition or desire; even later, political power and aspirations to god-head. But the essential issue is the individual conflict and struggle common to humanity. That these characters are in the long run released by death is not the same thing as Beddoes1 being pre-occupied with death. In a sense, of course, to explore the meaning of life is to explore the meaning of death. And it is true that death assumes a grander place in Beddoes' later poetry. But he was as much concerned to find a meaning for this brief passage on earth as he was to discover a meaning for all that is beyond it. When he was only twenty-four he wrote, ,fI am now already so thoroughly penetrated with the conviction of the absurdity & unsatisfactory nature of human life that I search with avidity for every shadow of a proof or probability of an after-existence, both in the 23 material & immaterial nature of man."^ In light of this temperament inclined to melancholy and contemplation of the mysterious, and conceding the structural difficulties in The Improvisatore, we must cautiously conclude that it is not so much the horror and certainty of death that govern the actions and tone of these poems as it is the p itifu l and losing struggle between a world of finite human know­ ledge and a world of infinite mystery. As the following section will indicate, these poems are a rather interesting mixture of the gothic and the visionary. All the major characters are in search of or possessed of a vision or ideal. The singularity of the struggle that results when a human being is pitted against an imaginative ideal is emphasized by removing the characters from any restrictiv e temporal or social environment. Albert and Emily, themselves idealized lovers, are in search of a love that can only be realized outside time. By contrast, a love on earth, subject to every human shortcoming as well as the ravages of time itself, can become at best a mere secular arrangement. Both Albert and Emily believe that the ideal love will be realized at death. And the spontaneous flower­ ing of the rose and the lily at the end of the poem suggests at ’east a poetic confirmation of this belief. In "Rodolph” the protagonist forsakes his Anna with all her human charm and loveliness for the enticing, seduc­ tive voices that lure him to a paradise wherein is enthroned 2k a tempting sensual mistress. She caresses him with words which are as drops of music; when Rodolph vows to be hers, the vision disappears and is supplanted by every supernatural

grotesquerie. Rodolph comes to a horrible and for aspiring to become a part of the vision, for allowing himself to be irrationally seduced by the voluptuous ideal. As in "Albert and Emily" any consummation of the love is thwarted by Beddoes1 particular chronological construction of the events. There is simply no place in the Beddoesian world for sexual relationships, even under the most reasonable and conven­ tional conditions. Persons move alone through this world. "Leopold" is even more bizarre than the other two fyttes. In this poem the main character, a child of blood­ shed and holocaust, frees himself of human limitations by severing his only connection with the race of men. He then is free to pursue his vision of power, his desire to return to the elements of earth, air, fire, and water. He is a picture of unbridled license and absolute defiance, moving most easily in what for humankind would be an unin­ habitable world. He thrives on ugliness, feeds on horror, and then, like Conrad in Byron's The Corsair, simply d is­

appears, coming to no definite end. As in the other two fyttes, a physical consummation of the love relationship is frustrated by the structure of incidents. The woman whom

Leopold saw and loved turns into a "beauty racked with pain": His look, his breath had choaked her soul, death's hand Had stiffened her fair tresses, and the grasp 25 Of his cold clammy fingers in their clasp Mottled her beauty with damp mildewed stains. 11. 365-368. The quality of the visions is modified by the markedly gothic element that pervades these poems. We cannot, how­ ever, call them gothic tales as such. That Beddoes could construct a romance of terror is obvious from his naive composition entitled Scaroni , or the Mys terious Cave, a Romant ic F ic t ion. He knew the requirements. At fifteen years of age, he crammed into this very brief tale every convention of the gothic tale as revealed in the works of Walpole, Radcllffe, and Lewis. The story, set in Italy during the Crusades, deals with Italian aristocracy, a quick-tempered Pope, and a forest demon. There are trap doors, caves, evil spirits, a long-lost wife re-established with her family, and a "grave impressive moral resulting Q from the whole.' The tale, calculated to terrify, was a blatant imitation of the terror school. But this is not so with the three poems under consideration here. Few of the conventions that distinguish earlier terror writers are to be found in The Improv i satore. Castles, gothic villains, flickering candles, mysterious manuscripts, obscure heroes, sorcerers and demons, magic mirrors and en- changed wands—none of these has any significant place in Beddoes’ trilogy. Part of the answer is to be discovered,

I suspect, in Beddoes' conception of the absolute singularity of each man's vision, each man's quest. Beddoes* characters, 26 both now and later, are only vaguely social creatures.

They simply can*not adapt themselves to the current social and living conditions. To make individual peace with them­

selves and with any collective system seems to be beyond possibility. Strengthened by the occasional use of gothic elements, there is in these poems a reflective seriousness that reinforces the ideas of isolation, solitude, and freedom.

In most of the gothic tales, society and organized life figure prominently, as symbolized by particular historical periods, particular castles with families, servants, the Church, the body politic. These divisive elements that de­ mand their various and often contradictory allegiances are,

of course, the trappings of civilization, order, authority, and even oppression. The resulting entanglements, aggrava­ ted by religious hatreds, political jealousies, family squabbles, and love rivalries consume the lives of the people involved. But such conditions do not obtain in The Impro- visatore. There is no fixed or pivotal point from which emanates the action: there is no nation, no real atmosphere of antiquity and no authentic detail. The characters, having

essentially been released from time and historical place, are more important for their general humanness than for the fact that they are errant sons, wayward priests, lusting counts, dutiful wives, or chaste maidens. Beddoes* char­

acters, in a sense, have been purified of the accidents of Fate; and the characterizations are modified accordingly. 2 7 In contrast, no matter how exaggerated or caricatured, the characters of the gothic tales do maintain individual presences: the reader fears for the life of the innocent maiden; and he expects the just sentence on the v illa in . Such characters have been thrust into an active life ; Beddoes* have been withdrawn. Such characters have involved, if melo­ dramatic, identities; Beddoes* have nominal differentiation. These different uses of characterization modify the degree of reflective and lyrical nature of the works. In

The Castle of Otranto, for example, the characters are constantly busy for one reason or another. Isabella's pre­ sence in the work is devoted solely to keeping alive and chaste. There is little chance or cause for an inquiry, even by implication, into the nature of life and death, though the former be anything but pleasant, and the latter an immediate possibility. In such works, death, even if unfair or inexplicable, is generally the result of a decidedly human instrument. Persons are undone by other persons be­ cause Justice and morality demand it. Such is not the case in The Improv1sato re. Beddoes* demi-characters are undone not because they have wronged another human being or because a morality outside the narrative demands it, but because they have personally lusted after the Ideal, and have been unable or unwilling to settle for less. The conflict here Is not so much the result of multiple human encounters as it is a personal and inward conflict between a vision or an 28 Ideal and the claims and restrictio n s imposed by the normal world. As a result, we may suggest that Beddoes1 characters, unlike those in the gothic romances, were the instruments of their own destruction in that they could not reconcile the claims of the free spirit and those of the enslaved flesh. The different emphasis on the nature of characterization also influenced Beddoes’ narrative process. In the gothic tales the narrative is ingeniously manipulated to heighten our suspense regarding the fate of the characters. The reader is led along to a climactic point and then, before the moment of recognition or a reversal of circumstances, he is either thrust back in time or led to another character whose unhappy life is hanging in the balance. The motive is suspense, the method a matter of precise timing; and all of it depends on whether or not the character(s) will succumb or endure. The Improv i sa to re , on the other hand,

lacks this narrative ingenuity. Almost every scene of horror has long been anticipated, and there are no gothic gimmicks. Beddoes' m otive--certainly not suspense--must

be discovered in the nature of the conflict between the formal, structural world and the lim itless world of dreams, visions, and imagination. Unlike most gothic authors, who were content to render exclusively some aspect of natural or supernatural "fact" (effects of light, space, of mass or solidity), Beddoes is not content until he has extended our sensibility to more than a sensational level. In his attempt 29 to make known that which can scarcely be stated in human terms, he draws on the mixtures of reality and unreality, logic and fantasy, banality and sublimation of existence. Reinforced with the agents of terror, these elements form an indissoluble and Inexplicable unity. The terror is intrinsic in Beddoes, not adventitious. As much as beauty and love, it Is at the core of experience, As D. Varna states in The Goth ic Flame, "[Man's] soul is quickened by the icy touch of fear for he experiences pure terror only when confronted by the dim indestructible world of the supernatural. The quiverings of spirit which are base when prompted by things sordid and earthy, become sublime when inspired by a sense of the visionary and immortal" (p. 212), As has been noted above, despite the air of melancholy and the occasional horror scenes in The Improv1satore, Beddoes uses the traditional gothic elements rather sparingly. Most certainly they are not used primarily to induce suspense or shock; nor are they used to anticipate the triumph of poetic Justice and moral virtue. There are, of course, scenes of scary apprehension; but we cannot label as gothic just any poem that contains a ghastly and psychic quality. The most gruesome scenes in Beddoes contain much blood, melting flesh, and putrid human remains; and in the midst of such scenes we often discover the principal character. But in every case the elements of terror are used to contrast the incom­ prehensible and unreasonably transitory nature of this life 30 with an unattainable ideal of permanence, of indestructibil­ ity. In "Albert and Emily," for example, the beautiful heroine clasps to her white breast the charred, grotesque body of her love, her only solace being the certainty of an ideal union after this life. In "Rodolph," the anxious youthful lover confuses the ideal with the most obviously sensual and as a result finds himself surrounded by the skulls, blood, filth and dust of decaying humans, a ll, in fact, that would ever remain of a love whose vital force was sensual. In "Leopold," gothic horror provides a contrast of the love of mother and infant with the intemperate and irrational propensity of man that leads him to a foul-sme11ing , death-ridden battlefield. In these early poems, then, the gothic element is used not so much to induce shock and maintain suspense as to symbolize, first, the destructive forces of time and, secondly, the superficial and irrational ambitions of man­ kind. Combined with a sense of skepticism and genuine anxiety, and without a hint of hope for the human condition, the gothic element underscores the personal anxieties and individual isolation that reside in each soul but which, in earlier gothic works, are obscured by the veneer of civilization with its elaborate and often oppressive patterns of thought and morality.

Without exaggerating the worth of these first youthful efforts, I think we can discover In them the seeds of much 31 of Beddoes1 successes and failure. First, he was never able to construct a wholly unified work (The 3rides 1 Tragedy, which comes closest, has its own special problems). While each of these first three poems has its own vague unity, as a trilogy they are not really held together with the use of the "songster wight." His presence in the structure is negligible and serves only to make the very weakest of transitions between the fyttes. The three d if­ ferent audiences for whom he performs have no dramatic connection to the piece. The minstrel, the hall of merry­ makers, "fair Agnes" and "ancient Margaret" provide only the creakiest kind of machinery for the movement of The

Improv isatore. A second difficulty, another that was to remain with Beddoes throughout life, was his inability to draw characters. This was a deficiency he was well aware of: "The charge of monotony is well grounded, but I can hardly do anything in this case, for the power of drawing character & humour—two things absolutely indispensable for a good dramatist--are the ,.Q first articles in my deficiencies . " / The characters in The Improvi sato re are used as mere passive vehicles. They re­ spond, they react, but they are scarcely ever moved by their own determined w ill. They almost never speak. They are not seen moving in society. They are not citizens of anypolltical or economic system, nor are they adherents of any particular philosophy or disciples of any faith. There 32 are few, if any, of the ordinary daily demands made on their lives, which, incidentally, balance precariously be­

tween sanity and insanity. In all three of these poems one of the principal characters ends his life in madness. In light of these circumstances it is doubly difficult for the reader to become involved in the individual welfare of the personages ol the poems. Here, however, we must guard against overstating the case against Beddoes’ characterizations. For while the personages are not what we would call f1esh-and-blood char­ acters, that need not be in itself an indictment against the poetry. In each poem the overriding principle seems to be to induce in the reader a sense of independent struggle with vital absolutes--unnamed and perhaps unname- able—absolutes best approached through metaphor. Through Beddoes' nature imagery we are made aware of a world informed with an inexplicable but inescapable order against which the human--any human--must struggle. Granted that Beddoes has abstracted from human personality all the realistically differentiating characteristics, he has, at the same time, managed to depict a world of supernatural enrichment, be it unaccommodating and essentially cruel, deceptive and entrancing. The actual occurrences in these poems--and they are few—are conditioned less by the circumstances of parti­ cularized character and setting than by Beddoes* youthful attempt to impose on an intangible world the logic of the tangi ble . 33 The improv i satore provides us with a remarkable gli»pse into what will be the world of Beddoes* thought and poetry. His preoccupation with a limitless and mysterious world be­ yond proof is, perhaps, the single idea which shapes much else. The nature imagery of "Albert and Emily," Rodolph's brief encounter with deceiving beauty, and Leopold's blatant union with the universe itself all anticipate the much stronger and more psychologically horrifying use Beddoes was to make of the world of fiends and our "other selves." Closely allied with this are several other ideas that form much of the poetry: 1) Among hostile forces of unlimited power and scope, the individual moves anxiously alone. In this early work, Beddoes' characters are even geographi­ cally isolated. But when he later deals with men in social and political settings we discover that they are psycholo­ gically isolated from one another. Indeed the individuals often have difficulties reconciling opposing forces within their own selves. 2) In this imperfect world the lines between reality and unreality, between logic and fantasy are Indeed thin ones and seem drawn as much by forces outside a person's control as by the persons themselves. However weakly drawn the characters are in these narratives, they do represent real people, but people who cannot, or are not equipped to, distinguish between the intensest kind of vision or ideal and the demands the world must make on humans if they are to survive in it. In these early works these 3U shortcomings are serious but ultimately bring ruination only to one or two persons. Later on, this confusion between logic and fantasy will be much more calamitous.

3) Despite the fact that Beddoes often writes about love there is rarely a hint of sensuality or sexuality. In The Improvlsatore, and later on in The Brides' Tragedy and Death's Jest-Book, any consummation of love is made impossible. Albert is killed; Rodolph goes mad; Leopold's looks des­ troy; Hesperus of The Brides' Tragedy is executed before his marriage to Olivia; Adalmar and Athulf and Isbrand of Death's Jest-Book all go to the grave unmarried although much of their dialogue is about imminent love and ultimate marriage. This idea is closely related to Beddoes' treatment of love-in-death, as we have already seen in The Improvisatore and as we shall see in The Brides' Tragedy and Death's Jest-Book. I4) The last major idea suggested by The Improvi - satore but which pervades all of Beddoes' work is two-fold. And that is the unpredictable quality of life and its rela­ tionship to a lack of a central, controlling morality. What could possibly happen to Albert and Emily, secure and as isolated as they were by ’’gent'e" Nature? Why would Leopold, treated to every kindness and virtue known to man, turn into a despicable monster? Throughout Beddoes' work, the same kinds of questions emphasize at once (a) how trapped

we are and (b) how desirous we are to escape that entrapment.

Of course these ideas are not as neatly categorized as 35 this sketchy outline would suggest. Each idea influences and is influenced by the others. Before he died, Beddoes was to work and rework these basic ideas in poetry which transcends rational consistency. FOOTNOTES FOR CHAPTER I

*The Works of Thomas Love 11 Beddoes, ed. H. W. Donner (London, 1935). Beddoes , in a letter to Thomas Forbes Kelsall (April 8, 1829)» remarked "and even the imaginative poetry I think you will find, in all my verse, always harp­ ing on the same two or three principles: for which plain & satisfactory reasons I have no business to expect any great distinction as a writer." p. 61+5. All references to anything written by Beddoes are to this edition, hereafter referred to as Works. %iram Kellogg Johnson, M. D., "Thomas Lovell Beddoes," Psychiatric Quarterly, XVII (191+3)# 1+85* ^Be ddoes once remarked about Death1s Jest-Book that "[Procter] is only about as much too brief as I am too long- winded; but he can correct his failing more easily. My cursed fellows in the jestbook would palaver ’mmeasurably & I could not prevent them" Works. p. 639. ^The Monthly Review: or Literary Journal, XCV (June 1821), 216. ^Royall Snow, Thomas Lovell Beddoes: Eccentric and Poet (New York, 1928), p. 22.

^Lytton Strachey, "The Last of the Elizabethans," Books and Characters French and Eng 1 ish (New York, 1922), p. 2l+3- ?Works, pp. 6 2 9 -6 3 0 . ®Mrs. Barbauld quoted in Devendra P. Varma's Gothic Flame (London, 1957), p. 66. ^Works, p. 61+5.

36 CHAPTER I I

THE BRIDES1 TRAGEDY AND TWO FRAGMENTS

Beddoes' next major work was The Brides' Tragedy, published on November 30, 1822, when Beddoes was nineteen.

The reviews were more promising than those of The Improvi- satojre, but they were not, as Donner has written, "Super­

latively laudatory reviews of The Brides' Tragedy, e.g. by

Procter, Darley, and John Wilson.For instance, Wilson praises Beddoes* subject matter and the luxuriance of the young poet's fancy but then states, "He has never once attempted to make his characters speak naturally; they all declaim, harangue, spout and poetize with equal ease and elegance; and when they go mad, which, towards the end they almost all do, man, woman and child, they merely become a little more figurative and metaphorical; but the train of their thoughts and feelings proceeds much the same as when they were in their sober senses." Procter and Darley,

though not quite so abusive and, I might add, mistaken, wrote 3 essentially the same thing. Later critics, at the expense

of losing sight of the play itself, have emphasized Beddoes*

obvious indebtedness to his Elizabethan predecessors--

though they have been unwilling to Judge him on those terms —

37 38 and his inability, shared with his contemporaries, to construct a real tragedy.

In passing from The Improvisatore to The Brides1

Tragedy we are, comparatively speaking, passing from a weakly constructed narrative poem to a play "academically built and planned with care."^ We move from a narrative in which time and place have been suspended to a drama which depends for its vitality and success on a precise relationship of events in time. We move from a more flexible literary form, the narrative poem, to a form which* through tradition, has had imposed upon it more demanding structural regularities. With the drama, we find ourselves somewhat more restricted in terms of setting and characteri­ zations. In a narrative poem, we often permit a latitude of character-drawing that we find unrealistic, not to say

Impractical, in a drama. Allowing for a few obvious excep­ tions— and not to draw too precise a line between the genres-- we do not expect supernatural spirits to be the central figures In a drama. Creatures of epic proportion with super­ human qualities do not often hold our attention on the stage.

We have come to expect the working out of problems and con­ flicts through the representative action of human beings, whether they be Incestuous kings, emancipated women, or tired salesmen.

The settings, too, are more limited in drama. It would be extremely difficult to stage, in as graphic and detailed a way as might be suggested in a narrative poem, the regions 39 of hell or heaven. Or as another example, a dream within a dream, a device of some narrative poems, would be more difficult to adapt to the stage without appearing gimmicky.

Obviously, many of the differences arise from the very practical limitations of the stage as so many square feet of floor space on which must be acted out every point of the drama. The ’’stage” of a narrative poem Is limited in no such way; ordinarily speaking, the range of the charac­ terisations, actions, and settings takes us as far and wide as the mind will carry us. Clearly these structural differ­ ences modify the content of the genre; indeed, one can say that these structural differences, arhen they do modify the content to a particular degree, differentiate one genre from another. In this change from one genre to another, Beddoes displays a remarkable knowledge of past literature and a marked progress in character delineation, in the compact handling of ideas, and in the gradual coming to terms with the problems that pervade his entire body of work.

It is time now to turn to Beddoes1 first drama, published when he was a nineteen-year-old student at Pembroke College,

Oxford. The Brides1 Tragedy, dedicated to the Reverend Henry

Card, was written "exclusively for the closet,” at a time when Beddoes felt that the dramatic muse had all but deserted

England: "England can hardly boast anything that deserves to be called a national stage.The drama was, as will be explained later In detail, based on an actual incident which, itself, had been treated earlier in an English ballad. A 1+0 little less than five years after the drama’s publication

Beddoes was to remember It as "a very sad boyish affair . . . which I wd not now be condemned to read through for any consideration.”^ It is, nonetheless, a very interesting work that we must consider in light of Beddoes' earlier work and subsequent development.

The first scene of The Brides1 Tragedy introduces us to the two main characters, Hesperus and Floribel. He is the son of an impoverished lord, and she the daughter of a previously wealthy though untitled family. Fearing the reaction of Hesperus' father, the two have been married secretly, and on this point the whole play turns. But for now they are two youthful, happy lovers, secluded from the world by a bower of eglantine. It should be noted here that aside from the desire to be alone with their love, there is with Beddoes1 main characters always a suggestion of physical and/or psychological estrangement from the world.

And this is so even if the poet is not dealing with insanity

(as in ”Albert and Emily”), when human nature itself seems to have taken on ominous overtones. Although this scene establishes the two as ecstatically happy, as in his earlier work Beddoes has injected a hint of the dark, of the mysteri­ ous land of vision, of dreams. Floribel, who ”oftentimes in solitude” is inclined to be "very, very mournful,” has been warned in a dream to "'ware of love,/Of fickleness, and woe, and mad despair.” Whenever he can, Beddoes keeps activated the undercurrents of gloom and melancholy, even when the essential image is ef loveliness or beauty: for example, the description of a lily of the valley: "low it

lay/Over a mossy mound, withered and weeping/As on a fa iry's

grave." Or, "The twi11ght-haunting gnat/His requiem whined, and harebells tolled his knell." Such lines, of course, do more than maintain a dark theme throughout the play.

They ever remind us of the dualities of emotion and thought, of beauty and ugliness, of innocence and worldliness, and of the difficulty of determining where one becomes the other. Such figures and images are more abundant in The

Brides1 Tragedy than in "Albert and Emily," for it becomes clear that in the year that lapsed between the two produc­

tions, Beddoes1 characters have grown out of their simplicity.

They have, as it were, been thrown dramatically into the world. To Albert and Emily love is only good. To Rodolph

the quest for a fantastic love is worth all the promise of earthly love. To J-e©p#id elemental power is everything.

But by the time he comes to The Brides1 Tragedy Beddoes has

tempered such approaches with a broader vision and a matur­

ing skill. Even in the first scene of the drama we learn

that love is not often only secretive, but also greatly complicated by such mundane strictures as class lines and

basic economics. Mores© than in The Improvlsatore, charac­

ters will be held accountable for their behavior to other

characters. The formal structures of the family and the body

politic will introduce obligations that extend far beyond k2 The second scene of Act X takes place at the palace of Orlando. It Is he who has had Lord Ernest, Hesperus* father, Imprisoned, ostensibly for debt. But there Is a minimum of hard feeling on Orlando’s part, as he explains to his friend Claudio:

You must not think Orlando so forgetful As to abuse the reverence of age. An age, like his, of piety and virtue; *Tis but a fraud of kindness, sportive force. Act I, sc. 11.

The suras that Lord Ernest owes Orlando’s father will not be claimed if Hesperus marries Olivia, Orlando's sister.

So obviously Orlando has another motive.

We discover now that Hesperus and Olivia had known each other as children.

they were wont In childhood to be playmates, and some love May H e beneath the ashes of that friendship, That needs her breath alone to burst and blaze. Act I, sc. II

This passage, anticipating a love between these two, is In­ teresting for its love-fire imagery. Beddoes* lovers when face to face never reveal any real sensual quality. As

C. A. Hoyt says of the first scene of this drama, "The total lack of eroticism connected with this stolen meeting between the lovers who are, after all, husband and wife, should be noted."? But occasionally when love unions are spoken of generally, Beddoes calls attention to heat and, g by extension, sensuality. At one point Claudio speaks, albeit humorously, of how Floribel, the nymph in the woods, has affected Orlando. We*11 have't In ballad metre, with a burthen Of sighs, hew one bright glance of a brawn damsel Lit up the tinder of Orlande's heart In a het blaze. Act 1, sc. 11.

Orlando answers and extends the image with religieus and sacrificial overtenes: "Enough to Kindle up/An altar in my breast."

In a very short space, then, Beddoes presents us with the dramatic problem: it will be a conflict between a duty growing out of a personal economic crisis,and love. The dramatic situation, however, has a slightly more complicated twist. Often a major plot line will revolve around marrying against a father’s wishes. But this plot line reads: Now that 1 have married, and probably against my father's wishes, what do 1 do? Because the crucial action, i.e. the marriage, has occurred and because there is no withdrawing, without violence, from the obligation that the marriage entails, the tentacles of misery and catastrophe will reach far and wide, entangling beyond extrication the lives of all, and ultimately destroying the two families most involved.

In the third and final scene of Act I, we are intro­ duced to Lord Ernest. Being held a prisoner by Orlando, he

implores Hesperus to marry Olivia. Hesperus, of course, can­ not, but his father's pleadings are so great and pitiful that he gives his word that he will. Lord Ernest is led away, supposedly to freedom, and Hesperus delivers himself of a soliloquy that is a strong contrast to the Joyous one with which he opened the play. In this last speech of the act he kh calls an catastrophe te end his life. He invokes lightning, madness, and disease. When he finds that he cannot thus will his death, he mocks it with a language and tone that harkcn back to "Leopold” and at the same time anticipate

Beddoes' proposed thesis of Death1s Jest-Book:

Then death is all a fable, A pious lie to make man lick his chains And look for freedom's dawning through his grate. Why are we tied unto this wheeling globe, Still to be racked while traitorous Hope stands by And heals the wounds that they may gape again? Act 1, sc. iii.

So that with no mean skill Beddoes has brought us from feel­

ings of hope, expectation, love, and happiness to anticipa­ tion of despair, misery, and destruction. Meanwhile Orlando

reveals that his apparently cruel treatment of Lord Ernest

is aimed at gaining the hand of Hesperus' beloved Floribel:

"I use this show of cruelty,/To scare a rival and gain a brother." But very soon the idea of a love rivalry as a dra­ matic force— never a strong one--gets lost in the combination of Hesperus* new-found romance, his desire to rid himself of

Floribel, and the madness that finally overtakes him. Had

Orlando known what his "show of cruelty" would lead to, perhaps he would have approached his rival more directly.

The second act opens with a scene which relieves the pitch to which the anger and frustration had risen by the end of Act I. Orlando, alone with his sleeping page, delivers a speech reminiscent of Wordsworth:

Boy I he is asleep; Oh innocence, how fairly dost thou head This pure first page of man. Peace to thy slumbers, Sleep, for thy dreams are 'midst the seraphs' harps, Thy theughts beneath the wings of holiness, Thine eyes in Paradise. The day may come, (if haply gentle death Say not amen to thy short prayer of being, And lap thee in the bosom cf the blest;) I weep to think on, when the guilty world Shall, like a fiend, he waiting at thy couch, And call thee up on ev'ry dawn of crime. Act II, sc. i.

These few lines, smooth In their cadence and pleasing

in their melancholy tone, contrast easily but definitely with the horror, guilt, and anguish that characterize Hesperus at the end of Act I. The page awakens, and before he is sent away with a love-note to Floribel, Orlando tells him what

love really is— the universe's soul:

for that is Love. »TIs he that acts the nightingale, the thrush, And all the living musics, he it is That gives the lute, the harp and tabor speech, That flutters on melodious wings and strikes The mute and viewless lyres of sunny strings Borne by the minstrel gales, mimicking vainly The timid voice that sent him to my breast, That voice the wind hath treasured and doth use When he bids roses open and be sweet. Act II, sc. i.

The vital force of all things beautiful is love. Beauty and love are synonymous. This one great force which moves through everything constant though changing is perhaps also the force that keeps death from being the end. It is, as Is also suggested In "Leopold," the one constant "That joints] to buried first the unborn last,/The embryo future to the sunken past." Just as in Beddoes' earlier work, love is characterized here as ideal, as spiritual. Love in any other form seems always, in Beddoes' work, to promote chaos, torment, and ridi- U6 The second scene of this act moves us from the palatial estate of Orlando to the humble home of Floribel and her par­ ents, Mordred and Lenora. It is a crucial scene for two

reasons: one, it is the first meeting--and an edgy one at

that--between Floribel and Hesperus since the complication of the proposed marriage with Olivia; two, it is the first

scene in which Hesperus intemperately and in the presence

of another person over-reacts to the circumstances crowding

in upon him. Beddoes is obviously moving Hesperus toward

insanity and complete separation from persons and circum­

stance, thus relieving his villain-hero of any personal

responsibility for the crime he will commit.

That Hesperus has always had a touch of strangeness is

suggested by Lenora In her interview with Floribel: "He is

a goodly man, and yet they say/Strange passions sleep within

him." And although Floribel herself believes "He hath too

much of human passion In him," she also claims, in a speech

reminiscent of Ophelia’s on Hamlet, that

He is the glass of ail good qualities, And what’s a little virtue in all others Looks into him and sees itself a giant; He is a nosegay of the sweets of man, A dictionary of superlatives; He walks about, a music among discords, A star in night, a prayer ’midst madmen's curses; And if mankind, as I do think, were made To bear the fruit of him, and him alone, It was a glorious destiny. Act II, sc. ii.

We cannot be much surprised at the innocence of this remark.

Yet it coincides rather well with Beddoes1 general character!- 1*7 zatlon of vtmen, A passage from his earlier ’’Leopold" is typica1:

Oh woman! flower among this wilderness Of wickedness and woe, whose aoul of love Lies scent-like inmost, steaming out about Its incense of soft words; how sweet to sip Entranced the voice of rapture from thy lip, And taste thy soul in Kisses. Thou dost bless Our earthly life with looks, and shinest afar Gilding our night of misery like the star That beams with hope upon the mariner; Our guardian angels robed in lovely clouds, Ye still attend our steps in smiling crowds, Friends, mothers, sisters, comforters, and wives. 11. 313-321+.

The imagistic similarity in the two passages just quoted is remarkable. By using the star and the flower in regard to both Hesperus and women Beddoes is able to suggest a per­ sonal perfection in each which, though creative, is without sexual overtones. The poet tempers this suggestion of creati­ vity in each with imagery drawn from the religious and spiri­ tual realms. Given Beddoes1 disinclination to involve him­ self in sensual scenes, this particular combination of imagery reinforces the idea of personal isolation, a lack of particular identity, and loneliness. One thematic result of this isolation in The Brides1 Tragedy is that no one has yet been able to ask a direct question of anyone else or admit a bit of essential detail that would alter radically the course of the play. What would happen, for example, if

Lord Ernest were to ask Hesperus why he could not wed or if

Hesperus were to admit freely that he is already wed to Flori- be 1 ? Both Donner and Hoyt complain about this, but unasked questions and information momentarily withheld account for 1*8 as much grief and frustration In a drama as they do in real life. The mare intimate the human beings, the greater difficulty they often have In such circumstances. In Ifce

Brides1 Tragedy, for example, the closest relationships are rather formal and, at best, slightly strained. They are never quite what one might expect them to be. Consequently, it

Is quite conceivable that situations involving secrecy.

Jealousy, hatred, and deception, i.e. situations of the intensest, most violent Kind, are doubly difficult when personal relations are those, say, of husband and wife, or father and son. Such a difficulty, coupled with the private and divided loyalities that most persons have with others, breeds its own kind of silence.

To return to the narrative, Lenora leaves her daughter alone and Hesperus comes to tell her of the unhappy turn of events. Not detecting his mood, she is playful and chid­ ing, which, as one might guess, does not sit well with him.

He explains that "fairness,/And innocence, and duty league against [her]"; he warns, in a remark that confirms Lenora's suspicions, that "sometimes strange/And horrid thoughts bring whispers to my soul," a remark that is strongly sugges­ tive in speech and tone of Beatrice Cenci’s "What is this undistInguishable mist/Of thoughts, which rise, like shadow after shadow,/Darkening each other?"^ The reader, then, must be prepared to see the coming catastrophe dictated not merely by a peculiar set of economic circumstances, but also by a force unnamed and unnameable that pulls a man against k9 himself, and, in so doing, ruins the man, however innocent, and destroys those he loves most dearly. It all suggests a kind of mystic force or destiny against which Beddoes* major figures struggle interminably and unsuccessfully.

It Is at best an amoral force in the face of which men attempt

seemingly by their own free will, to construct a viable soci­

ety, a society In wMch personal dreams and desires can be

fulfilled with the least severe rupture in the larger social

system. But the endless search for this delicate balance

between personal desire and social stability Is thwarted

time and again by forces inexplicable, forces ill-defined

but nonetheless real. Such forces, In the work of Beddoes,

gradually become so strong that they suggest a determinism--

he calls it necessity--in the universal order that would,

In the long run, deny much free choice. The idea finds its

strongest, and most grotesque statement in the climactic

third act of Death* s Jest-Book.

Hesperus cannot bring himself to tell Floribel of the

new set of circumstances, so he leaves promising to meet her

"tomorrow in the sweet-briar thicket,/When twilight fades

to evening." Orlando’s page then enters with a love-note

from his master. Floribel Is incensed by this familiarity

and delivers herself of a few lines that belie the notion

that Beddoes could not construct adequate conversation.

Read rightly, these lines present quite a natural and severe

dressing down. 5 0

Fie sir; your gifts are dangerous. Leek you here, As I disperse the wicked syllables Met in this little parliament of words, And give them to the light and careless winds, Se de 1 bid him tear the thoughts of me Out ef his breast, and held me as a thing Further from him than misery. Act II, SC. ii.

Floribel is grateful, of course, that Hesperus did not see this note. She tells the lad that she is fearful and sad, and he says he will sing her a little ballad. And as she gives him what must be the most innocent kiss in literary history, Hesperus surprisingly reappears and flies into a most absurd fit of jealous rage. Had the incident Justi­ fied Hesperus* reaction, the following dialogue would seem entirely appropriate and natural, Hesperus catching up

Floribel’s sentences in the middle of their construction and turning them irrationally against her.

Flor. Hesperus, thou art mad. Hesp. Better to be mad than treacherous. Aye, twas well To tear the letters; there might be a husband; No, he shall be no more. Flor. But listen to me, These lips that thou hast kissed,— Hesp. 1, and a thousand, Men, boys, and monsters, Flor. Beloved and fair— Hesp. And fickle and adulterous. Enough of woman boy, your paramour Is troublesome, sir ah, milk-blooded imp, Raise her; she loves your silken limbs; I give you All that is mine of her. Flor. Oh*, save me, dearest. Hesp. She speaka to you, sir. I beseech you both, Go on; don't heed me: oh, I Joy to see Your love-tricke.

The scene, while probably written to convince us of the

extent of Hesperus* approaching madness, lacks any real motiva- 51

tlon; It is over-written and can be called nothing but em­

barrassing. The failure is partly a result of Beddoes* attempt to condense too much action into too little time

and space. Surely there is need of more proof of all the

accusations that Hesperus makes against Floribel and this

mere boy. Once again a few well-placed questions would have

probably proved Floribel quite innocent of the charge and

turned the plot line to a conflict between Orlando and

Hesperus. But such questions are inappropriate to Beddoes* main theme that dashes headlong to its catastrophic end.

In effect, he has sacrificed our demand of realism for a mere

burst of abusive language. The scene is unsuccessful, too,

because Hesperus* insults are couched essentially in sexual

terms, which tend to shift the responsibility for the ensuing

calamity to Floribel. She is called fickle and adulterous;

she is accused— and this borders on the perverse--of loving

the young lad's "silken limbs'’; and the "pap-faced chit" is

called a "playmate for your chamber." The passage is as much

in the earthly extreme as Beddoes* vision of women is in the

ideal. Such choice of language and such rash generalities

by Hesperus regarding Floribel*s behavior weaken this crucial

scene by rather shakily shifting the plot line, heretofore

clearly supporting a conflict between love and duty, to a

conflict built falsely on an alleged adulterous relitionship.

What tiiis means, of course, is that Beddoes once again is

gradually moving to absolve Hesperus of a personal responsi­

bility for the coming crime. Before this moment, Hesperus* 5 2 motive seemed a matter of self-satisfaction. Now he has convinced himself that his motive for murder is more nearly

Just. When he at the end ©f the harangue says

1 am no lover, I. Madam, we're strangers; And yet 1 knew some while ago a form Like thine, as fair, as delicate, Oh heaven1. To think of it. But she was innocent, Innocent, innocent. Act II, sc. II.

--when he says this, he has given himself cause for murder.

In his madness he has suddenly become the wronged man whose sense of masculine honor demands revenge.

The third scene of Act II, one between Hesperus and

Olivia, is also too compact. If in the previous scene,

Hesperus was too quick to anger, in this one he is even quicker

to love again. He has not seen Olivia for many years when her brother, Orlando, introduces her. Here follows the first

few lines of the scene:

Orl. [to Hesp.] Here is a living welcome, prithee Know her; Olivia Hesp. Blessedness, you should have said. A music waits upon her every step, That my heart leaps to. Act 11, sc. ill.

And slightly later:

To see and love thee Was but one soul's step. Act II, sc. iii.

Such adulation is, of course, In keeping with Beddoes'

attitude toward women. In the space of a few lines Olivia

Is called "blessedness,” "a goddess,” "virtue,” "flower of

love." Especially in light of previous studies of Beddoes

it is important to note, however, that despite this idealized 5 3 treatment of women, they are always subservient te men and

Incredibly self-effacing. Floribel reminds us that she is a simple girl; she says she Knows tee well that she is "a poor, foolish, discontented child," and asks of Hesperus,

nYeu don't despise me much?" Likewise Olivia. She says to

Hesperus, "Had 1 a right te pray to you, 1 would"; again:

"Try 1 beseech thee, try not te detest,/Not utterly detest a silly girl," And again: "Then thou canst endure me;

Thou dost not hate the forward maid?" And although the woman always stands at the man's command, it is rare that

the man ever commands anything of her.

A large part of this scene between Hesperus and Olivia

becomes a profession of mutual, if long delayed and now

instantaneous, love, but with a morbid, idealistic ecstasy

that we have come to expect from Beddoes. Like the same kind of scene between Athulf and Amala in Death1s Jes t-Book, the expression of the purest love is in terms of the universe's soul, a love, without beginning or end, that is realized only when the soul is freed from the body at death: "For when our souls are born then will we wed." Most reader's will agree with Royall Snow, who cailed this encounter "one of

the strangest scenes of wooing with which 1 am acquainted."*^

Hesperus now praises the swift passage of time, since they can belong to one another only at death: "Joy my love'./We're nearer to our bridal sheets of lead/Than when your brother

left us here just now,/By twenty minutes talk." And the marks of approaching age--the lined face, the graying hair-- Sh that many persons dread, Hesperus views as "most prized

jewel[s}." Following this most unusual but typically

Beddoesian mixture of love and death, Olivia departs and

Hesperus gives words to his intensifying inward conflict:

Floribel, 1 would not have thee cross my path to-night There is an indistinct dread purpose forming, Something, whose depth of wickedness appears Hideous, incalculable, but inevitable; Now it draws nearer, and I do not shudder; Avaunt, haunt me no more; I dread it not, But almost--hence 1 1 must not be alone. Act II, sc. ill.

Scene Four of this second act is largely a soliloquy

by Hesperus which develops the few lines Just quoted. He is

discovered in a disturbed slumber and calls for an atten­

dant. He describes for the attendant a vision that he has

just had. But It is almost as if the vision had had a cor­

poreal existence. Ironically, the voice and vision had

warned Floribel in Act I to "'ware of fickleness, and woe,

and mad despair." The vision has, since then, taken on a

more intense quality. Whatever it was— Hesperus calls it

"something"--came nearer and nearer to him and "plucked my

mantle from me,/And made mine heart an ear, in which it

poured/its loathed enticing courtship." The evil force is

actually wooing Hesperus into madness and crime and "con­

verting feeling into intenser vision . . . Deeper than sight."

The attendant attempts to explain away the noises:

The wind is high, and through the silent rooms Murmurs his burthen, to an heedless ear Almost articulate. Act II, sc. iv 5 5 Hesperus dismisses the attendant and then addresses himself te a tapestry. Suggestive ef Keats's "Ode en a Grecian Urn,” the passage is a fine ene en Beddees' part, drawing a sharp centrast between Hesperus' state ef mlnd--anxieus, fluctua­ ting, at war with itself--and the images, fixed ferever by seme artisan, ef a world ef perpetual springtime inhabited by peeple ferever yeung. Because Hesperus is, at this peint, incapable ef helding in his mind a single idea, the passage is rather chaetic in content and an accurate mlrrer ef dis- t ract i on,

The fifth scene ef this act--enly thirty lines leng— consists ef twe reports. In the first ene, Orlande tells ef seeing Hesperus in the garden. By this time the inward feelings ef Hesperus--gui1t and sorrow, love and hate--have finally manifested themselves In peculiar behavior:

He steed with eyes wide open, but their sense Dreamed, in dumb parley with some fancied thing; For his lips moved, and he did walk and gaze, New frown most mournfully, new smile most madly, And weep, and laugh, groan deep and gnash his teeth, And new stand still with such a countenance, As dees the marble sorrow e'er a tomb. Act II, sc. v.

The second report is offered by Hesperus* father, Lord Ernest, as an explanation for the strange behavior ef his son.

On his nurse's breast Seme twenty years age, he lay and mused Upon her singing and bright merry lips; A viewless bolt dropped on her, and she died Most hideously; cleee in the infant's face Looked all the horrors ef her bursting eyes; And as the months bring round that black remembrance, His brain unsettles, bloody thoughts oppress And call him from his bed. Act II, sc. v. 56

Thus in this factual confirmation by Lord Ernest of Lenora's and Floribel*s intuition, we learn that such momentary beha­ vior has a real precedent. In a very direct way, we are made aware of the stress that Beddoes places on the life of the child. Too we learn that all the forces' of Beddoes* universe are inextricably bound together and that the coming together at any single point of all these forces will provoke Hesperus*

ruin. This poetic treatment, coming as it does repeatedly, suggests that men, driven by necessity and without choice or will, are entrapped by this "sluggish flesh" and, as far as

Beddoes is concerned, can do little more than "curse the chance that fashioned this sad clay and made it man."

The last scene of this act occurs at "A suicide's grave."

Orlando and Claudio comment on what a ghastly night it is.

Orlando suggests that the elements of nature--the wind, the

blistering dew, the fatal darkness--"serve to stir ill minds/

Up to an act of death." However, Claudio offers an opposing view, suggesting that man has more control over himself than he thinks he does:

We may not think so, For there's a fascination in bad deeds Oft pondered o'er, that draws us to endure them, And then commit. Beware of thine own soul, *Tis but one devil ever tempts a man, And his name's Self. Act II, sc. vi.

Orlando ignores such an alternative and states that there

is an evil power beyond human limits and that it can easily

gain control "when goodness sleeps." In Claudio's few closing

lines we get but another detail which contributes to the 57

inevitability ef the approaching murderous climax, and also

implies that Claudio too is not altogether convinced of his

former sentiments.

Home, it is the time When the hoarse fowl, the carrier-bird of woe, Brings fevers from the moon, and maddening dreams: The hour’s unholy, and who hath not sent After the parted sun his orisons, Falls ’neath the sway of evil. Act 11, sc. vi.

Orlando and Claudio leave for home and Hesperus enters,

pleading with the dark forces:

Ye negro brothers of the deadly winds, Ye elder souls of night, ye mighty sins, Sceptred damnations, how may man invoke YeHr darkling glories? Teach my eager soul Fit language for your ears. Act II, sc. vi.

Rather than pray for heaven's pity or forgiveness, Hes­

perus begs for strength to do what seemingly has to be done.

Implicit here is an abdication of responsibi1ity and a resig­

nation of the will to the point where Hesperus sees himself

as another being. The rationalizing process is evident from

three brief passages, all gradually received within the space

of twenty lines:

1) Bear this breath of mine, This inner Hesperus away, and bring Another guest to its deserted home.

2) 1 see a shadowy Image of myself, Yet not my perfect self, a brother self, That steps into my bosom.

3) Hesperus is a man, a demon-man, And there's a thing he lives for, shall amaze The emulous bad powers. Act II, sc. vi. 58 By this time, then, we have a fruition, dark and perverse though it may be, of Hesperus' inner conflict which has been the subject of Act 11. The decision has obviously been re­ ceived: Floribel must die. In league against her stand Hes­ perus' abdication of his own self; Lord Ernest's fatherly,

if selfish, imprecations; every dark and grotesque omen known to man; and the full brunt of most formidable nature.

Act III opens with a scene at Orlando's palace.

Hesperus, by now absolutely possessed by "a brother self," sits stone-1ike--motionless, speechless, "like the coffined dead." It is the first time that Lord Ernest, Orlando and

Olivia have seen him in this state. The three give short

sympathetic speeches, but he does not respond. Perhaps

Hesperus' state Is supposed t© elicit from the reader a

sympathy for the insane, and In a sense it does. But such

sympathy is tempered by knowledge that the characters do not have; that is, they do not know that Hesperus has decided

to put away ene bride and take on another almost instantly.

To them he seems a distraught and pitiful young man given

to unh-althy brooding, but to an audience Hesperus seems a

cold-blooded, calculating, opportunistic killer whose deepest

concerns vary with the shifting family winds. Consequently

the situation at this point seems too melodramatic. The scene

ends as Hesperus utters four words: "The hour is come."

The next scene takes place at Mordred's cottage, Floribel

speaks a seventeen-line soliloquy. With heavy-handed irony,

Beddoes has her pray for "sweet death," that "soother of woe, 59 sole friend ef the oppressed." Aside from the fact that she

is about te get exactly what she has prayed fer, there is semething especially anneying abeut Fleribel's degree ef naivete. Even making great allewances for what might be called the idealization ef women, ene must find her either an extremely peer judge ef character, er se blinded by leve

that she can accept any consequence. Her mether, who enters

this scene immediately after the selllequy, is far more level­ headed. Of ceurse she is older and that must ceunt fer

semething; but the advice she has te effer her daughter is quite practical and need not be the result of having lived

se leng in the werld. At any rate, Floribel gees te meet

Hesperus in the weeds and thus plays her direct part in the

dra iuA Xr hat will bring ruin te beth houses.

All the details amassed thus far have been leading te

Act 111, sc. iii, the central peint ef the drama. The scene

is set in a wood and we discever two huntsmen lest from their

party. Between them they describe the nightmarish quality

of the evening. Echees of the earlier meeting or Orlande

and Claudio will be apparent:

The day is in its shreud while yet an infant, And Night with giant strides stalks e'er the world, Like a swart Cyclops, en its hideeus front One round, red, thunderswe1len eye ablaze. Act III, sc. iii.

They turn their thoughts briefly to any man who might be

caught at sea on such a night, and make a mockery of his hope

ef being saved. The sentiment expressed here is repetitious

of Hesperus' earlier mockery ef hope and reinforces the ideas of entrapment, estrangement, and the law ef necessity:

Why are we tied unto this wheeling globe, Still to be racked while traitorous Hope stands by, And heals the wounds that they may gape again? Act I, sc. iii.

The huntsmen exit seeking shelter from the approaching storm

Floribel enters feeling "as if the spirits of the earth and

air/Were holding sad and ominous discourse." Hesperus Joins

her and, unprovoked, abuses her with cruel ridicule. She

finally attributes his sentiments to madness brought on by

"some wild and poisonous creature" who has "wounded him and

with contagious fang/Planted this fury in his veins." He

stabs her and then, in a touching and delicate passage,

remarks on her beauty:

Look, what a face: had our first mother worn But half such beauty, when the serpent came, His heart, all malice, would have turned to love. Act 111, sc. Iii.

He carries her off to a grave, Hubert and his fellow-

huntsman once again come upon the scene and, at a distance,

discover Hesperus, whom they do not recognize, burying they

know not what. They assume that It is a miser burying his

gold and is one of the finer ironic touches of the drama:

Hunts. The forest has more tenants than 1 knew Cook underneath this branch; seest thou not yonde Amongst the brushwood and the briary weeds A man at work? Hub. My life upon't some miser, Who in the secret hour creep* to his hoard, And kneeling at the altar of his love, Worships that yellow devil, gold. Hunts. 'Tis buried And now he stamps the sod down, that no light May spy his mistress; with what doleful look He marks its grave, and backward walks away, As if he left his all of sight behind. 61

Hub. Let us steal towards It; I would have a peep Upon this hidden jewel. Act III* sc. 111.

Thus Beddoes finishes a remarkably gruesome scene with some

of the most effective Imagery of the play. He is able to have the huntsmen speak of gold, of value, of an altar of

love, of a jewel--all terms that apply equally well to actual

gold and to the dear treasure which Hesperus is disposing of.

Although we are witnessing through the eyes ©f the huntsmen

a horrifying burial, the imagery remains delicate and plea­

sant in its association. Throughout the scene, we are always

aware of the lovely, if idealized, woman.

Hesperus once again enters, vaguely regretting that he

cannot re-animate the poor creature; he then calls attention

to the fact that he has "left the guilty dagger at her side."

Wedding bells sound at a distance and with the following

lines the catastrophic scene is at an end:

Wedding bells, Thanks for your merry voices; ye have waked A sudden hurry round about my heart, I'll think it joy. Now for my second bride. Act 111, sc. iii

In the next scene it is his "second bride" who speaks

first. She is being readied for her wedding and there is

much Joy, devotion and well-wishing. While the frivolity

and chatter serve to decrease the horrifying effect of the

previous scene, they also remind us that such an act of mur­

der as Hesperus has committed has ramifications far beyond

the deed. For the audience knows that despite Olivia's imme­

diate happiness, her world is about to crumble about her. In a short time her world of order, love and harmony will be grotesquely replaced with estrangement, chaos, madness, and death.

As he has done twice before, Beddoes follows the scene at Orlando's palace with one at Mordred's cottage. Lenora finally tells Mordred of the secret marriage. The old and ailing husband is [leased with such a match but fears that deceiving Lord Ernest will cause them all to rue It. At this point Hubert and the other huntsman come in carrying

Floribel's body and announce Hesperus as the murderer. They leave to take the news to the Duke who will "crush the viper in his nest, before/Report alarm him.” All of this news is beyond Mordred's endurance and he succumbs. There is Impli­ cit in this scene a nice contrast between a marriage plain and simple, one of devotion, truth, duty and love into the autumn years, and one ridden with deception, pain and catas­ trophe. In a moving scene, Lenora cradles Floribel In her arms and sings quietly and distractedly as the act ends.

Act IV opens with Hesperus alone, guilt-ridden though not remorseful. He curses the hand that wielded the murder weapon: "the wild adder's sting, the lightning's edge,/Are blunt and tame and gentle to it." But then--and here we understand that the character change has been permanent--he scoffs: "psha l/Why then men dread the adder and the flash,/

So shall they cringe to me." An attendant enters and urges him to Join the wedding party, and Hesperus feels that the fellow suspects his master of some foul deed. Beddoes has 63

us involved in two or three emotional states here. F®r

Hesperus does not know that the murder has been detected,

the attendant knows nothing of anything, and the wedding par­

ty outside is obviously anticipating an auspicious and a happy

union. Hesperus ends the scene alone with "My Olivia,/Now my whole soul is thine ,--thine and the fiends'.'1

The second scene is a brief (2£ 11.) interview between

Hubert and the Duke. And although the murder is most foul

it is awkwardly overstated by the Duke:

All ancient cruelties Look pale to it and merciful: henceforth They that would christen human fiends must write Hesperus, 'stead of Cain; and chiding nurses, To still their peevish babes, shall offer them, Not to the wolves, but him, the fiercer beast. Act IV, sc. ii

The sentiments here represent possibly--indeed probably--a

strained effort on Beddoes1 part to be dramatic. Possibly,

too, It is the result of his consistent attitude toward

women. They are, after all, the better part of creation,

and to bring an end to a woman's life is to abridge the idea

of beauty and innocence itself. That Beddoes saw it this way

is not altogether unreasonable; for in addition to the al­

ready quoted passage from "Leopold," Lenora suggests at the

end of Act III that such beauty could not have an end, that

"they have ta'en [Floribel's] soul/To make a second spring

of it, to keep/The jarring spheres in melody." Incidentally

this idea--of all earthly life being, in an abstracted sense,

merely varied aspects of a single, never-ending, universal

life--has echoes throughout Beddoes' work. In The 6ip

Improvisator^. for example, Leopold, using the especially appropriate sea figure, exclaims:

Our lives still fall and fall, flake upon flake, Like piling snow upon the waves Of some vast lake, And melt away into the caves, Whilst rising bubbles waste them, as they break Like ye, from our own substance, as ye pass Our essence still ye pilfer, onward fleeing; We vanish, as a thing that never was, And become drops of the huge ever-being. 11. 161+-172.

In a letter of August, I82I4., Beddoes laments the death of

Shelley in this way: "Was it that more of the baautiful and good, than Nature could spare to one, was incarnate in him, and that it was necessary to resume it for distribution through the external and internal worlds?"** Examined, then, in light of this idea, the death of Floribel is, at one and the same time, a particular tragedy and possibly, a univer­ sal blessing. However, if earthly justice is to triuraph-- and here it must--Hesperus must be punished, so the Duke or­ ders Hesperus brought before him.

The third scene of this act involves the meeting of all the principals but one. It begins in a banquet hall where all have met to celebrate this "nuptial night." Hes­ perus enters only to mock the proceedings. Then Beddoes, a man who all his life had only one or two fairly close acquaintances, gives to Hesperus a speech magnificently

Shakespearean in its sneering tone, which characterizes the kinds of friends that often crowd in upon a man well placed.

Olivia first says, "Dearest Hesperus/Be calm, I beseech you: 65 all are here/My friends and yours." And Hesperus answers:

Na doubt. They drain our goblets. A friend 1 What is't? A thing shall squeeze your hand, Caress with fervent love your 'broidered sleeve, And wring his mouth into a leering lie. While his heart damns ,thee. One whose love's as deep As your gold coffer. Hast a wife? They come; Buz, buz, lie, lie, the hungry meat-flies come, 'Dear lord, sweet lord, our only gentle lord'.' Aye, thus they sugar o'er the silent dagger, And love, and love, till they've inhelled thy soul. Oh 1 when I call for friend, bring honest poison. Put out the lights, I like the beams o' th' moon; And tell those revellers to tope in silence. Act IV, sc, ill.

Hesperus' father gently chides him and attributes his senti­ ments t© the fact that Hesperus' "soul is wholly/Wrapt up

In admiration of his bride." They pose a toast to Olivia and music begins. But all is interrupted by the entrance of Hubert who, to the consternation of all, arrests Hesperus

in the name of the Duke. The scene breaks up as Lord Ernest curses, Olivia swoons, and Hesperus is led off to face the

Duke's judgment.

Scene Four of Act IV introduces Lenora again mourning over Floribel. After the end of Act III, which caught very well the weight of grief and a mother's agony, this scene is antic1imactic. Aside from being blatantly macabre, it pur­

sues too obviously the public display of grief--an act which will always call into question the degree of sincerity and

the real depth of the loss. When Lenora exits, a few citi­

zens enter to inform us that "Death is the sentence." So

society will exact its pound of flesh for the murder of one

of its victims. Hesperus, Orlando, Lord Ernest and a mob 66

•f curiosity seekers enter. Hesperus vilifies his father

in the very worst language:

Thy son I 1 would I'd time to laugh. No, no; attend. The night, that gave me being, There was unearthly glee upon the winds, There were strange gambols played beneath the moon, The madman smiled uncouthly in his sleep, And children shrunk aghast at goblin sights: Then came a tap against the rattling casement, Not the owl's wing, or stru gle of the blast; The dotardship snored loudly, and meanwhile An incubus begot me. Act IV, sc. iv.

After this disquieting harangue which says as much implicitly

about women as it does directly about Hesperus' father, the

distraught murderer directs his thought to Olivia. When

someone informs him that she is ill, that nshe wastes,/

Careless of living, n he answers:

Tell her, on my love I charge her live; oh heaven, she must not die, There are enough accusers in the tomb. Tell her--Shame, shame, they shall not see me weep. Act IV, sc. iv.

With this broken sentence Act IV closes.

Act V begins with yet another lamentation by Lenora.

It is a scene reminiscent of that in which Lear cradles his

beloved Cordelia in his arms and bids her speak. But finally

Lenora admits the reality of the circumstance and closes her

soliloquy with MOh heavens, 'tis she indeed \/\ know it all,

don't tel 1 me.n

The second scene of this last act is a curious one for

two reasons: first, Hesperus begins to fear death and the

flames of Hell, but prefers the latter to Elysium where he would meet his betrayed Floribel and finally Lord Ernest, 67

He feels that to know of a "Ian* of bliss" Is punishment enough for those not in it. The scene is curious, too, be­ cause ef Lenora's visit with Hesperus. She comes, at first, to curse him, but revokes the curse an* turns herself to a grotesque suggestion:

But while you still are living, What say you to some frolic merriment? There are two grassy moun*s beside the church, My husban* an* my daughter; let us to An* sit beside them, an* learn silence there; Even with such quests we'll hold our revelry O'er bitter recollections; there's no anguish, No fear, no sorrow, no calamity, In the deathful catalogue of human pains, But we will jest upon't, an* laugh an* sing: Let pitiful wretches whine for consolation. Thank heaven we despair. Act V, sc. i i.

While there is obviously here a personal resignation to a set of unchangeable circumstances, an* while madness may ex­ plain such a response at such a moment, there is, in light of the rest of the play, a logic in it all. In a more than personal way, the passage is a restatement of the grotesque isolation, alienation, an* estrangement that beset mankind.

The emphasis is clearly on the absurdity of it all. As far as The Brides' Trage concerned, hope has no place in the scheme of things. All the attempts that the characters have made to alter their lives for the better have come to naught. For caught in the web of a world of matter set in motion, mankind can only passively respond. Some will with­ stand it, some will not.

By the end of this scene Lenora has brought herself to assess the circumstances in a new light. And with an uncommon 68

sympathy, she decides against the public execution and hence

ridicule of Hesperus.

My son, the husband of my Floribel: They shall not slaughter him upon the block. And to the cursing multitude hold up The blackened features which she loved; they shall not. Act V, sc. i i.

The third scene of Act V takes us back to Orlando’s

palace and Olivia’s apartment. She is preparing for death,

supposedly from misery and grief, and has convinced all her

handmaidens of it. She makes light of death as "but a goblin work,/Which bad men conjure from their reeking sins/To haunt

their slumbers.0 The scene, lacking any real anguish or mi­

sery, is most disappointing. The lamentations are repeti­

tious and emotionally unconvincing, the tone false and

forced.

The last scene is at the place of execution. Hesperus

says, rather unexpectedly, that "Angelic ministers have

been with me,/And by the holy communings of conscience/wrought

a most blessed change; my soul has wept/And lain among the

thorns of penitence." The Christian overtones in his state­

ments are further strengthened by those of his father who

speaks of Hesperus' "Going to thy mother." All the players

but Hesperus exit, and Lenora enters with a bouquet of

flowers that grew upon the grave of Floribel. The smell of

flowers falls on Hesperus "like an unearthly sense." And

Lenora says well it should, since she lias steeped the plants

in a poison which, if "poured in a city conduit,/Would 69 ravage wider than a year of plague;/lt brings death swifter than the lightning shaft.” Lenora, too, has smelled the deadly flowers. They both begin to speak distractedly,

Lenora about rivulets of music and "winged maidens floating round," Hesperus about hunters and their dogs, serpents’ heads and hounds with fiery fangs. They die, and with their deaths the play is at an end.

* v-

Beddoes' play, written obviously in the Elizabethan manner, has provoked various critical comments, most of which are narrow theses based on specially selected passages. If we keep in mind the difficulties of isolating various as­ pects of the drama and always judge one part in relation to the others, we shall, by careful examination, be able to dismiss or modify various explanations of The Brides1 Tragedy and, hopefully, to conclude with a more reasonable interpre­ tation of Beddoes1 only finished drama.^

H. W. Conner has suggested that the theme of The Brides’

Tragedy "is to a certain extent topical":^ the secret mar­ riage and the strained father-son relationship were both popular subjects. In general, when Conner approves of what

Beddoes does with these topical devices, he calls him Eliza­ bethan; when he is quite critical of Beddoes, he calls him

Romantic. I believe there is enough proof to suggest that

Beddoes was more Elizabethan in his first play than even

Donner wants to admit. Because the poet does rely heavily 70 on Elizabethan conventions, and beeause this feature of his work has been the cause for so much comment, we should, at the risk of seeming digressive, take a brief look at Just how close Beddoes does follow some of the conventions. In so doing, we will discover that abme of the criticism laid at Beddoes1 door is without foundation and that the dramatic weakness of The Brides1 Tragedy is as much the result of an excessive use of Elizabethan convention in an attempt to en­ large what is basically too limited a subject as it is of what Donner might call a general romantic malaise. Many of the following general comments might be kept in mind as one reads through the succeeding chapters of this study.

To begin, let us take a look at some of the Elizabethan conventions of presentation and acting. Donner explains that

"Beddoes transplants the story into a vague upper-class at­ mosphere in a vague country at a vague date--ln every respect vaguer than the setting of an Elizabethan drama, but just the sort of scene cherished by the Romantics."*^ Generally speaking, the settings of Elizabethan dramas with the excep­ tion of Shakespeare's were quite vague. The two most popu­ lar scenes, according to M. C. Bradbreok, were the orchard or woodland scene and the city gates.^ In this respect

Beddoes and his fellow Romantics were as precise, if not more so, than their Elizabethan predecessors. Take for example

Shelley's "a mean apartment of Giacomo's House" Byron's

"The Hall of the Palace i1luminated--Sardanapalus and his

Guests at Table--A storm without, and Thunder occasionally 71 heard during the Banquet*;*? or Keats's "A Banqueting Hall,

brilliantly Illuminated, and set forth with all costly mag­ nificence, with suppertables laden with services of gold and

silver. A door in the back scene, guarded by two Soldiers.

Lords, Ladies, Knights, Gentlemen, etc., whispering sadly 1 ft and ranging themselves; part entering and part discovered."

The Romantics did, of course, make use of a "desolate moor,"*^

"a part of the forest,or "another chamber,but as

a rule they were neither more nor less vague than the Eliza­

bethans. Other Elizabethan conventions were as easily em­

ployed by Beddoes; music (Act IV, sc. iii.}, the facial dis­

tortions (Act II, sc. V.), the expression of grief by throw­

ing oneself on the ground (Act V, sc. ii.), and the use of

darkness to suggest evil or the supernatural (Act III, sc. Hi.).

The conventions of presentation are closely tied to

those of action, and these latter must be understood before

we can measure Beddoes' degree of success. According to

Bradbrook "The first and most essential thing to be realised

Is that consecutive or causal succession of events is not

of the first importance." We cannot, of course, permit

dramatic chaos, but on the other hand, it would be unrea­

sonable to make the same demands on Elizabethan drama that

we make, for example, on hineteenth-century English fiction.

A genre that permits, even demands, the expansion, neglect,

or telescoping of time, cannot be subjected to the same

critical guidelines that obtain in lengthy prose narrative.

To be more specific, causality is not as important in 72 Elizabethan drama er in The Brides1 Tragedy as it is in

Dickens and Shaw. In the works of the Elizabethans— and later in Beddoes— effects existed without their causes (as

In Hesperus’ Jealaus rage, or in his quick repentance); and causes are not always fallowed by their usual effects

(Hesperus' cruelty being repaid with fatherly kindness,

Floribel's absolute resignation in the face of death, Hes­ perus’ abusive action at his wedding banquet).

It is doubtful, of course, whether the Elizabethans wholly accepted a deliberately strained and illogical narra­ tive. But they, and ultimately Beddoes, disguised such quali­ ties with other conventions. First, the dramatic plot might be historical. Bradbrook notes that "it was, in fact, a general requirement that all tragedy should be based on in­ cidents taken from life. . . . Tragedy would have a more powerful moral effect if the spectators were convinced that the story was not invented to improve them, but a true ’ex­ ample. * "^2 Since the story was true, whatever the dramatist did with the story was only of secondary Importance. This emphasis on historical authority was also tied to other means of disguise: the familiar stories which relied on folk tradi­ tion, and the stock stories "which acquired the incontesta­ bility of legend by their frequent u s e . "^3 These two or three factors came together in Beddoes* source, a ballad pub­ lished In 1822 by Thomas Gillet; and although Donner has outlined the changes of plot, they deserve a brief and modi­ fied restatement here. The ballad "Lucy" was itself taken 73 from Memolrs of in The Oxford Uni vers 1 ty and City

Herald fer 2\\ March 1821. In the Memoir, which affirms that the essentials of the story are true, Lucy (changed to

Florlbel by Beddoes) Is the daughter of a wealthy and Jealous father. The young man, later Beddoes* Hesperus, falls in love with her, but does not marry her until after he begins wooing the second lady. Donner feels that Beddoes did not follow this plot line because he felt the conduct too wicked. There are, probably, degrees of wickedness, but Beddoes, from the very first to the very last of his career, did not shrink from representing wickedness. I think the more reasonable explanation is that Beddoes decided to change the basic motive for the murder. In both the Memolr and the ballad the motive is the young man's ambition. His own parents, as well as those of the girl, strongly urged the marriage; the young man is caught by the desire for prominence and decides against love and for social and, perhaps, political prominence. He achieves this latter in both the Memo 1r and the ballad. The punishment he receives in these works is remorse and regret brought on by his private guilt. Witness a passage from the

Memoir: "This gentleman afterwards became a conspicuous character In the state; 1 visited him when he was stretched on the bed of sickness and death. I saw his departure hence; and I always pray that my latter end may not be like his, t.2ip

And then the corresponding passage in "Lucy":

the scenes of that sad night Would never from his mind decay They rose to blast his mental sight ^ In deepest gloom and brightest day. ^ 71* Beddoes, then, has taken an essentially social theme and turned it into a more general one of conflict between love and duty, between the allegiance one owes to one's soul and the disturbing demands made on that allegiance by the many pressures of family fortune and a man's weak, almost whimsical nature. Beddoes probably weakened his play by such a change; for although history and legend, as we have remarked, often served to hide or excuse a weak plot, there is just not enough material or character here to support the Eliaabethan five-act play. Donner writes that the weak­ ness of the play stems from Beddoes' failure "to grasp the 26 dramatic interest ©f deliberate crime." But judging from much of the material imbedded in the play which has little to do with "deliberate crime," we might more accurately suggest that Beddoes was more interested in the internal conflicts of the characters involved, both before and after the murder. While such an interest is at once intriguing, when used on the stage it must be turned to action, relevant action. What may be the life's blood of a long prose or poetic narrative may jbrove the undoing of a dramatic repre­ sentation .

There are many more conventions that bear on the action of the Elizabethan drama, and we can only touch on a few that relate most directly to the work of Beddoes. First, and very important, "most of the villains are given some kind of defect which embitters them and cuts them off from humanity. This is no justification for their behavior, for IS the Elizabethan mind was not accustomed to distinguish between crimes which were the result of choice and those which were 27 the result of heredity." Donner, on the other hand, sug­ gests that Hesperus, Beddoes1 villain-hero and murderer for whatever reason, exhibits Beddoes' inability to draw a clear­ ly defined character. In fact, this rather significant fail­ ure is laid generally at. the door of Romanticism: "The

Romantic's incapacity of representing character was founded in his inability to understand it." Donner's criticism seems motivated more by the fact that Beddoes did not write another kind of play, rather than by the fact that he did not write a good play modelled on his Elizabethan predecessors.

One also strongly suspects that when Donner uses the term

"Elizabethan" he means "Shakespearean."

Other Elizabethan conventions included the reluctance to make the minor characters "human." Braefbreok is again helpful: "First and second gentlemen were used as channels for conveying information to the audience; there was n© effort to disguise the fact by making one of them into a pp comic clergyman and the other into a maiden aunt. 7 Beddoes makes use of every minor character and in this sense goes beyond the Elizabethan tradition. The characters of Orlando and Lenora are rather well-drawn, and some of the most realistic dialogue occurs when they have the stage. That the characters d© not "develop" is also characteristic of the Elizabethan drama. It holds true also with Beddoes.

The characters may be suddenly reversed, as Hesperus* jealousy 76

In Act 11, sc. 11 an# his love-at-first-sight in Act II, sc. ili, but most readers would agree that it is not natural at all. As with his Elizabethan models, the process of change is not gradual, nor is there any attempt to disguise its violent and arbitrary nature. The characters even under­ score the scene by flatly describing and defining the abrupt change of heart.

There is no need to examine further the importance of

Beddoes1 Elizabethan models. The significant point to be gained here— and one that has been missed in Donner and other critics — is that Beddoes1 Important relationship to the

Elizabethans is one based more on capturing the overall conventions of presentation, action, and speech--in short, the heart and soul of the form--and doing with them what he would, rather than on the occasional echoes of a line from

Marston, diction from Tourneur, or a twist on a Shakespearean phrase. With this knowledge, we must turn to particular aspects of The Brides 1 Tragedy.

In light of Beddoes' other attempts at the drama, one of the most notable features of The Brides1 Tragedy is its rather orderly construction. Most of the early critics of the play, for one reason or another, struck out at the organization;^ some said the construction was weak,'** others said he toys with his subject too much;-^ and yet others said there was no series of well-ordered scenes,^

As any close look at the play will prove, most of these statements are far wide of the mark. Without belaboring the point, it is enough to say that,

if anything, Beddoes goes too far in the direction of com­

pactness and condensation, occasionally forcing the plot line

into unreasonably contracted time elements. The relationship

of Beddoes' manipulation of time to his Elizabethan models

is fairly obvious and derives from the Elizabethans' will­

ingness to forego a strict cause and effect relationship.

Often with the same heavy mechanical hand that we have ob­

served in The Improvisatore, Beddoes moves us along in

The Brides' Tragedy. Floribel's unwarranted premonition of

despair in Act I, sc. i and its succeeding confirmation in

Act II, sc. iii and iv, the to© strongly marked contrasts

in Act 1, sc. 1 and ii, in Act 111, sc. iii, Iv, and v,

and the constant changes of scene from Orlando's palace to

Mordred's cottage all bespeak what Hoyt has called a

’’schoolboy' s penchant for correctness,"^ At the same time,

however, we must give the young Beddoes much credit. For he

does not lose sight of any single thread. He does not--as

he does in his later work--permit lesser ideas t© usurp the

important dramatic positions. With the use of these contrasts

he allays the passionate intensity of some of the terrifying

scenes, and he retards the action just at the moment when

©ur desire to know is at its peak. Throughout the play, he

maintains the tone of overcast horror and tracedy, despite

the subject matter of individual scenes. S© that in the

first scene of the play, the joy of the lovers is modified

by the choice of imagery (the tale of blood and the rose, 78 the "lonely fate,” Floribel's dream); in Act III, sc, iv the same melancholy imagery infects Olivia's wedding prepara­ tion (talk of past griefs, the statement that a wedding is really the funeral of a single girl). Paradoxically the play

is held together by the tension created by the .pull of man's

individual desires and passions, and the inevitable fate that awaits him, Beddoes himself came to hold this position when he stated that the pivot of all tragedy is "the struggle be­ tween the will of man and the moral law of necessity, which -it awaits inevitably his past actions.^ So regardless of what else may be said of The Brides' Tragedy, we can claim for it a unity of tone and theme, a unity created by a strictly con­

trolled progression of events, by the poetically controlled tensions that result from passionate human conflict, and by

the precise and imaginative language that is the play's life's

blood.

Judged by today's standards, the character-drawing in

The Brides' Tragedy is probably the weakest aspect of the

drama. That it is "wholly negligible" seems an indefensible 36 position. It Is true tirat there is not a great differentia­

tion between the speech of the characters, but we are dealing with a group of characters whose lives are inextricably bound

emotionally and actively to one another, the resulting entan­

glements of which will be catastroph4c .

Hesperus is, of course, the center of the activity and

the key to any general weakness of Beddoes' characterizations.

Donner writes the following about Hesperus: 79

Of all the characters in The Brides* Tragedy only Hesperus is at all active. . . . Hesperus has te fill the play with his activity, and inasmuch as he sees nothing in its true light or right propor- tians, continually tortures himself and thus becames the torturer of others, he seems not wholly unfit far his part. Yet it may be doubted whether one who is not responsible far his actions, but acts under the shadow of periodical mainess, who invokes the fiends to help him in his enterprise, not be­ cause he is strong enough to command them, but out of weakness, because he is incapable of action . . . It may be doubted whether such a person is fit for the role of a tragic hero.^7

This statement only touches on the problem, since Hesperus is obviously not "incapable of action." The essential pro­ blem, instead, centers upon the nature of the action.

Hesperus resolves t© murder and to wed again. Both ©f these acts, in this context, are wrong for at least three reasons.

Of the least importance here is that of Christian standards.

The play is not an overtly Christian work, but Christian attitudes towards women, marriage, the family and death are obviously at the bottom of much of the action. Secondly, this act, basically a cowardly one, plays havoc with the lives of innocent beings. But we must remember in passing that in Beddoes* world Hesperus is also a kind of innocent being--a victim of his father’s insolvent state. Too we must remember that Hesperus* friends and family In some cases knew of and in others often sensed his erratic psychological state and were either unwilling to put much stock in it or were willing to take their chances. Floribel's statement, "It is true/He hath too much of human passion in him,/But 1 will hold him dear," is typical. Third, and of greater signifi­ cance in this context, is the fact that Beddoes was compelled 80 to have fiends inhabit the character ©f Hesperus; the con­ templated act was beyond the imagination ©f ©rdinary men.

Hesperus says in Act IV, sc. i, that there is really nothing in nature that compares to the murderer's hand. S# the murderer in The Brides’ Tragedyt has, in effect been removed from the natural world. Finally, Hesperus1 action, in one sense, is weak and passive. Viewed In this way, he Is merely responding to the strong force that finally assumes authorlty-- his "second self." The strong and active--and genuinely tragic--Hesperus would have loved his Floribel, would have attempted to reconcile the two families to the circumstances, and would have,perhaps, bested his rival Orlando--and in so doing, would have, one way or another, met his inevitable and seemingly unjastifiable end. But this is not the Hesperus of The Brides' Tragedy. If it is true, as Donner says, that all the other characters of The Brides1 Tragedy "passively submit to the whims of the hero," it is equally true that

Hesperus submits weakly to circumstance. He Is incapable of controlling his own small world. He is, finally, a man of

little resolve and expedient decision, a man of no innate power which might In Its breakdown occasion the waste of power essential to a tragic experience. As he rushes head­

long to his doom, "like a fiend appointed to chastise/The offenses of some unremembered world," (Cenc1, Act IV, sc. i) he has no law of heaven or earth on his side. 81

Hesperus* father, impoverished Lard Ernest, "was want ta be a stern imperious scarner af the pear." From what little we knew af him, he is a man wha fluctuates between self pity and blind pride, between self-deprecatian and self- apprabatian. C. A. Hayt states in his study af Beddoes that the canflict between father and sen is the crucial conflict, and that the "mishaps af Flaribel and Olivia" constitute 39 "what we may call the play's academic framework. He bases this opinion an one scene in The Brldes1 Tragedy (Act IV, sc. iv) In which Hesperus, now decidedly deranged, ridicules and curses his father; Hayt states that "It will be noticed that the emotion is generally mast powerful, least academic, where Hesperus grapples with his father." Aside from the dubious labeling af certain aspects af The Brides1 Tragedy as "academic," it Is necessary to note that the scenes between

Flaribel and Hesperus, the scene at the wedding feast, and even his soliloquy In Act II, sc. iv, are equally powerful and certainly could never be called academic. But ta came back ta the father-san conflict, Lard Ernest and Hesperus have more scenes in which they profess the lave they hold far one another, rather than the hate they harbor. That same kind af conflict would develop between father and son, or between other characters for that matter, is not an improbable thing. But we must remember 1) that there Is an entire scene af reconciliation which would modify considerably the dominant theme of father-son conflict and 2) that Hesperus* execution is finally a social and political act, not a personal one in 82 the name of Lord Ernest. In short, the lack of communication between the characters In The BrIdes1 Tragedy goes far beyond the simple lack of communication between father and son. To take one scene from the twenty-two of The Brides1 Tragedy and make it dominate the other equally violent or passionate scenes Is to distort the overall meaning of the play with the use of a restricting psychological thesis. Hoyt himself emphasizes the shakiness of the theory when he says that his Htheme, apparently a real compulsion with Beddoes, is kept under control by the play's rigid design and the school­ boy penchant for correctness,"^ a penchant, we are forced to note, which had never interfered with the composition of

The Improvisatore. The real theme--If one can be said to dominate the play--is more reasonably explained as the detach­ ment of one human being from another. The detachment is caused partly by forces and objects often outside our control

(love, money, heredity, pressures of society) and partly by the strength or lack of it with which we make a choice.

These obstructing forces are thrown in the way of all the characters in The Brides' Tragedy, and of course are most prominent in regard to Hesperus. He comes to ruin more because he chooses badly than because he is the ungrateful son of an ungrateful father.

Beddoes' characterization of women lias been hinted at often in this discussion and there is no need for much

repetitious summary. But one slightly paradoxical aspect of the treatment must be emphasized. The women are referred 83 to variously by Beddoes as flowers, stars, and goddesses.

They are delicate te the paint af frailty, unappraachable, holy, and distant. At one paint woman is called "Nature's rarest wark." Despite this, however, they are simple, com­ pletely subservient, given easily ta madness, without self, and stand out significantly as the ultimate cause ©f conflicts between Beddoes' men. They move somewhere between heaven and earth, leading lives that seem dreadfully unfulfilled.

1 point this out because in the precarious balance af the

Beddaesian world, the picture af women is, in part, an unsympathetic one, and one which in the long run would modify somewhat the suggestion that the essential conflict

Brides1 Tragedy is one between father and son.

As surely as The Improvlsatore1s theme is not to be confined by critical accusations of necrophilia, the real significance of The Brides1 Tragedy goes beyond a father-son conflict. There are broader ideas working in Beddoes' drama that align it more closely with his preceding and succeeding work. One is the displacement of personal responsibility for one's actions. In both The Improvlsatore and The Brides'

Tragedy the individual man is taken off the hook by being portrayed as mad. It happens with Rodolph, Leopold, and

Hesperus, as well as with Emily and Lenora. The "punishment" of insanity, whether deserved or undeserved, is peculiarly personal and isolated. By comparison, the punishment that society exacts in The Brides' Tragedy Is, by the end of the play, insignificant as far as Hesperus is personally concerned. ei* Closely aligned with this idea is the suggestion that univer­ sal law or the law of necessity is cruelly impartial. Catas­ trophe v isits the Just and the unjust, the guilty and the innocent. So that in such a discussion words such as punishment and reward. fair and unfair. qullty and innocent run vaguely into one another, the result of a language devised by man to which Beddoes' law of necessity has not the least connection. The poet suggests by this attitude that men do not control their actions as much as they think they do. It really matters very little in Beddoes' world

that a man would strive for goodness or beauty. His is a world of despair and hopelessness that resists generality and systematization. And finally the world of Beddoes is a grotesque one. The grotesque, in this sense, is a structure whose nature often suggests Itself to us In Beddoes' work; the grotesque is the estranged world. The familiar and obvious turn out to be strange and ominous; suddenness and surprise are essential. We are strongly affected and often terrified because Beddoes' world ceased to be reliable, and we feel that we could not live in a world on which we had so little hold. The grotesque finally instills a fear of life rather than fear of death. Demons, fiends and spirits that finally assume a living presence in Beddoes are powers we cannot name. If we could name them and If we could relate them to a cos­ mic scheme, the grotesque would lose its essential quality. The grotesque Is not necessarily concerned with Individual 85 actions or the destruction of the moral order. "It Is finally the expression of our failure to orient ourselves In the physical universe,"^ All of this leads us to con­

jecture that a writer who structures a drama using such ele­ ments is finally attempting to invoke and even subdue the demonic aspects of the world. The relationship of this attempt to Beddoes' stated desire to "uncypress death" in

Death1s Jest-Book is close and suggests that we have hit upon a larger and more significant idea than that of a quarrelsome father and son, or a fickle and selfish young man. But for Beddoes there were to be abandoned attempts at other dramas before he turned t© his large and great work.

•};-

With Terrismond, Beddoes turns to a particularly political setting, although much of the drama still deals with domestic d ifficu lties. We have only the firs t four

scenes of the firs t act, but within that short space we discover the themes that have concerned Beddoes from the

start and that anticipate further development in Death's Jest-Book. Torrismond begins immediately with the Duke's harangue against his son, the dissolute Torrismond,

He speaks thus to the servants whom he suspects of protect­ ing and hiding his son Torrismond: ] am no lord, sir, but a father: My son has stuck sharp injuries in my heart, And flies to hide in your obscurity. Cover him not with falsehoods; shield him not; Or, by my father's ashes,--but no matter. 86 You said X was a duke: 1 will be one, Though graves should bark for it. You've heard me speak: Now go not to your beds until my son (—It is a word that cases not a meaning--*) Come from his riots: send him then to me: And harki Ye fill him not, as ye are wont, To the lip's brim with oily subterfuge. 1 sit this evening in the library. Act I, sc. i. Echoing previous and looking ahead to future sentiments regarding a man's offspring, the Duke says "he, whose world/ Grows in his thoughts, methinks, alone is happy.” When he retires to the library, the servants with whom he had been talking draw for us a quick character sketch of Torrismond, one which by now we may recognize as characteristically Beddoes i an:

Perhaps some further outrage Reported of his son; for the young lord, Whose veins are stretched by passiorts hottest wine Tied to no law except his lawless will, Ranges and riots headlong through the world; Like a young dragon, on Hesperian berries Purplely fed, who dashes through the air, Tossing his wings in gambols of desire And breaking rain-clouds with his bulging breast. Thus has he been from boy to youth and manhood, Reproved, then favoured; threatened, next forgiven; Renounced, to be embraced; but, t i l l this hour, Never has indignation like to this, With lightning looks, black thoughts and stony words, Burst o'er the palace of their love, which stretches From heart to heart. Act I, sc. i. Torrismond, it would seem, is an earthbound Leopold. Torrismond is 1 ike a dragon flying through the air. Leopold did fly. Leopold, a supernatural spirit, "tied to no law except his lawless w ill,” shares with Torrismond, though in a more fantastical way, the megalomania that plagues them 87 both. There are, however, marked and significant differences between the characters. Leopold's world was timeless and spaceless. The universe was his province. His birth was obscure, his education and training to no avail, and his existence outside any economic, social and political system. Much more than Torrismond, he was a symbo1 of defiance, of strength, of seIf-consuming madness. Leopold was responsi­ ble to no one and served only himself. Torrismond, on the other hand—and some of these qualities he shares with Hesperus--is, most importantly, earthbound. He has clear obligations to his father, the head of a dukedom. Parti­ cular attention is called to the excessively permissive and erratic manner of training and education. And it is clear that he is, by virtue of his station in life, behold­ en to various other persons. If he is defiant, If he is selfish, he stands to be judged by his contemporaries. By bringing the character down to earth, Beddoes makes Torris­ mond more suitably actable--simply a practical matter--and at the same time urges upon him the various pressures of time space, and other humans. In scene two of this fragment we are introduced to the fast-living Torrismond. With his crcnies in a banquet hall, they are about to have one last toast before they go off to yet another party. It is the first scene of youthful revel­ ry in Beddoes and is managed quite sk illfu lly and r e a lis ti­ cally. Beddoes rarely gets this earthy again in his dramatic pieces : 88

Fill up the goblets, sirrahl By the white dance of a Circassian princess, Whose breast had never aught but sunlight touched, And her own tears: 'tis spicy, cool, and clear As is a magic fount where rainbows grow Or nymphs by moonlight bathe their tremulous limbs; And works an intellectual alchemy, Touching the thoughts to sunshine. Now, to whom— To what young saint, between whose breathing paps Love's inspiration lies, shall we devote This last and richest draught: with whose soft name Shall we wash bright our hearts? Act I , sc . i i . As it turns out Torrismond is taking his pleasure rather sadly, and pleads with them to go to the festivities with­ out him: "Tonight, 1 thank you,/it is against my will; in­ deed 1 cannotj/l'm vilely out of tune, my thoughts are crack­ ed,/And my words dismal." All the revellers exit exce Pt Cyrano, Torrismond's confidant. Torrismond asks Cyrano "What think you of me?" and when Cyrano answers "Sir, my heart speaks of you as one most kind:/Spiritual and yet mild: a man more noble/Breathes not his maker's air," Torrismond accuses his friend of flattery and explains that he is des­ perately in need of love: Cyrano, Cyrano, I yearn, and th irst, and ache to be beloved, As I could love, through my eternal soul, Immutably, immortally, intensely, Immeasurably. Oh'. 1 am not at home In this December world, with men of ice, Cold sirs and madams. That I had a heart, Fy whose warm throbs of love to set my soul 1 I tell thee I have not begun to live, I'm not myself t i l l I've another self To lock my dearest and most secret thoughts in; Change petty faults and whispering pardons with; Sweetly to rule, and Oh', most sweetly serve. 89 We have here, as we have witnessed in The Improvlsatore and The Brides1 Tragedy, a hint of a being set apart from other men, of a being genuinely alone, and when Cyrano leaves, Torrismond, in a soliloquy that suggests more of Isbrand of Deaths Jest-Book than any other single character before this, explains how he sees himself: He thinks me now Weak, unintelligible, fanciful,-- A boy shut up in dreams, a shadow-catcher: So let him think. My soul is where he sees not, Around, above, below. Yes, yes; the curse Of being for a little world too great, Demanding more than nature has to give, And drinking up for ever and In vain The shallow, tasteless, skimmings of their love, Through this unfathomable fever here.— Act 1, sc. i I . At this moment he remembers a girl whom he met at a feast theprevious evening and decides to seek her out. In summary of this scene, then we may say that at least part of Torris- mond’s unsettled state is a direct result of not being loved. He suggests that love can be self-devourIng unless it is shared, and his last few comments hear this out. Alone, man retreats to his own world which becomes the measure of all things. His removal from the world, either forced or volun­ tary, may lead him to believe that he is cursed for "being for a little world too g reat.” As far as Torrismond Is con­ cerned, the key to psychological freedom and personal salva­ tion is love. The third scene of Torr1smond shifts away from the bois­ terous banquet hall to ”A garden by moon 1ight" where Veronica, 90 after being sung to sleep by her attendants, is discov­ ered by Torrismond. His language is rapturous as he compares her loveliness to the stars and the rose, imagery that Beddoes, as we have seen, often uses in his description of women. She awakens and, unaware of Torrismond's presence

relates a dream she had, the essence of which is that a bee named Torrismond came to her and proferred his love. At this moment, Torrismond interrupts and asks her not to deny the real man. In his brief plea, we discover Beddoes* char­ acteristically impassioned plea for love, along with the Beddoesian notion that through love Torrismond may enjoy

immortality: O Lady '. then Will you deny him now? when here he kneels, And vows by heaven, and by the sacred souls Of all the dead and living, in your pity His hope is folded, in your soul his love, And in that love his everlasting life. Act 1, sc. iii. With a true devoted lover’s spirit Torrismond swears that he will do anything for Veronica, who is, by the way, des­ cribed here as blessed, angelic, and heavenly:

1 will not swear, for thou dost know that easy: But put me to the proof, say, 'kill thyself'; I will outlabour Hercules in will, And in performance, if that waits on w ill. Shall I fight sword-less with a youthful lion? Shall I do aught that I may die in doing? Oh', were it possible for such an angel, I almost wish thou hadst some Impious task, That I might act it and be damned for thee. But, earned for thee, perdition's not itself, Since all that has a taste of thee in it Is blest and heavenly. Act 1, sc. iii. 91 Frightened somewhat by these impetuous protestations, she yet remains after he explains that they must make the most of the present moment, an idea which becomes much stronger in Death1s Jest-Book. There is a desperate fear here and throughout all of Beddoes* works that, if we do not enjoy the existing moment, something--and it may be triv ial or universally important—will cause us to regret not having done so; there is no mention of the regrets that may accom­ pany over-hasty action. The following is the first fairly direct statement of the idea; Stay, Veronica 1 This very night we both of us may die, Or one at least: and it is very likely We never meet; or, if we meet, not thus, But somehow hindered by the time, the place, The persons. There are many chances else, That, though no bigger than a sunny mote, Coming between may our whole future part, With Milo's force tear cur existence up, And turn away the branches of each life, Even from this hour, on whose star-knotted trunk We would engraft our union; it may sever us As utterly as if the world should split Here, as we stand, and all Eternity Push through the earthquake's lips, and rise between us . Then let us know each other's constancy; Thou in my mind, and I in think shall be; And so disseparable to the edge Of thinnest lightning. Act I, sc. iii. She is impressed with his seeming honesty, but, aware of his reputation, fears for the success of any permanent affair with him. There Is a suggestion in the following lines that, in keeping with her heavenly attributes, she has not Judged him so harshly and completely as others. 92

If thou art Torrismond, the brain of feather; If thou art light and empty Torrismond, The admiration, oath and bottle-god Of beer-brained tipplers, he whose corky heart, Pierced by a ragged pen of Cupid's wing, Spins like a vane upon his mother’s temple In every silly sigh--let it play on: Or pluck it down and stop musk-phials with it. . . . If thou art otherwise than all have held Except myself; if these, which men do think The workings of thy true concentrate self, Have been indeed but bubbles raised in sport By the internal god, who keeps unseen The fountains of thine undiscovered spirit; If underneath this troubled scum of follies, Lies what my hopes have guessed:—why, guess thy wishes What it may be unto Veronica? Act 1, sc. iii. He pleads for understanding and swears his love, to which she responds with ” I love thee dearly, purely, heartily;/ So witness heaven and our own silent spirits'.” As the scene ends, they part filled with thoughts of the morrow. Scene four begins with the Duke once again berating his son. Judging from most descriptions of Torrismond he is the precursor of Athulf in Death1s Jest-Book. The Duke says: Yes, was it not enough, good Garcia: Blood spilt in every street by his wild sword; The reverend citizens pelted with wrongs, Their rights and toil-won honours blown aside, The very daughters of the awful church Smeared in their whiteness by his rude attempts; The law thus made a lie even in my mouth; Myself a jest for beer-pot orators; My state dishonoured;--was it not enough To turn a patience made of ten-years' ice, Into a thunderbolt? Act I, sc. iv. Melchior, a courtier much respected by the Duke, comes for­ ward to say that Torrismond now, In league with ethers for his father's dukedom, is guilty of treason. Gaudentio, 93 another courtier, comes to the aid of Torrismond by accusing Melchior, "a Spanish Jew*, a godless, heartless exile," of lying. In a very clumsy aside in the midst of this heated discussion, Melchior hints at a motive which may confirm Gaudentio's accusations: God help the miserable velvet fellow*. It seems he has forgot that little story, How he debauched my poor, abandoned sister, And broke my family into the grave. That's odd; for 1 exceeding well remember it, Though then a boy. Act I, sc. iv The Duke asks them all to leave as Torrismond enters. What follows Is the most bitter kind of verbal abuse between father and son and, what is worse because of the political implications, between the duke and the heir apparent. In the strong dialogue we discover another one of Beddoes* ideas strongly stated, the idea that a child is the offspring of a demon working through the lust of the weak-willed human. The Duke says: Hear me, young man, in whom I did express The venom of my nature, thus the son, Not of my virtuous will, but foul desires, Not of my life, but of a wicked moment, Not of my soul, but growing from my body, Like thorns of poison on a wholesome tree, The rank excresence of my tumid sins,-- And so 1 tear thee off: for, Heaven doth know, All gentler remedies 1 have applied: But to this head thy rankling vice has swelled, That if thou dwellest In my bosom longer, Thou wilt infect my blood, corrode my heart, And blight my being; therefore, off for ever*. Act I, sc. Iv. As important as the Duke's view of his son ishis self-con­ demnation regarding his own sexual behavior. In a sense he 9U denies his responsibility for so foul and irrational an act. In an effort to get them to temper their argument, Gaudentio rushes in and asks them to "lay a night of sleep/Upon its head, and let its pulse of fire/Flap to exhaustion." He describes the ideal father-son relationship so eloquently, and the description contrasts so strongly with the heated scene between father and son that it deserves quoting: There stands before you The youth and golden top of your existence, Another life of yours: for, think your morning Not lost, but given, passed from your hand to his, The same except in place. Be then to him As was the former tenant of your age, When you were in the prologue of your time, And he lay hid in you unconsciously Under his life. And thou, my younger master, Remember there's a kind of god in him, And after heaven the next of thy religion. Thy second fears of God, thy firs t of man, Are his, who was creation's delegate And made this world for thee in making thee. Act I, sc. iv.

The Duke, In a comment that anticipates a more developed one in Death's Jest-Book, calls Gaudentio little more than a dog for Interfering: A frost upon thy words, intended dog'. Because thy growth has lost Its four-legged way And wandered with thee Into man's resemblance, Shalt thou assume his rights? Get to your bed, Or I'll decant thy pretext of a soul, And lay thee, worm, where thou shalt multiply. Act I, sc. iv. After more harsh words between father and son, Torrismond makes a pitifu l plea to the Duke: O father, fatner'. must I have no father, To think how 1 shall please, to pray for him, To spread his virtues out before my thought, And set my soul in order after them? 95 To dream, and talk of in my dreaming sleep? If I have children, and they question me Of him who was to me as 1 to them; Who taught me love and sports and childish lore; Placed smiles where tears had been; who bent his talk That it might enter my low apprehension, And laughed when words were lo st.—0 father, father! Must I give up the first word that my tongue, The only one my heart has ever spoken? Then take speech, thought, and knowledge quite away; Tear all my life out of the universe, Take off my youth, unwrap me of years, And hunt me up the dark and broken past Into my mother’s womb: there unbeget me; For 't i l l I'm in thy veins and unbegun, Or to the food returned which made the blood ^hat did make me, no possible lie can ever Uproot my feet of thee. Canst thou make nothing? Then do it here, for I would rather be At home nowhere, than here nowhere at home. Act I, sc. iv. The Duke, in answer, says that Torrismond must repent his many sins before he can consider forgiveness. And as the scene and this dramatic fragment end, Torrismond assumes the tone of his kindred spirit-to-be, Isbrand. Answering Melchior's "What shall we do?" Torrismond says: What shall we do?--why, a ll. How many things, sir, do men live to do? The mighty labour is to die: we'll d o 't,-- But we'll drive in a chariot to our graves, Wheel'd with big thunder, o'er the heads of men. Act I, sc. Iv.

it it it it it

The other important dramatic fragment--three full acts and one scene of a fourth--is entitled The Second Brother and, once again involves a duke of Ferrara, this time with his two brothers, Orazio and Marcello. The drama opens on 96 a scene of festivity, of which Prince Orazio, the darling of the courtiers, is the center: "By my life,/There is no mortal stuff that foots the earth/Abie to wear the shape of man, like him,/And fill it with the carriage of a god." But very quickly the scene is disrupted by the second brother, Marcello, who appears, after an absence of "a dozen years," disguised as a beggar. The two brothers exchange harsh words, and from all indications we understand Orazio to be a power- hungry, self-effacing, wildly dissolute, if colorful charac­ ter, whose mien contrasts sharply with Marcello's. Proud Orazio refuses any extended interview with this intruder and proceeds on his way. After receiving such a rebuke, Marcello--like Hesperus before him and Isbrand and the Duke of Death1s Jest-Book after him—raises his voice in an Invocation to demonic sp irits:

Let me forget to love, And take a heart of venom: let me make A staircase of the frightened breasts of men, And climb into a lonely happiness 1 And thou, who only art alone as 1, Great solitary god of that one sun, 1 charge thee by the likeness of our state, Undo these human veins that tie me close To other men, and let your servant griefs Unmilk me of my mother, and pour in Salt scorn and steaming hate I Ac t I , sc. i On the whole, Beddoes manages this firs t scene very well. In the midst of ail the social and political festivities of

Ferrara comes a very strong note of family dissension. It would seem that Beddoes has drawn brief but precise character sketches, that he has indicated the sources of antagonism, 97 and, by the end of the scene, has spurred our interest on as to the solution of the many-sided dilemma. We understand Orazio to be irresponsible and debauched, and we have some pity for the brother who, undone for so long, is about to gain the dukedom that is his. But Beddoes has a few twists of plot and characterization that, at this point, we could not have anticipated. The second scene includes a number of reversals. While

Orazio is taking his pleasure, his father-in-law, Varinl, enters to announce that Orazio, heavily in debt, has lost everything. However, his prospects brighten when a messenger arrives to announce the imminent death of the ruling Duke. But Just as quickly the father-in-law announces that the long-gone second brother, Marcello, has received the crown and dukedom. All exit except Varini and an attendant who asks whether they should remove the plate from the banquet table. And in an imaginative, dramatic stroke, Beddoes brings an end not only to Orazio1s prospects for that great intan­ gible, political power, but also to his material acquisitions as well. He has Varini say: Leave it alone: Wine in the cups, the spicy meats uncovered, And the round lamps each with a star of flame Upon their brink; let winds begot on roses, And grey with incense, rustle through the silk And velvet curtains: then set all the windows, The doors and gates, wide open; let the wolves, Foxes, and owls, and snakes, come in and feast; Let the bats nestle in the golden bowls, The shaggy brutes stretch on the velvet couches, The serpent twine him o'er and o’er the harp's Delicate chords:--to Night, and all its devils, 98 We do abandon this accursed house. Act I, sc. li. Act II discovers Marcello in power and Orazio about to be banished and/or imprisoned. When Orazio asks why the punishment is not death, Ezril, Marcello's sycophant, in an answer that anticipates the same situation and dialogue in Death1s Jest-Book, says MThe pious hape/That bitter solitude and suffering thought/Will introduce repentance to thy woes,/ And that conduct thee to religious fear/And humbleness.* It Is one of the many speeches throughout Beddoes' work--there is another at the end of this scene--in which the emphasis is thrown upon a man's own tormenting conscience, in compari­ son with which death can sometimes provide a most welcome release. In this particular case—the exchange between Orazio and E zril--it is interesting to note that the two persons with the least concern for humility and their fellow- man's well-being, I.e. Marcello and Ezril, are the self- appointed moral guardians of the wayward Orazio. Act III opens with a brief scene between Marcello and hissycophant Ezril* It is a scene which looks ahead to the opening of Act V of Death's Jest-Book. Marcello hasassumed power in much the same way that Isbrand, his successor, will assume it. Observe, for example, Marcello's opening speech: I have them all at last; swan-necked Obedience; And Power that strides across the muttering people, Like a tall bridge; and War, the spear-maned dragon: Such are the potent spirits he commands, Who sits within the circle of a crown'. Methought that love began at woman's eye: But thou, bright imitation of the sun, 99 Kindlest the frosty mould around my heart-roots, And breathing through the branches of my veins, Makest each azure tendril of them blossom Deep tingling pleasures, musically hinged. Dropping with starry sparke, goldenly honied, And smelling sweet with the delights of life. At length I am Marcello. Act III, sc. i. The newly-crowned duke, In refusing to let the nobles proffer him "the homage of their coronets," explains to Ezril that he will not adhere to the traditional governmental organiza­ tion:

Say unto them, Ezril, Their sovereigns of aforetime were utter men, False gods, that beat an highway in their thoughts Before my car; idols of monarchy, Whose forms they might behold. Now 1 am come, Be it enough that they are taught my name, Permitted to adore it, swear and pray In it and to it: for the rest I wrap The pillared caverns of my palace round me, Like to a cloud, and rule invisibly On the god-shouldering summit of mankind. Dismiss them so. Act III, sc. i . Ezril warns that "'Tls dangerous" to assume dictatorial powers and Marcello retorts that all life is dangerous: "Each minute of man's safety he does walk/A bridge no thicker than his frozen breath/O'er a precipitous and craggy danger/Yawning to death The reversals of fortune, up to this point, once again reinforce Beddoes' Idea of the risky, precipitous, and unpre­ dictable quality of life. As for the mass of mankind, they no sooner seem content with their condition than a single event, much removed from the sphere of most of them, serves to modify all destinies, whether they be collective (as is 100 the government men live under) or personal. This notion of the destiny of all being inextricably bound to the destiny of one appears time and again in Beddoes. And it is the de­ sire of the single, strong, and most often evil, individual trying to break free from this entangled fate that often breathes dramatic life into Beddoes’ characters and situations. The second scene of Act III is a rather talky one between imprisoned Orazio and his brother Marcello. It Is

largely a melodramatic lament on Orazio’s part for his dead wife, Valeria. Marcello hints that there is a way to bring Valeria back to life and asks Orazio, though he is imprisoned, to meet him tomorrow night in the cathedral vault where Valeria is to be buried. There Is little remark­ able about the scene except that, with the necessary modifi­ cations, It is played out again in Death* s Jest-Book between the Duke, Thorwald, and Ziba, the Egyptian slave. Act IV, only seventy-five lines long, contributes little to what has gone before. It only adds the Duke's own personal testimony of his alienation from the rest of mankind. He calls himself "Nature's cast chi Id,/Renounced by Life and

Death of common men,/And placed by wrongs upon an island peak."

Although it is more difficult to assess fragments than completed dramas, there are interesting features of Torrls- mond and The Second Brother that clearly relate to the poet’s earlier work and look ahead to Death1s Jest-Book. The firs t, 101 Torrismond, while not as overtly political as The Second

Brother, is nonetheless political in a sense that The Brides« Tragedy is not. Torrismond, whom we may call the protagonist only in a special Beddoesian sense, is heir to a dukedom, a fact which would ordinarily color all our opinions of him as a man. Much like his dramatic predecessor Hesperus, he is ill-tempered, quick to anger, quick to love, and quick to ask, though not grant, forgiveness. But unlike the private citizen Hesperus, he is, as heir to a dukedom, a potential leader in whom these qualities are more danger­ ous. This latter assumption, although it can scarcely be disputed, is interesting because it is one that never con­ cerns Beddoes. So we have here a dramatic fragment with a cast of characters made up of a duke, the son of a duke, and courtiers—a fragmented drama with a definite political setting in which politics is not an issue. Because the fragment is so brief, it would be difficult to speculate on the direction the play might have taken. The Second Brother, however, is more nearly complete and slightly stronger in its political emphasis. The central problem seems to be--and 1 say seems advisedly--a brother's usurpation of a crown that belongs rightfully to his older brother. The latter, thought to be dead, returns at the right moment and assumes power. But all of this takes place before the third act begins. So what seemed to be the plot line shifts considerably and comes more in line with 102 the problems that seem to confront Beddoes In all his work: the dramatic substitution of the strong, demon-ridden, and evil character for the more usual plot entanglements between characters that, at least, do not pretend to god-head. This shift in focus is more disturbing In The Second Brother than it is in Death1s Jest-Book when the characters are finally dramatically and structurally overpowered by Jsbrand who becomes, but also not until Act III, the central figure of that work. At least Isbrand never posed as anything but a revengeful man. Marcello of The Second Brother Is, until he assumes power in Act III, the spokesman for every quality that a beneficent ruler should entertain. When he comes to power he becomes, as we have seen, the dramatic kin of Rodolph, Hesperus, and Torrismond before him, and Isbrand after him. In each case, then, with a shift in emphasis, there results a suggested shift in the central thesis of the drama. Once again the author's emphasis is thrown on The lndividual--his aloneness, his lack of trust, his danger, his irrationality, his ability to deceive, his choosing, and, most importantly, his desire to escape the physical and spiritual restrictions placed upon him by nature. Obviously much of Beddoes' thought and work In these two fragments provided him with a kind of preparation for Death1s Jest-Book. Many of the situations are similar; some of the speeches are identical in tone to those in 103 Death1s Jest-Book. Most certainly some of the ideas that Beddoes constantly used are prominent in the fragments. The great break-through, however, in Death1s Jest-Book involves Beddoes' unashamed mixture of elements from the natural and supernatural worlds. He seems uncomfortable when he keeps all his characters earth-bound, for no matter how Marcello or Torrismond or Orazio wish to proclaim their godhead, they cannot actually assume it. But what to do with them once they have assumed such power becomes, a rtistic a lly , a very difficult problem, particularly if one is attempting to write tragedy and to provoke feelings of pity or terror or grandeur in the reader or viewer. In Death's Jest-Book we are, once and for all, released from our conventional attitudes toward reality, and the line between the living and the dead, between the physical and spiritual worlds--always a tenuous line in Beddoes--ceases altogether to exist. FOOTNOTES FOR CHAPTER I I

*Works, p. lix. 2john Wilson, "The Brides' Tragedy,” Blackwood* s t XIV (December 1823), 723. 3b. W. Procter, "The Brides' Tragedy,” London Magazine, VI11 (February 1023), 170. And John Lacy, WA Sixth Letter to the Dramatists of the Day." London Magaz ine, VIII (Dec­ ember 1 8 2 3 ), 6I48 . ^Donner, p. 9 i|.

% orks, p. 6 3 0 . 6 lbid. p. 3 6 7 . ?C. A. Hoyt, Studles in Thomas Love 11 Beddoes, a dis­ sertation (Columbia University, 1961), pT 108. ®We are reminded of Rodolph*s quest that began thus: Then from the lake was heard a sudden sigh; Straightway the sportive billows arched on high, And from the flower-strewn bed of the calm stream Up shot a fiery pillar, like the beam Of love which lightens through the slender veil Of maiden, listening to a lover*s tale, A bail of fire rose through the yawning stream, Spouting its fevered venom with a roar, Whirling around the lake its lurid gleam, And snowing its red light upon the sleepy shore. 1 1 . 106-115. 9P ercy Bysshe Shelley, The Cenc1, Act III, sc. i, The Complete Poetica1 Works of Percy feysshe Shelley, ed. Roger Ingpen and Walter Peck (London, 1527), iTi 107.

10Snow, p. i+9. l^Works, p. 590. ^ 1 am aware that, more and more, distinctions are being made between Elizabethan and Jacobean drama. However, I use the term Elizabethan to Include some writers who are, historically speaking, Jacobean.

*3oonner, p. 8 6 . ^Donner, p. 85. 10k 15m. C. Bradbrook, Themes and Convent ions of Eli zabethan Tragedy (Cambridge, EngTa'n'if, 1961*), p. 11.

l^Shelley, The Cenc i , Act III, sc. i i , p. lll|. ^^Lord Byron, Sardanapalus. Act III, sc. i, in The Poetical Works of Lord Byron, Oxford Standard Authors Series (New York, 19)4.6), p.TT T . *®John Keats, Qtho the Great, Act V, sc. v, in The Poetlea 1 Works of John Keats, ed. H. W. Garrod (London,1956 ), p. 299. ^^William Wordsworth, The Borderers, Act H I, sc. ii in The Complete Poet ical Works' of William Wordsworth, intro, by John Mor ley(Lon'don^ 1950T7 pT 5k •

2 ®Keats, Qtho the Great, Act V, sc. i, p. 293.

2 *Byron, Manfred, Act III, sc. Ii, p. i|03.

^Bradbrook, p# 3 9 ,

2 3ibid., p. kO.

^Works, p. 7 1 1 *

2 ^lbld. , p. 7 1 0 .

2 ^Donner, p. 85.

2?Bradbrook, p. 57.

Conner, p. 1 9 .

2 ^Bradbrook, p. 59. 3°r. F, Kelsall, "Thomas Lovell Beddoes," Fortnightly Review, XII, N. S. (July 1872), 58. 3*Mabel C ollins, " A Poet Not Laureate," Dublin Univers1ty Magazine, IV (November 1879), 513.

3%. w . Procter, "The Brides' Tragedy," London Magazine, VIII (February 1823), 170.

33john Lacy, "A Sixth Letter to the Dramatists of the Day." London Magazine, VIII (December 1823), 6 I4.8 . 106 ^^Donner, p. 9 5 . 37Ibid. 38ibld.

3^Hoyt, p. 130. ^°Ibld. ^Wolfgang Kayser, The Grotesque in Art and L Iterature (New York, 1963), p. l85. ^An interesting sidelight at this point is a passage in one of Beddoes1 letters in which he describes Shakespeare. Toward the conclusion he becomes humorously aware of the inflated quality of the prose. "About Shakespeare you don't say enough. He was an incarnation of nature, and you might just as well attempt to remodel the seasons, and the laws of life and death, as to alter 'one Jot or tittle ' of his eternal thoughts. 'A star' you call him: if he was a star, all the other stage-scrlbblers can hardly be considered a constellation of brass buttons. 1 say he was an universe, and all material existence with its excellences and defects was reflected in shadowy thought upon the chrystal waters of his imagination, ever-glorified as they were by the sleep­ less sun of his golden intellect. And this imaginary uni­ verse had Its seasons and changes, its harmonies and its discords, as well as the dirty reality; on the snow-maned necks of its winter hurricanes rode madness, despair, and 'empty death, with the winds whistling through the white grating of his sides'; its summer of poetry, glistening through the drops of pity; and its solemn and melancholy autumn, breathing deep melody among the 'sere and yellow leaves' of thunder-stricken life, &c &c. (See Chas Phillips's speeches and X.Y.Z. for the completing furbelow of this paragraph.)." Works, p. 581. CHAPTER I I I

DEATH’S JEST-BOOK

Beddoes' last great work was Death1s Jest-Book or the

Fool's Tragedy, begun In 1825 and completed In 1828, but revised and reworked until his death. It represents the culmination of Ideas that the poet had Introduced into

The ImprovIsatore, The Brides1 Tragedy, the dramatic frag­ ments and other brief works. A very long work of five acts and nineteen scenes, It must certainly be one of the most peculiar, fascinating, and revealing literary productions of the period. It has been the subject cf various criticism, much interesting and valid, much biased and picayune, and almost all fragmentary. The approach that has been neglect­ ed is the one that would attempt to indicate the value of

Death's Jest-Book as a fruition of the poet's life-long thought and labor. Hence it is one that would see this work in relation to the poet's other work. And It is an approach that would help us to understand the poet and his work as part of a larger historical picture. For these reasons we must turn now to a detailed examination of the drama Itself.

10? 108

The settings of Deaths Jest-Boek are Ancona, Egypt, and Silesia at the end of the thirteenth century. The characters are all connected in one way or another with the upper-classes and, more particularly, the court of the Duke of Munsterberg. The first scene, at Ancona, opens with two comic characters--Homunculus Mandrake and Kate--who, after some private bickering, reveal the crucial forthcoming ac­ tion: Mandrake says, "You heard the herald this morning thrice invite all Christian folk to follow the brave knight,

Sir Wolfram, to the shores of Egypt, and there help to free from bondage his noble fellow in arms, Duke Melveric, whom, on a pilgrimage to the Holy Sepulchre, wild pagans captured." Such a speech is unusually claar for Mandrake, whom Beddoes describes in the cast of characters as "zany to a mountebank." Like most zanies, Mandrake is given the task of lightening the play's extraordinarily heavy content.

Death1s Jest-Book he is also called upon to make the fool’s occasionally penetrating criticism of the turn of events. One of the least happy features of the drama Is that Beddoes makes so little use of this zany; neverthe­ less, Mandrake, Beddoes' only comic character, remains one of the poet's great creations and carries the play along, the few times he Is present, with a strong, sharp wit and a spirited, fun-ridden use of language.* His opening speech gives a glimpse of these vital qualities, and at the same time suggests the modernity of Beddoes: 109 Canst thou Lack the wheel of Fortune with '1 Prithee'? Nay, I will live no longer like a retired cream-Jug In the broken China Shop of History. 1 will give up the grub, and mount. Let who will cleave to the earth like a melan­ choly devil in a blacking bottle, 1 am true Gooseberry and Up1, my motto: so tell my master the Doctor, he must seek another Zany for his booth, a new wise Merry Andrew. My jests are cracked, my coxcomb fallen, my bauble confiscated, my cap of captious caprice decapi­ tated. Toll the bell: for O', for 01 Jack Pudding is no more. Ac t 1, sc. i . The brief scene between Kate and Mandrake ends with the appearance of Isbrand, the son of the Duke whose posi­ tion Melveric apparently usurped. He is engaged now as the court-jester, allegedly waiting for the right moment to have his revenge. In this rather confusedly plotted drama, Isbrand gradually becomes the dominant character; but for the moment he Is the court-jester chastizing Mandrake for Joining those determined to save Duke Melveric: Good morrow, brother Vanity 1 How? soul of a pickle-herring, body of a spagirical toss-pot, doublet of motley, and mantle of pilgrim, how art thou transmuted'. Wilt thou desert our brotherhood, fool sublimate? Shall the motley chapter no longer boast thee? Wilt thou for­ swear the order of the bell, and break thy vows to Momus? Have mercy on Wisdom and relent. Act I, sc. i. Mandrake laments Ironically that there is scarcely any place left for the faculty of Folly: "now is every man his ©wn fool, and the world's cheerless." Isbrand agrees, ex­ claiming that "the Fates are no more humorous, they have been converted by the Knowledge Society tracts." 110 At this point enter those that Isbrand calls the unini­ tiated --ThorwaId (the Governor In the Duke's absence), his daughter Amala, and Wolfram, Isbrand's brother Thorwald wishes Wolfram a safe and successful Journey. Wolfram re­ sponds that all hearts are ready to go rescue the Duke from the Saracens. Mandrake says that he too is ready to join the cause. Wolfram asks, "Who is this fellow that inter­ rupts?” and provides Beddoes with the first clash between the two brothers, Isbrand and Wolfram, when Isbrand answers: One of the many you have made. Yesterday he was a fellow of my kindred and served a quack­ salver, but now he lusts after the mummy land whither you are bound. 'Tis a servant of the rosy cross, a correspondent with the stars; the dead are his friends, and the secrets of the moon his knowledge. He will brew you a gallon of gold out of a shilling. But had 1 been cook to a chameleon, I could not sweeten the air to his praise enough. Suffice it, of his wisdom Solomon knew less than a bee of petrified flowers, or your butcher of the Mammoth. We fools send him as ambassador to Africa; take him with you, or be yourself our representative. Act I, sc. i. The plot is now further complicated by Thorwald who gives to Wolfram letters to deliver to the Duke, letters which reveal that the Duke's two sons, Athulf and Adalmar, are plotting against their father for the throne of Munster- berg. Isbrand, in an aside, says, "May [such news] flatten him t il l he have no more brain than a pancake.” Amala now bids farewell to Wolfram and makes known that Wolfram is in the service of ”a lady in those lands.” Wolfram thanks everyone and all exit except Wolfram and Isbrand. It is I ll now that we learn that these brothers had come disguised to the court of the Duke of Munsterberg to seek revenge for the Duke's usurpation of his title from the father of

these two men. Isbrand has assumed the role of court Jester, and Wolfram seems to have become a minor confidant of the

Duke. Isbrand has never put from his head the original plan for revenge, but Wolfram's relationship with the Duke has tempered this young man's desire for revenge. The

Duke and Wolfram have enjoyed a mutual respect and "broth­

erly affection" that have outweighed the initial hatred

and suspicions. But Isbrand, always mocking the tradition­ al virtues, equates forgiveness, charity and friendship with weakness, indecisiveness and lack of resolve. And it

becomes clear from here on to the end of the play that the

real dramatic appeal of Death's Jest-Book depends on the

terror-ridden, wicked, and defiant character of Isbrand.

The scene ends with a final threatening farewell: "Be angry

then, and we will curse each other. But if thou goest now

to save this man, come not again for fear of me and the

paternal ghost: for when he comes to me in the night, and

cries revenge! my heart forgets that my head hath a fool's

cap on it, and dreams of daggers: come not again then!"

Wolfram exits and Isbrand delivers a short soliloquy that

suggests earlier passages in Beddoes' work that develop

the idea of the necessity of a strong man's acting alone,

the necessity of his taking on powers of creation and 112 destruction that cannot be shared or understood by ordi­ nary morta Is: I will turn my bosom now to thee, Brutus, thou saint of the avenger's order; Refresh me with thy sp irit, or pour in Thy whole great ghost. Isbrand, thou tragic fool, Cheer up i Art thou alone? Why, so should be Creators and destroyers. I'll go brood And strain my burning and distracted soul Against the naked spirit of the world, Till some portent's begotten. Act I, sc. i.

The real difference between earlier characters who aspire to be creators and destroyers and Isbrand is that Isbrand is, in fact, heartless, strong, and wise enough to manipu­ late this large group of characters to his own end. There is no weakness in his resolve. It is true that death is his in the end--it could scarcely be otherwise--but only after he brings an end to the whole chain of events that he has set in motion. Beddoes seems to have been moving gradually to the creation of such a character, and as evil as Isbrand is, it is difficult not to be fascinated by him. The second scene switches to "The African Coast: a_ woody so 1 itude by the sea, 11 wherein are hidden Duke Melveric and Sibylla, a young girl whom Melveric has rescued. A short soliloquy by the Duke praises the lovely, sleeping girl and at the same time invokes the protection of Fate who has been thus far so kindly and protective. Ziba, a trusted Egyptian servant, enters with food and relates that he has overheard the Saracens swear to discover and kill the Duke by nightfall. Such a threat is then made somewhat doubt- 113 ful when Ziba produces a bottle of wine which he stole

from an Egyptian captain who, obviously poorly protected

by his men, was slain by a lion. This kind of grotesque

situation, an element in every work of Beddoes, develops

the idea of the absurd, chaotic and unpredictable condi­

tion of man, an idea which comes to a ful1-flowering in

Death1s Jest-Book.

Sibylla now awakens from what she says was a regenera­

ting sleep and instantly praises her rescuer. We discover

that she was born in a dungeon and, until the Duke saved

her, "had never seen this earth, this heaven,/The sun, the

stars, the flowers.” In effect she is newly born, having

been taken from the dark, damp imprisonment into light,

air, and the busy world. The Duke replies that he can

receive no thanks until they are safe once more on German

shores. Surprisingly enough, she is not anxious to leave.

Although she must know that she and the Duke are hiding

from '’the savage Moslem^ rage,” she implores:

Why should we seek cruel mankind again? Nature is kinder far: and every thing That lives around us, with its pious silence, Gives me delight: the insects, and the birds That come unto our table, seeking food, The flowers, upon whose petals Night tells down Her tremulous dews, these are my dearest playmates. O let us never leave them. Act 1, sc. ii

But the Duke argues that there is a superior group of

"godliker mankind . . . whose works each day adorn and

delfy/lhe world their fathers left them," and that such 11U a lovely woman should not at once deny herself an acquain­ tance with this world, and the world an acquaintance with such beauty: "Durst thou be such a traitress to thy beauty/

As to live here unloving and unloved?" She replies that she loves the Duke. He replies with what seems rather fatherly advice, but which, we discover soon, is either deception on his part or one of those instant reversals of personality and situation which fill this scene, indeed the entire play:

Dear Maiden, thou art young. Thou must see many, and compare their merits Ere thou canst choose. Esteem and quiet friendship Oft bear Love's semblance for awhile. Act 1, sc. ii.

Sibylla claims to know the difference between love and friendship and at this point explains that more than a year past she shared her imprisonment with "a brave Saxon knight."

In short, the knight described is Wolfram. Their love was a weird mixture, says Sibylla, of pain and pleasure. He was,

A noble generous man, in whose discourse I found much pleasure: yet, when he was near me There ever was a pain which I perceived Even in the very sweetness of my comfort: My heart was never still: and many times, When he had fetched me flowers, I trembled so That oft they fell as 1 was taking them Out of his hand. When 1 would speak to him 1 heard not, and I knew not what 1 said. Yet this I thought was Love. O self deceived’. For now I can speak ail I think to thee With confidence and ease. Act I, sc. Ii.

The Duke, with a quick change of heart, swears that he loves her. In his speech to her, the Duke, anticipating one of the 115 crucial situations in the play and another quick reversal of circumstance, says that "if another being stepped be­ tween us,/And were he my best friend, I must forget/All vows, and cut his heart away from mine.” At this moment, and with a nice touch of irony, Ziba enters and announces the arrival of the knight Wolfram, the Duke’s "best friend*1 who will "step between” the ruler and his new-found love, and whose "heart will be cut away" by the love-hate of the older man.

But just now the Duke welcomes the Saxon knight as a god. The two men reveal that they made a blood pact:

Duke. At parting each of us did tear a leaf Out of a magic roll, and, robbing life Of the red juice with which she feeds our limbs, We wrote a mutual bond. Thou dost remember? Wo Ifr. And if a promise binds beyond the grave My ghost shall not forget it. There I swore That, if 1 died before thee, 1 would come With the first weed that shoots out of my grave, And bring thee tidings of our other home. Act I, sc. ii.

The two men understand that the current situation is much analogous to a death and rebirth, and they rejoice in their love for one another. Sibylla, who has recognized

Wolfram as the knight who once shared her prison cell, says in an aside, "Pray heaven, [l] be not/The angel of death for one of you." When Wolfram recognizes her, he turns to rapturous language, but then decides--much like other

Beddoesian characters--that words cannot express the inten- O sest feelings. Sibylla, after once loving Wolfram— a year ago--then denying such feelings to the Duke only moments 116 earlier, now in one of the series of reversals in this scene, proclaims her love for the young Wolfram: "O', at

thy call 1 must surrender me,/My lord, my love, my life”

Such protestations, of course, make the Duke particu­

larly unhappy about his recent rescue, and when Sibylla

goes into the tent to rest, he quickly lets Wolfram know of his love for Sibylla. The Duke accuses Wolfram of "tor- turing her soul with spells and adjurations,” and of, in some way, restricting the girl’s free will. Wolfram will not relinquish any claim he has over Sibylla and calls

the Duke an "unworthy friend.” The Duke, in a speech remi­ niscent of Isbrand’s earlier speech, says:

All things like these, Friendship, esteem sympathy, hope, faith, We need no more: away with them for ever'. Wilt follow them out of the world? Thou see’st All human things die and decay around us. 'Tis the last day for us; and we stand naked To let our cause be tried. Act I, sc. ii.

Naked here means lacking reason, distrusting all the time- honored qualities of friendship, esteem, et cetera. The word, coming in this context, suggests an inability to or­ der our universe, to direct our lives, or to predict, in

any way, the behavior of human beings. The only thing that

Wolfram and the Duke can reach some agreement about is the nature of love itself. When he speaks of Sibylla, Wolfram

says he could not forget her, since that would be a living

death: "Then were I dead,/And stripped of the human spirit's

inheritance,/The immortality, of which thy love/Gave me 117 the first sure proof." When the Duke speaks of Sibylla he confirms these remarks by Wolfram that love Is the real connection between this world and the world of the Immortal spirit: ”1 have in all the world/Little to comfort me, few that do name me/Wlth titles of affection, and but one/

Who came into my soul at its night-time,/As it hung glisten­ ing with starry thoughts/Alone over its still eternity,/

And gave it godhead."

The Duke orders Wolfram to put to sea again. Wolfram exits and in true Beddoesian fashion, the Duke is greatly revived by having resolved to kill Wolfram:

Then Amen is said Unto thy time of being in this world: Thou shalt die. Ha', the very word doth double My strength of life: the resolution leaps Into my heart divinely, as doth Mars Upon the trembling footboard of his car; Hurrying into battle wild and panting, Even as my death-dispensing thought does now. Act I, sc . 1 i .

So scene two comes to a close as does scene one, with a curse upon Wolfram, the first from his brother, the second

from a man whose life Wolfram came to save.

It is worth noting here, although it will be discussed at length later, the great number of reversals in this scene.

The Duke, who seems at first to have no particular feeling

for Sibylla, at the end of the scene loves her so much that he would kill Wolfram who, at the beginning of this scene, was the Duke's closest friend, but who, at the end, is his

greatest enemy. Sibylla some time aga loved Wolfram, but 118 has since denied such a love and turned to the Duke, only to return to Wolfram when he appears in Egypt. Such dramatic construction tends to reinforce the unpredictable and chaotic

Beddoesian world. But more of that later.

Scene three of Act I is brief, yet one again of many changes of raind, many reversals in motivations and action, many paradoxes. The seene opens with a curious dialogue

between Wolfram and Sibylla, curious primarily because of a significant change in Sibylla's attitude toward nature.

In scene two she told the Duke that she did not care to

leave their lovely habitat (see above, p. 113). But in

scene three, oddly enough, it is Sibylla whose speech

represents the ugly side of nature, while Wolfram thinks

on nature as a force of loveliness, light, beauty, color,

harmony, and safety. It represents most clearly how the

different personal attitudes toward this love affair influ­

ence the sensuous receptivity of the natural world of trees,

sun, meadows, and fireflies:

Wolfr. This is the oft-wished hour, when we together May walk upon the sea-shore: let us seek Some greensward overshadowed by the rocks. Wilt thou come forth? Even now the sun is setting In the triumphant splendour of the waves. Hear you not how they leap? Sibyl. Nay; we will watch The sun go down upon a better day: Look not on him this evening. Wo If r. Then let's wander Under the mountain's shade in the deep valley And mock the woody echoes with our songs. S1byl. That wood is dark, and all the mountain caves 119

Dreadful and black, and full of howling winds: Thither we will not wander. Wolfr. Shall we seek The green and golden meadows, and there pluck Flowers for thy couch, and shake the dew out of them? S1 by1. The snake that loves the twilight is come out, Beautl/ul, still, and deadly; and the blossoms Have shed their fairest petals in the storm Last night; the meadow's full of fear and danger. Wolfr. Ah', you will to the rocky fount, and there We' 11 see the fireflies dancing in the breeze, And the stars trembling in the trembling water. And listen to the daring nightingale Defying the old night with harmony, Sjby1. Nor that: but we will rather here remain, And earnestly converse. Act I, sc. iii.

These last few words of Sibylla indicate the anxiety of her own position and suggest a fear that Wolfram too should share. But his main thoughts are obviously of his love for the beautiful maiden; and a false security has made him, all in all, rather careless concerning his rival.

At this point Ziba enters with a draught of wine for

Wolfram which, under the circumstances, should suggest to him a certain caution. He says he will "taste it presently."

A knight now rushes in and exclaims that the Duke has been discovered again by a band of robbers. Considering his recent treatment by the Duke, Wolfram hesitates to help his former friend, but Sibylla says "Assist him; he preserved me." Another knight reports the situation worsening so

Wolfram agrees to go to his aid after first taking a draught of the wine. Ziba, now moved by what the Duke would describe as "the worm conscience," prevents Wolfram from drinking the fatal wine. When all this is revealed, Wolfram decides 120 to let the Duke take his chances with the robbers:

Wolfr. [to Ziba] Thou'rt pardoned. But for thy lord, the Saracens deal with him As he thinks fit. Wolfram can help no murderer. Act I, sc. iii.

But Sibylla wants again to turn the other cheek.

Mercyl O let me not cry out in vain: Forgive him yet. Act 1, sc. iii.

This time, however, Wolfram seems determined. But then

comes another reversal with the addition of yet another

bit of knowledge. A knight enters to report the capture

of the Duke: "They bind him to a column in the desart,/

And aim their poisoned arrows at his heart.” Wolfram again

changes his mind:

0 Melveric, why didst thou so to me? Sibylla, 1 despise this savage Duke, But thus he shall not die. No man in bonds Can be my enemy. He once was noble: Up once again, my men, and follow me. 1 bring him to thee, love, or ne’er return. Act I, sc. iii.

They all speed to the Duke’s aid as the scene closes.

Within the short space of scarcely one-hundred lines Wolfram

has changed his mind four times about whether or not to save

the Duke. Interestingly enough the changes of mind are, in

two instances, made on the basis of how the fight is going.

At first, Wolfram does not like the idea of the Duke’s

being outnumbered and overwhelmed. And the last change of

mind results from the idea of the Duke’s being bound and

shot through with arrows. Wolfram, of course, cannot

tolerate such a barbarous and cowardly act. 121

The fourth and last scene of this act takes us to the hound Duke and his captors, but not before a brief comic interlude with Mandrake and his boy who are gathering in­ gredients for a pomade that will make a man invisible. In his answer to the boy’s question, ’’Ho w shall 1 believe such things?” Mandrake replies with a mockery not so severe as that of the Duke's, but mockery nonetheless:

Doubt at thy peril, boy. This, 1 tell thee, will make the true ointment. ’Tis no great rarity. Look for a true friend, a wit who ne'er borrowed money or stole verses, a woman without envy; there are legions of such, but they have anointed their virtues with this pomatum till they disappeared. Act 1, sc. iv.

Besides providing us rather mechanically with some comic relief, the speech also reaffirms the wisdom of this zany.

For while the mockery may seem mere cynical, foolish chatter, the truth of Mandrake's remarks is borne out at the end of the act when the Duke, in a markedly dramatic scene, kneels hypocritically in prayer for the knight and former friend he has just slain. As Mandrake has implied, the real vices of mankind have been obscured by what appear to be friend­ ship, love, devotion, and honor, but what are in reality chicanery, greed, lust, hate, and betrayal. In the Beddoesian world, the veneer of civilization— that rather arbitrary social, political and moral structure--is often discarded in the conflict with personal ambition and the wildly egocentric pe rsona11ty. 122

The latter half of this last scene discovers the Duke about to be bound and slain by the Arabs. But this situa­ tion is quickly reversed when Wolfram appears and drives off or kills the Duke's captors. Wolfram once again, in an almost irrationally magnanimous gesture, says that all ill feeling should "be now forgotten and unknown to Heaven."

But the Duke, true to his former vow, will not hear of forgiveness, not so much because he is strongly determined now to have Sibylla, but because in his own eyes he is miserable for having treated Wolfram badly, only to be repeatedly forgiven:

Think'st thou I’ll live in the dread consciousness That 1 have dealt so wickedly and basely. And been of thee so like a god forgiven? No: 'tis impossible. Act 1, sc. iv.

The Duke has convinced himself that he would be a cowardly villain if he lived under such circumstances. Again we have virtue identified with a weak resolve when the Duke says to

Wolfram "Fool, would thy virtue shame and crush me down;/And make a grateful blushing bond-slave of me?/0 no'. 1 dare be wicked still: and murderer/fay thought has christened me, such 1 must remain./O curse thy meek, forgiving, childish heart,/Which doth insult me with its cowardly virtue." He strikes at Wolfram who falls dying. It must be said here that while the Duke Is obviously wicked and more than un­ grateful, there is a strength and a resolve in his charac­ ter that we do not find in Wolfram, who is foolishly 123

forgiving and not a little incautious, indicating the truth of what both Isbrand and Mandrake have said, that in the

face of selfish and wicked determination, friendship and

loyalty count for little.

While the victorious Duke is standing over the dying

Wolfram, fellow knights and Sibylla enter. She is distraught and asks Wolfram "Who did this?'1 Wolfram refuses to name his slayer and in so doing "saves" the Duke once again;

but such a refusal also allows the gnawing secretive know­

ledge to lodge uncomfortably in the Duke's heart. The

various minor characters curse the unknown murderer, and

the Duke replies: "He is cursed,/And from this moment shut

up in a hell/Far from all earthly things." Judging from

this remark, we must assume that he is quite conscious of

the wickedness of his deed and knows that he will punish

himself even if the truth is never discovered. He knows

that the "worm conscience" cannot be "trampled in the dust."

The scene and Act 1 end dramatically with two brief remarks

by a knight and the Duke:

Knight. All that liveth here, Kneel down beside the body of this knight, And swear revenge against his murderer. Duke. With all my heart. Methinks I’m of the dead, And yet 'tis right so. Pray all in silence. Act I, sc. iv.

In sharp and delightful contrast with the close of the

first act, Act II of Death1 s Jest-Book opens with a playful

and careless banter between Kate and Isbrand in a tavern in

Ancona. Isbrand is trying to get yet another flask of wine. 12k Once again we have a mockery of the serious aspects of life, but this time such commentary is motivated as much by the

love of language and wine as by a desire to produce a serious critique of the human condition. Because this is Beddoes at his playful best, it is worth quoting at some length:

Kate. Master Isbrand, the wine is sweet, but a sweet seducer. You have had three flasks, and there is morality in all trades. Isbr. You say true--I had forgot. There have you the morality. (Gives her money) Will you have history for it? Then think of that great King in Lydia, Croesus, whom they would have set on fire, but the lucky dog had seen the sun through the bottom of too many glasses so he was too wet and went out. Will you have divinity for it? There's Bacchus, in his time a clever travelling God and an arch-Tosspot. Wilt have law? Behold my Cudgel. Poetry? Then bring the fourth bottle. Kate. 'Tis true you are not what you might be, but withal, a well spoken customer, and the action of your right hand is too irresistible for us poor weak ones, so there's your new flask. Isbr. Gramercy, Hostess. This is the mystery of humanity, drank I not wine 1 were a tailor to­ morrow; next day a dog, and in a week I should have less life than a witch's broomstick. Drink­ ing hath been my education and my path of life. Small beer was my toothless infancy, the days of my childhood I passed in stout, porter comforted my years of Love, but my beard growing 1 took to sack, and now I quench the aspiration of my soul In these good wines of Hungary. And for these my merits, I hold my place at Court.— Act II, sc. i.

The conversation between Kate and Isbrand is interrupted

by the arrival of the sailors and Mandrake's boy from

Wolfram's ship. The remainder of the scene, a rather short

one, is taken up by the boy's explanation of how, during

the night's sea journey, Mandrake's bottle of lotion that 12$ would make men invisible broke and spilled over the luck­ less fool. At this point the Invisible zany "appears.”

Much consternation follows: Kate thinks that a ghost is among them (though there is no real horror here); Isbrand suspects a demon invisible to the Christian eye. Nonethe­

less, they all fall upon him and exit chasing this unseen man •

This raucous and turbulent scene in the tavern Is followed abruptly by a solemn and somber scene in "The

interior of a_ church at Ancona. The DUKE, _i_n the garb of

£ Pi 1 grim„ SIBYLLA and knlghts, assembled round the corpse

of Wo 1fram, which is lying on the bier. A short dirge ends whatever service had been held, and the Duke, after promis­

ing to build a monument to Wolfram, is anxious to get away

from the scene. He asks Sibylla to go with him and she

agrees since "My will lies there, my hope, and all my life/

Which was in this world." Unlike her predecessors Emily,

Rodolph, and Lenora, she does not weep and wail; nor does

she go mad. She stoically accepts the circumstances, assess

es them very reasonably and concludes:

And therefore you shall never see me wail, Or drop base waters of an ebbing sorrow; No wringing hands, no sighlngs, no despair, No mourning weeds will I betake me to; But keep my thought of him that Is no more, As secret as great nature keeps his soul, From all the world; and consecrate my being To that divlnest hope, which none can know of Who have not laid their dearest in the grave. Farewell, my love,--I will not say to thee Pale corpse,--we do not part for many days. 126

A little sleep, a little waking more, And then we are together out of life. Act II, sc. ii.

The Duke, alarmed by what seems to be the changing facial

expressions of the dead Wolfram (from gentle to threatening), hurries the group along: "Now then into the bustle of the world'./Wef 11 rub our cares smooth there.” But he still

intends to proceed to Silesia disguised as a pilgrim and

to have his subjects think he is yet a prisoner in Egypt.

The mourners leave Just as Mandrake passes through and, with a characteristically Elizabethan playing with words, laments his current invisible existence: "Well, what Is, is, and what is not, is not; and I am not what

1 was— for I am what I was not; 1 am no more 1, for I am no more: 1 am no matter, being out of all trouble, and

nobody at all, but poor Mandrake's essence." In short, what we have here is a most abrupt and grotesque Juxtaposing

of serious and comic attitudes toward death. And before we can get caught up in the spirit of this quick reversal

Mandrake exits and we are confronted with Isbrand, Wolfram’s

brother, who has come to mourn his brother's death as well

as to set In motion the machinery which will be nearly

everyone’s undoing. From this point on, Isbrand gradually

becomes the central figure of the drama. As part of a larger

plan, Isbrand has attendants take the body so that it may

be buried In Silesia, rather than in Ancona. As the body

is carried out Mandrake enters again, and Isbrand forces him 127 to take the place of the removed corpse. The agreement

Is that the invisible man covered by a pall can run awayt if he cares to, when he gets to the graveyard. Mandrake is borne out and Isbrand is left with his friend Siegfried to vow revenge:

Away, we must be doing in Munsterberg; the Gover­ nor is there, and those two Duke’s sons who shall perish for his sake. I bury my brother there: he is an earthquake-seed, and will whisper now, thunder shall speak the word hereafter: and it shall be the thunder of the wheels of a war- chariot in which 1 shall triumph like Jupiter In my fool’s cap, to fetch the Duke and his sons to Hell, and then my bells will ring mer­ rily, and 1 shall jest more merrily than now: for I shall be Death the Court-fool. Act II, sc. ii.

The instant they exit, Mandrake, who has obviously run away from his latest task, runs across the stage: "Who’ll

run a race with a ghost? Now, Musicians, strike up Death's

Hornpipe, for I dance alone through the world like a Jack o’Lanthorn." On this weird note, the scene ends.

In strong contrast to the dark and gloomy setting of scene two, the third scene opens in a spacious "ha11 in the castle of Munsterberg in the town of Grussau in Siles la."

Athulf, one of Duke Melveric's sons, describes the festi­ vities on this tourney day: colorful, lively, "knights

shut in steel," "soul-eyed maidens"; "'twas a human river,/

Brimful and beating as if the great god,/Who lay beneath

it, would arise." Adalmar, Athulf1s brother, comes near and is described by Athulf as "A mere savage man,/Made for

the monstrous times, but left out then,/Born by mistake 128 with us." Such an opinion, as it turns out, is decidely unfair to Adalmar, but It _i_s true that the two brothers are quite different human beings. At this moment in the play there is an important scene between Isbrand and a

"Lady." She sees Isbrand carrying a weapon and asks, "What,

Isbrand, thou a soidier7 Fie upon thee'./is this a weapon for a fool?" In the dialogue that follows, logic and lan­ guage are turned topsy-turvy in order to provide a sharp and bitter satire on mankind in general and court-life in particular. The scene serves, also to indicate Isbrand's strengthening resolve to grab for power and to revenge his brother’s and father’s death. Isbrand begins by answering the lady thus:

Isbr. Madam, 1 pray thee pardon us. The fair have wrested the tongue from us, and we must give our speeches a sting of some metal-- steel or gold. And 1 beseech thee, lady, call me fool no longer: I grow old, and In old age you know what men become. We are at court, and there it were a sin to call a thing by its right name: therefore call me a fool no longer, for my wisdom is on the wane, and I am almost as sententious as the governor. The Lady. Excellent: wilt thou become court- confessor? Isbr. Aye, if thou wilt begin with thy secrets, lady. But my fair mistress, and you, noble brethen, 1 pray you gather around me. I will now speak a word in earnest, and hereafter jest with you no more: for I lay down my profes­ sion of folly. Why should I wear bells to ring the changes of your follies on? Doth the besonneted moon wear bells, she that is the parasite and zany of the stars, and your queen, ye apes of madness? As I live I grow ashamed of the duality of my legs, for they and the ap­ parel, forked or furbelowed, upon them constitute humanity; the brain no longer; and I wish I were an honest fellow of four shins when I look into 129

the note-book of your absurditie. I will abdicate. The Lady. Brave', but how dispose of your domi­ nions, most magnanimous zany? Isbr. My heirs at law are manifold. Yonder minister shall have my jacket; he needs many colours for his deeds. You shall inherit my man­ tle; for your sins, {be it whispered,) chatter with the teeth for cold: and charity, which should be their greatcoat, you have not in the heart. The Lady. Gramercy: but may I not beg your coxcomb for a friend? Isbr. The brothers have an equal claim to that crest: they may tilt for it. But now for my crown. O cap and bells, ye eternal emblems, hieroglyphics of man's supreme right in nature; 0 ye, that only fall on the deserving, while oak, palm, laurel, and bay rankle on their foreheads, whose deserts are oft more payable at the other extremity: who shall be honoured with you? Come candidates, the cap and bells are emp­ ty. The Lady. Those you should send to England, for the Sad poets and the critics who praise them. Isbr. Albeit worthy, those merry men cannot this once obtain the prize. I will yield Death the crown of folly. He hath no hair, and in this weather might catch cold and die: besides he has killed the best knight 1 knew, Sir Wol­ fram, and so is doubly deserving. Let him wear the cap, let him toll the bells; he shall be our new court-fool: and, when the world is old and dead, the thin wit shall find the angel's record of man’s works and deeds, and write with a lip- less grin on the innocent first page for a title, 'Here begins Death’s jest-book'.--There, you have my testament: henceforth speak solemnly to me, and you shall have a measured answer from me, who have relapsed into courtly wisdom. Act II, sc. i i i.

Aside from its satirical intent and an indication of Isbrand's strengthening resolve, the passage is re­ markable for its mixture of lament and spoof. With very amusing language Beddoes has provided us with a lamentable characterization of mankind, and it is a characterization that clearly derives from Beddoes' earlier work and is 130 confirmed forcefully in Death1 s Jest-Book. From Isbrand's-- and we strongly suspect, Beddoes1— point of view, the Fool provides us with the truth, with wisdom. Most men, of course, do not recognize it as such for, having lived in the world a long time, they have relinquished any pretense to honesty in deed and thought. So the Fool's insights appear as silly or mad against the background of "normal circumstances,” i.e. deceit, foppery, vanity, sententious­ ness, self-indulgence. The lamentation for the cond11ion humalne is carried further by Isbrand when he "grow[s ] ashamed of the duality of my legs.” He prefers "the honest fellow of four shins," the lower animals. Following his catalogue of the kinds of deception men fall prey to, he concludes only one thing, and that is that the greatest

Fool of all, the greatest jester will prove to be Death himself. It is he who, at the beginning of time, began his cruel Joke on human-kind. This is by far the strongest sustained statement we find in Beddoes regarding the weak­ ness, the meanness, the servileness of human-kind--and all offered up as a Fool's humor.

Following closely this conversation between Isbrand and the lady is a long conversation between the two brothers,

Athulf and Adalmar. This exchange, together with the one we have just looked at, constitutes the basis for nearly everything that happens from here to the end of the drama.

For the bitter love rivalry that develops between the two 131 brothers facilitates Isbrand’s plans for revenge and usur­ pation of the political power which, ironically and as far as we know, is rightfully his. The play, from this point

on, becomes more structurally coherent, more tightly or­

ganized. Up to this point the emphases have shifted here

and there, from Isbrand and Wolfram, to the Duke and Wolfram,

to Athulf and Adalmar. But from now on, the emphasis is

clearly on Isbrand. In a real sense, he emerges to control

and to direct the weakness of the other characters to

his end.

Athulf begins by taunting Adalmar--ha1f in fun, half

seriously--about knowing little of love. In so doing,

Athulf reveals that he himself flits from one love to another:

"each spring of mine/He sends me a new arrow, thank the boy."

Adalmar, admitting that he is not nearly so "adept in these

chamber passions," now proclaims that, although he may not

have known the meaning of love, he does now. Interestingly,

he speaks of love's influence in much the same way as Wolfram

and the Duke:

1 never knew before The meaning of this love. But one has taught me, It is a heaven wandering among men, The spirit of gone Eden haunting earth. Life's joys, death's pangs are viewless from its bosom, Which they who keep are gods; there's no paradise, There is no heaven, no angels, no blessed spirits No souls, or they have no eternity, If this be not a part of them. Act II, sc. iii.

Athulf admits that he too has very recently discovered a

love different from all others he has known, and he describes 132

that love In more human terms, in more concrete detail than

Adalmar would use. The latter rebukes his brother for

speaking so irreverently of women and love. Then Athulf

asks, "What is more worthy/Than the delight of youth, being

so rare,/Precious, short-lived, and irrecoverable?" The

short dialogue that follows this makes clear another marked

distinction between the two brothers, and indicates that

Adalmar is more capable than his brother of separating

the Important from the trivial,

Adalm. When you do mention that adored land, Which gives you life, pride, and security, And holy rights of freedom; or in the praise Of those great virtues and heroic men, That glorify the earth and give it beams, Then to be lifted by the like devotion Would not disgrace God's angels, Athulf. Well, sir, laud, Worship, and swear by them, your native country And virtues past; a phantom and a corpse: Such airy stuff may please you. My desires Are hot and hungry; they will have their fill Of living dalliance, gazes, and lip-touches, Or swallow up their lord.

Adalm- So be it then'. But mark me, 1 spoke not from a cold unnatural spirit, Barren of tenderness. 1 feel and know Of woman’s dignity: how it doth merit Our total being, has all mine this moment: But they should share with us our level lives: Moments there are, and one is now at hand, Too high for them. When all the world Is stirred By some preluding whisper of that trumpet, Which shall awake the dead, to do great things, Then the sublimity of my affection, The very height of my beloved, shows me How far above her 's glory. When you’ve earned This knowledge, tell me: 1 will say, you love As a man should. Act II, sc. iii. 133 One implication of this exchange is that Athulf has no

sense of proportion or order, that his youthful and unrea­

sonable lust is carrying him along. Like others of Beddoes*

characters he scarcely looks to the past, nor to the future;

he is primarily concerned with self and the gratification

of his personal desires. Adalmar, on the other hand, would

concentrate on the "holy rights of freedom" or the "great

virtues and heroic men,/That glorify the earth and give

it beams." He seems to understand his own position in

relation to other men in a way that Athulf does not. There

is an extension of himself into the affairs of the world,

the understanding of which makes him, in his own eyes,

truly worthy of woman's love.

As Fate and Beddoes would have it, the two brothers

have fallen in love with the same woman. After Adalmar leaves,

Athulf, in a brief soliloquy, is much disquieted:

By heavens, *tis Amala, Amala only, that he so can love. There? by her side? in conference*, at smiles l Then I am born to be a fratricide. 1 feel as 1 were killing him. Tush, tush; A phantom of my passion*. But, if true-- What? What, my heart? A strangely-quiet thought, That will not be pronounced, doth answer me. Act 11, sc. iii.

As Athulf exits, Thorwald enters on his way to the

lists and encounters Duke Melveric yet in his pilgrim's

disguise. The scene is important for three reasons. First,

it allows Melveric to test the loyalty of Thorwald, the

governor during the Duke's three-year absence. Secondly, It gives us an additional insight into the Duke's person­ ality. And last, when the Duke is certain he can trust

Thorwald, he reveals who he is and together they begin to plan a way to force the hand of the alleged conspira- tors--the Duke's two sons, Athulf and Adalmar. In the soliloquy that ends this scene, the Duke makes clear the various ideas that are tearing at his heart and soul. It is significant here--and this fact ie often overlooked by the critics--that In the last few lines, he gives the bene­ fit of the doubt to his sons.

Rebellion, treason, parricidal daggers'. This Is the bark of the court dogs, that come Welcoming home their master. My sons too, Even my sons'. O not sons, but contracts, Between my lust and a destroying fiend, Written in rny dearest blood, whose date run out, They are become death-warrants. 0 that the twenty coming years were over'. Then should I be at rest, where ruined arches Shut out the troublesome unghostly day; And idlers might be sitting on my tomb, Telling how 1 did die. How shall I die? Fighting my sons for power; or of dotage, Sleeping in purple pressed from filial veins; And let my epitaph be, 'Here lies he, Who murdered his two children?' Hence cursed thought 1 will enquire the purpose of their plot: There may be good in it, and, If there be, I'll be a traitor too. Act 11, sc. iii

By the end of this scene, then, nearly every main character

has given thoughts to murder as the solution to his parti­

cular situation. The sons must kill the father if they

are to usurp power. Athulf has thoughts of killing Adalmar

for the love of Amala. The Duke has thoughts of killing

his own sons. And Isbrand has thoughts of killing all of 135 them in order to gain the Dukedom and his revenge for the deaths of his brother and father.

Such is the state of affairs at the beginning of the fourth scene, a scene of few persons but much dialogue.

It is in this scene that Isbrand makes known his strong desire to usurp the political power. In a speech much

reminiscent of Leopold in The Improvlsatore, Isbrand re­ veals his gradually strengthening, determined, and rather mad character:

Now see you how this dragon-egg of ours Swells with its ripefling plot? Methlnks I heare Snaky rebellion turning restless in it, And with its horny jaws scraping away The shell that hides It. All is ready now: 1 hold the latch-string of a new world's wicket; One pull--and it rolls in. Bid all our friends Meet in that ruinous churchyard once again, By moonrlse; until then I'll hide myself; For these sweet thoughts rise dimpling to my lips, And break the dark stagnation of my features, Like sugar melting in a glass of poison. To-morrow, Siegfried, shalt thou see me sitting One of the drivers of this racing earth, With Grussau's reins between my fingers. Hal Never since Hell laughed at the church, blood-drunken From rack and wheel, has there been joy so mad As that which stings my marrow now. Act II, sc. iv.

Unlike the supernatural Leopold, Isbrand is earthbound;

yet the defiance, the ambiguity of his motive, his assump­

tion of extraordinary human powers make Isbrand a terres­

trial brother of his predecessor. At first, there seems

to be nothing but personal lust for power that spurs Isbrand

on: there is certainly no social conscience working here;

there are no accusations of corrupt government or of an 136 unhappy populace. But as we probe Death's Jest-Book, we discover that Isbrand's hatred for the Duke is the fundamen­

tal motive for his proposed action, that to take away the

Duke's political power would be, for Isbrand, the ultimate

revenge. Isbrand, in effect, would deprive the Duke of what the Duke deprived Wolfram and Isbrand of. While there

seems a kind of Old-Testament justice in such revenge,

there is no attempt to assess this change of government in

terms of the social upheaval, political chaos, or moral

unrest that will obviously result. It is all a very per­

sonal battle between two houses with little regard for

ordinary citizens whose destinies are, though in an Imper­

sonal way, inextricably tied up with the principal actors.

Isbrand at this moment relates to Siegfried his sus­

picions about his brother's death. Rightly, he suspects

the Duke. And although he does not have proof of this,

he sets his plan of revenge In motion based on this assump­

tion. Isbrand now relates how he substituted Wolfram’s

body for that of the Duke’s wife, so that "At doomsday's

dawning shall the ducal cut-throat/Wake by a tomb-fellow

he little dreamt of.fl Siegfried exits with the understand­

ing that he and the other fellow-conspirators will meet

with Isbrand in the ruinous churchyard to plot their suc­

ceeding moves. Isbrand detects the approach of Athulf and,

after the following short speech, hides for a moment: 137 Isbr. There is a passion L1ght ing his cheek, as red as brother’s hate: Shivering each other, and their ruins be My step into a princedom. Act II, sc. iv.

In a twenty-line soliloquy Athulf laments the loss of Amala.

In characteristically Beddoesian terminology Athulf suggests the divinity of woman's love: "Thou hast slain/The love of

thee, that lived in my soul's palace/And made it holy." And again: "Now farewell, my love;/For thy rare sake I would have been a man/Onc story under God," The overall impli­ cation is that woman’s divinity would raise man to her.

But of course— and this is also typical of Beddoes--there will be no ultimate union of this woman with anyone. Using yet another standard technique, Beddoes has Athulf plead

for voluptuous Sin to seize upon him. The unrequited lover

resigns his spirit to Sin, the "paramour of Hell's fire- crowned king." He vows to become the devil's "knight and

Hell's saint for evermore." Much in the way that the medieval knight might serve his lord or lady in the name of honor or justice, Athulf dedicates his services to the dark forces of sin, the devil and hell.

Isbrand, not a man to miss an opportunity, overhears

these thoughts and decides to add fuel to the flames of hatred. In conniving to direct the lives of others Isbrand has no equal. There is a mysterious quality In his person­

ality which Athulf attests to in this way: 138

Come to me. Thou 'rt a man 1 must know more of. There is something in thee, The deeper one doth venture in thy being, That drags us on and down. What dost thou lead to? Art thou a current to some unknown sea Islanded richly, full of syren songs And unknown bliss? Art thou the snaky opening Of a dark cavern, where one may converse With night's dear spirits? If thou'rt one of these Let me descend thee. Act II, sc. iv.

Of course, as the court fool, a role which he has forsaken,

Isbrand had made a way of life out of deception, out of turning phrases, out of seeming, so that knowing him person­ ally would be extremely difficult. We discover that the mask of the court Jester covered a multitude of frustrations, long-harbored hatreds, and dark and grandiose secrets. His evil intent goes not unnoticed by Athulf who calls Isbrand

"a plotter, a po 1 i t ic ian. " The unpredictable prince asks

Isbrand off-handedly if he would turn away a man who asked to be part of any kind of evil plot. Isbrand, not to betray himself nor his friends, says that "1 will not be known before my hour." He impresses upon Athulf the need for deeds more than thoughts. Athulf explains that the loss of his love, Amala, has rendered life pointless and that ’’The hourly need,/And the base bodily cravings, must be now/The aim of this deserted human engine." Isbrand here contrasts the harm to the body with the harm done to a man's soul:

If you would wound your foe, Get swords that pierce the mind: a bodily slice Is cured by surgeon's butter: let true hate Leap the flesh wall, or fling his fiery deeds Into the soul. Act II, sc. iv. 139 Here it is worth noting that Isbrand is a master at following his own advice. His path to the Dukedom has up until this point been one of psychological warfare. He understands perfectly how to take advantage of another man’s weakness, how to instill doubt and suspicion, and how to get much of his way to the throne cleared by setting brother against brother, friend against friend. He inflames Athulf by telling him to let Adalmar go ahead with the marriage to

Amala, after which Isbrand and Athulf will act against him.

The thought of such a marriage so angers Athulf that he departs, leaving the last lines of the scene and act to the wild, powerful, demon-ridden plotter:

Then go where Pride and Madness carry thee: And let that feasted fatness pine and shrink, Till thy ghost's pinched in the tight love-lean body, I see his life, as in a map of rivers, Through shallows, over rocks, breaking its way, Until it meet his brother's, and with that Wrestle and tumble o'er a perilous rock, Bare as Death's shoulder: one of them is lost, And a dark haunted flood creeps deadly on Into the wailing Styx, Poor Amala 1 A thorny rose thy life is, plucked in the dew, And pitilessly woven with these snakes Into a garland for the King of the grave. Act 11, sc. iv.

Act 111 opens in an apartment in the ducal palace where Thorwald and the Duke are discussing the marriage of Amala and Adalmar which is to take place the following day. The Duke then reveals that he has made contact with the leaders of the rebellion and intends to meet with them tonight. The other point in this conversation concerns

Sibylla who, broken-hearted, lives now in seclusion li^O attended by Amala. Her beauty again is described as heaven­ ly: Thorw. Methinks she's too unearthly beautiful Old as i am, 1 cannot look at her, And hear her voice, that touches the heart's core, without a dread that she will fade each instant. There's too much heaven In her: oft It rises, And, pouring out about the lovely earth, Almost dissolves it. She is tender too; And melancholy is the sweet pale smile, With which she gently doth reproach her fortune. Act 111, sc. I.

For some reason or other, the Duke now turns over his man

Ziba to be of whatever use he may be to Thorwald. The

Egyptian Is held to be a kind of sorcerer or alchemist:

He hath skill in language; And knowledge is in him root., flower, and fruit, A palm with winged imagination in it, Whose roots stretch even underneath the grave, And on them hangs a lamp of magic science In his soul's deepest mine, where folded thoughts Lie sleeping on the tombs of magi dead; So said his master when he parted with him. Act III, sc. i.

When Thorwald and Ziba exit, the Duke reminisces a little about his former love for Sibylla, but puts it from his mind when he thinks on the larger matters of state, i.e. the coming rebellion. We must remember here that the whole

idea of the rebellion is extremely vague and is never made clear, but here I take it to refer to the sons' rebellion against the father. Just why they are rebelling is never clarified. Nonetheless the Duke takes strength from thinking on the revolt: "Courage heart, cheer up:/who should be happier than a secret villain?" On this note of expectation, the scene closes. 11*1 The next scene, one between Amala and Sibyl’a, Is extremely brief (twenty-five lines). Sibylla presents

Amala with a flower in honor of her approaching marriage to Adalmar, a union not altogether to Amala's liking:

0 yes: brave, honourable is my bridegroom, But somewhat cold perhaps. If his wild brother Had but more constancy and less insolence In lave, he were a man much to my heart. But, as it is, 1 must, 1 will be happy; And Adalmar deserves that 1 should love him. Act 111, sc. i.

This extremely brief, relatively simple encounter between Sibylla and Amala precedes the longest and the most complex scene in the play, one which takes place in

’’The ruins of a_ spacious Gothic Cathedral and churchyard.

On the cloister wal1 the Dance of Death is painted. The sepulchre of the Dukes wi th massy carved foId ing doors,

moonllflht.” This gloomy scene is introduced by

Mandrake who, apparently, is invisible no longer. He en­ gages in some very amusing chatter about death: it is a

”take-in,” a way of avoiding taxes and reviewers, a ”ridi- culous game at hide and seek.” He suspects that the whole

idea of death, and, implicitly, the attitudes surrounding it, constitute a hoax perpetrated by doctors and undertakers

”whose invention the whole most extravagant idea seems to be.” At the end of this soliloquy he hears people coming and goes to hide in the sepulchre. Isbrand and Siegfried enter to await the other conspirators. Isbrand reminds us that It is In this church that the body of the Duke*s wife 1 k2 was switched with that of Wolfram's, Having at some point before Act 111, sc, i, learned of the approaching rebellion-,

the disguised Duke enters, followed shortly by the remain­

ing conspirators, including Adalmar, the Duke's son. As far as we know, the revolution is to be as bloodless as possible, followed by the creation of a new government,

the plans of which, ironically, have been drawn up by the

"unknown pilgrim," i.e. the Duke himself. Adalmar, rightly

suspicious of any stranger in the midst of such a plot, asks Isbrand if he has warrant for trusting the pilgrim.

Isbrand answers that he has, and Adalmar does not press him for the reasons. Rather he asks Isbrand about the

citizenry: "How are the citizens? You feasted them these

three days." Isbrand answers:

And have them by the heart for 1t. 'Neath Grussau's tiles sleep none, whose deepest bosom My fathom hath not measured; none, whose thoughts I have not made a map of. In the depth And labyrinthine home of the still soul, Where the seen thing is imaged, and the whisper Joints the expecting spirit, my spies, which are Suspicion's creeping words, have stolen in, And, with their eyed feelers, touched and sounded The little hiding holes of cunning thought, And each dark crack in which a reptile purpose Hangs in its chrysalis unripe for birth. All of each heart 1 know. Act 111, sc. iii

There is here implied a self-confidence to a fault, an

intimate knowledge of that unfathomable creation--the mind;

and an ability to predict and, hence, to order the lives of

the people who make up the dukedom. Part of the irony at

this point is that the person whom Isbrand has misjudged the most and of whom he Is most confident (i.e. the dis­ guised Duke) is the one who has "framed'’ the new state.

Isbrand, with his ego-maniacal confidence, boasts "All of each heart I know." Of course, implicit in such braggadocio is his regard, or lack of it, for the will of the people. His own strong ambition feeds his spiteful, greedy, and revengeful action and moves him, though unbe­ knownst to himself, step by step to his own and others' destruct ion.

The Duke— a base man though he may be--warns the young firebrand about such proud assumptions, telling him that, in effect, "you claim to know more than you can know"

O perilous boast 1 Fathom the wavy caverns of all stars, Know every side of every sand in earth, And hold in little all the lore of man, As a dew’s drop doth miniature the sun: But never hope to learn the alphabet, In which the hieroglyphic human soul More changeably is painted than the rainbow Upon the cloudy pages of a shower, Whose thunderous hinges a wild wind doth turn. Know all of each1, when each doth shift his thought More often in a minute, than the air Dust on a summer path. Act 111, sc. iii.

Isbrand, then, has assumed for himself the bearing, the knowledge, and the instincts of the gods. Using his skill with language and his determination to revenge Wolfram and his father, he has set about to direct men's lives.

He sees himself thus: "For Isbrand is the handle of the chisels/which Fate, the turner of men’s lives, doth use/

Upon the wheeling world." He seems to himself an extension Ikk of an Ideal, of a primordial, shaping force, unhampered by the usual human restrictions. The Duke, on the other hand, drawing on experience and the knowledge born of woe recognizes that such ambition and personal desire must be tempered by the knowledge of one's own limitations, limi­ tations which obscure our knowledge of other men and which prohibit certain prophecy.

After a few words with a fellow conspirator, Mario, all exit except the Duke who, in an especially curious

reversal of attitude, decides to exhume his wife's remains and flee the country. His spirit, in this speech, seems

genuinely broken; yet only minutes earlier his resolve to

suppress or control the pending revolt was notably strong.

The next seventy-five lines constitude a conversation be­

tween Thorwald, recently entered,and the Duke about the

Duke's late wife. Thorwald attempts to prevent the Duke

from disturbing his much-beloved wife, for such disturbance

"led never yet to good." The Duke curses the human's mne­ monic power, curses the power to remember the "gracious

image." The pitiful plight of this murderous Duke is

emphasized here by his calling attention to the fact that

the Duchess had been nothing to millions, but had been,

to him, everything. The Duke's attitude is contrasted

strongly with that of Thorwald who urges the present on

the Duke: Let the past be past, And Lethe freeze unwept on over it. What is, be patient with; and, with what shall be Silence the body-bursting spirit's yearnings. Thou say'st that, when she died, that day was spilt All beauty flesh could hold; that day went down An oversouled creation. The time comes When thou shalt find again thy blessed love, Pure from all earth, and with usury Of her heaven-hoarded charms. Act 111, sc. iii.

The Duke berates Thorwald for speaking in abstract

terms of his wife and explains how he came to know the

inner loveliness of this woman through knowing her lovely outward appearance:

Fool, thou say'st a lesson Out of some philosophic pedant's book. 1 loved no desolate soul: she was a woman, Whose spirit I knew only through those limbs, Those tender members thou dost dare despise; By whose exhaustless beauty, infinite love, Trackless expression only, I did learn That there was aught yet viewless and eternal; Since they could come from such alone. Where is she? Where shall I ever see her as she was? With the sweet smile, she smiled only on me; With those eyes full of thoughts, none else could see? Where shall 1 meet that brow and lip with mine? Hence with thy shadows'. But her warm fair body, Where's that? There, mouldered to the dust. Old man If thou dost dare to mock my ears again With thy ridiculous, ghostly consolation, I'll send thee to the blessings thou dost speak of. Act III, sc. iii.

Yet Thorwald suspects that the Duke's desire to exhume his

wife and leave the country "is either madness,/Or a sure

cause of it." Finding that he cannot persuade the Duke,

he retires and leaves Melveric with Ziba. At this point

we have an interruption by "ISBRAND fo1 lowed by SIEGFRIED

wi th wine, etc." In contrast with the melancholy and anger 11+6 of the Duke and Thorwald moments before, this scene will be light and mocking conversation and song, Isbrand, who takes strength from the night, calls for a song. But when all decline to sing, Isbrand says that "you shall have a ballad of my working,11

S iegf r. How? do you rhyme too? Isbr. Sometimes, in lei2ure moments And a romantic humour; this 1 made One night a-strewing poison for the rats In the kitchen corner. Duke. And what's your tune 7 Isbr. What is the night-bird’s tune, wherewith she startles The bee out of his dream and the true lover, And both In the still moonshine turn and kiss The flowery bosoms where they rest, and murmuring Sleep smiling and more happily again? What is the lobster's tune when he is boiled7 I hate your ballads that are made to come Round like a squirrel's cage, and round again. We nightingales sing boldly from our hearts: So listen to us.

The song that Isbrand sings is a satirical spoof of the ballad and at the same time a comment on the central theme of the play. It is one of Beddoes' finest pieces of verse and deserves quoting in full:

Squats on a toad-stool under a tree A bodiless childfull of life in the gloom, Crying with frog voice, ’What shall I be? Poor unborn ghost, for my mother killed me Scarcely alive In her wicked womb. What shall I be? shall 1 creep to the egg That's cracking asunder yonder by Nile, And with eighteen toes, And a snuff-taking nose, Make an Egyptian crocodile? Sing, "Catch a mummy by the leg And crunch him with an upper Jaw, Wagging tail and clenching claw; Take a bill-full from my craw, Neighbour raven, caw, C caw, Grunt, my crocky, pretty maw'. And give a paw." 1U7 ’Swine, shall 1 be one? ’Tis a dear dog; But for a smile, and kiss, and pout, I much prefer your black-lipped snout, Little, gruntless, fairy hog, Godson of the hawthorn hedge. For, when Ringwood snuffs me out, And 'gins my tender paunch to grapple, Sing, "’Twist your ancles visage wedge, And roll up like an apple."

•Serpent Lucifer, how do you do? Of your worms and your snakes I'd be one or two For in this dear planet of wool and of leather 'Tis pleasant to need no shirt, breeches or shoe, And have arm, leg, and belly together. Then aches your head, or are you lazy? Sing, "Round your neck your belly wrap, Any bee and daisy."

'I'll not be a fool, like the nightingale Who sits up all midnight without any ale, Making a noise with his nose; Nor a camel, although 'tis a beautiful back; Nor a duck, notwithstanding the music of quack And the webby, mud-patting toes. I’ll be a new bird with the head of an ass, Two pigs' feet, two men’s feet, and two of a hen; Devil-winged; dragon-bellied; grave-jawed, because grass Is a beard that's soon shaved, and grows seldom aga in Before it is summer; so cow all the rest; The new Dodo is finished. O', come to my nest 1 Act 111, sc. i i i.

Obviously this song is not a typical ballad. In fact, it Is a curious work no matter what kind of song one might call It. It is not the kind of verse form that would be easily passed from generation to generation. The rhythms and the rhymes, while perfectly appropriate to the song itself, are very irregular when compared to the more fami­ liar ballad stanzas. Nor would the various refrains urge memory or repetition. The language, anything but plain and formulaic, is calculatedly grotesque, and moves far 11*8 away from the small stock of epithets and adjectives that often serves all the ballads in a given language. When

Isbrand finishes the song, his comrades applaud him. Then-- perhaps with the verses of Letitia Landon and Thomas Campbell

in mind--Beddoes has Isbrand say: "I fear you flatter; 'tis perhaps a little/Too sweet and tender, but that is the fashion; Besides my failing is too much sentiment."^ Beddoes'

friend Procter, upon reading the song, was appalled, but

Beddoes, identifying himself with Isbrand, saw the song as

essential to the piece: "[Procter] has also as 'absolutely objectionable' anathematized Squats on a toadstool, with

its crocodile,--which I regard as almost necessary to the

vitality of the piece. . . . If a majority decide against

it, I am probably wrong. If you say it is nonsense--! and

Isbrand reply that we meant it to be so: and what were a

Fool's Trag. without a tolerable portion of nonsense. 1

thought it consistent with the character and the scene.

Aside from the obvious comic relief provided by the

song, "Squats" also represents once again Isbrand's ability

to state a serious thesis in essentially comic language.

The lilting, Jocular quality of the verse, the strong and

ugly rhymes (claw, craw, caw, maw; back, quack; pout, snout),

the various subjects (a "gruntless, fairy hog"; a "frog

voice"; a "duck" and his "mud-patting toes")--all contri­

bute to the essentially comic character of the song. But

finally, and with echoes of the earlier comic prose speech 11*9 of Isbrand's (Act II, sc. iii), the song is an ironic lament on the nature of choice. Once again we have the idea of conception and birth alluded to as wicked. We have the

"bodiless childfull of life in the gloom" deciding its own fate. Curiously the being never considers becoming human.

A crocodile perhaps. Even a swine. Or a worm. Or a night­ ingale. But in the end the concoction is, of course, a grotesque configuration of parts. The being has indeed chosen. And the result is a hideous combination of cow, ass, pig, chicken, and man.

To return to the drama, the conversation between these conspirators now turns, but lightly, to the subject of death and ghosts, but an approaching rain cloud drives all but

Ziba and the Duke away. Ziba swears that, with the aid of his occult powers, he can raise the dead. He has, of course, caught the Duke at a bad moment: Melveric is distraught, anxious, confused, and in no mood for Arabian chicanery.

But Ziba swears he can raise the Duke's dead wife, asking,

too, "Wilt thou submit unmurmuring to all evils,/Which this

recall to a forgotten being/May cause to thee and thine7"

The Duke replies, "With all my soul,/So I may take the good."

Trusting rather desperately in the incantations of the seer,

the Duke is tense and frightened: "Thou human murder time of night,/What has thou done? . . . O come to me/Thou dear

departed spirit of my wife;/And, surely as 1 clasp thee once

again,/Thou shalt not die without me." This serious scene is l£0

shattered, not by the appearance of the duchess’ ghost,

but by Mandrake who has been awakened by the noise from his hiding place in the sepulchre. His words grotesquely

destroy the dramatic moment that had been building:

A poor ghost of one Homunculus Mandrake, Apothe­ cary, often by the boys in the street, Monkey Drake, at your service. Excuse my disorder. And, con­ jurer, I'll give you a little bit of advice: the next time den’t bait your ghost-trap with bombast and doggrell, but good beef; we live poorly in the dead line: and so I'll promise you, you may catch as many ghosts, if they are of one mind with my stomach, in a night in this churchyard, as rats in a granary. Act 111, sc. iii.

The Duke thinking he is the victim of a pre-arranged joke,

angrily dismisses Ziba. Alone, he is suddenly aware of

a ghostly silence. And when we least expect It, the ghost

of Wolfram appears. Instead of fearing the ghost, the Duke

unleashes the most abusive, hate-ridden language:

Lie of my eyes, begone1. Are thou not dead? Are not the worms, that ate thy marrow, dead? What dost here, thou wretched goblin fool? Think*st thou, I fear thee? Thou man-mocking air, Thou are not truer than a mirror’s image, Nor half so lasting. Back again to coffin, Thou baffled idiot spectre, or haunt cradles: Or stay, and i’ll laugh at thee. Guard thyself, If thou pretendest life. Act III, sc. iii.

Wolfram, this time at a distinct advantage, keeps quite calm:

Thou, old man Art helpless against me. 1 shall not harm thee; So lead me home. 1 am not used to sunlight, And morn's a-breaking. Ac t III, sc. iii.

In a mood of quiet resignation now, the Duke ends this scene

and act: l£l

Then there is rebellion Against all kings, even Death, Murder's worn out And full ©f holes; I'll never make 't the prison, Of what I hate, again. Come with me, spectre; If thou wilt live against the body's laws, Thou murderer of Nature, it shall be A question, which haunts which, while thou doest last. Se come with me. Act III, sc. iii.

Together these beings from two worlds exit--no fear, no horror, no anger.

The fourth act opens in an apartment in the Governor's palace. The Duke, while waiting for Thorwald to appear, laments the fact that he is still alive. Luckless, he says, is the man who has avoided the bodkin's point and is forced into a pitiful security while waiting for death to over­ take him. To a man faced with such a series of recent set­ backs, despair and an accompanying distortion of reality are only natural: MMethinks/The look of the world's a lie, a face made up/O'er graves and fiery depths; and nothing's true/But what is horrible.M Thorwald enters and breaks off this lamentation. Immediately Wolfrfun, too, appears to the Duke who Implores him to make himself invisible to everyone else. Wolfram exits. Isbrand, Siegfried and

Adalmar enter and speak happily of the coming rebellion.

The Duke suggests that they fall upon the powerful politi­ cal figures--those that they are revolting against--at

Adalmar's wedding feast where they will be all gathered together. We must remember that the whole idea of the rebellion is extremely vague, even as to who is rebelling 152 against whom. The really important idea through this seems

to be that, unbeknownst to any of the others, Isbrand in­

tends to betray any kind of rebellion in order to serve his own personal end. At this moment, however, he turns

the conversation away from revolution to love. He claims

that Sibylla has recently looked on him with some favor and asks if the present company thinks it would be a good match. All agree that no match could be worse. As Isbrand

and Siegfried leave the scene, he swears to wed the lovely

Egyptian girl. Adalmar and the Duke--I.e. father and son—

remain. The son, a youthful idealist, wishes that the

rebellion were over:

Would that it all were over, and well over*. Suspicions flash upon me here and there: But we're in the mid ocean without compass, Winds wild, and billows rolling us away: Onwards with hope 1 Act IV, sc. 1.

The Duke, much like his Beddoesian predecessors, mocks this hope: "Of what? Youth, is It possible/That thou art toiling

here for liberty,/And others' welfare, and such virtuous

shadows/As philosophic fools and beggars raise/Out of the world that's gone?" Adalmar replies that It is his manner

To do what's right and good." The Duke spurns such devotion

to "virtuous shadows" and, mocking all royal prerogatives,

proposes that Adalmar take a very materialistic attitude

toward his royal station in life:

Thou'rt a strange prince. Why all the world, except some fifty lean ones, Would in your place and at your ardent years, 153 Seek the delight that lies in woman's limbs And mountain-covering grapes. What's t© be royal Unless you pick those girls, whose cheeks you fancy, As one would cowslips? And see hills and valleys Mantled in autumn with the snaky plant, Whose juice is the right madness, the best heaven? Have men, and beasts, and woods, with flowers and fruit From all the earth, one's slaves; bid the worm eat Your next year's purple from the mulberry leaf, The tiger shed his skin to line your robes, And men die, thousands in a day, for glory? Such things should knigs bid from their solitude Upon the top of Man. Justice and Good, All penniless, base, earthy kind of fellows, So low, one wonders they were not born dogs, Can do as well, alas'. Act IV, sc. i.

When Adalmar rejects this advice, the Duke, In a typically

Beddoesian passage, emphasizes in another way, the unpre­ dictable quality of life:

Think of now. This Hope and Memory are wild horses, tearing The precious now to pieces. Grasp and use The breath wi thin you; for you know not, whether That wind about the trees brings you one more. Act IV, sc. i.

These two quoted passages amount to "Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow you may die." with all the attendant skepticism, self-indulgence, and lack of sympathy for one's fellow beings that can be crowded into so few lines. It is at this point--and for what reason it is not clear-- that the Duke, heretofore disguised as a pilgrim, makes himself known to his son. And with this revelation the scene ends.

Scene two of Act IV, one of 130 lines, consists of two interviews, the first between Sibylla and Athulf, the 15U second between Sibylla and the ghost of Wolfram. Much change has been wrought in Athulffs attitude toward women.

Earlier in the play (Act 11, Scene iii) his attitude was

light and carefree. He seemed as happy with one woman as another. Now, however, observe: "From me no comfort. O you specious creature,/So poisonous to the eye1. Gal You sow madness:/And one of you, although 1 cannot curse her,/

Will make my grave a murderer's." Two observations are

important here: first, the picture of women here is not

in keeping with most critics1 remarks about Beddoes1 women, and second, Athulf puts the blame for his own hatred and

inclination to murder on to Amala, thus--and this happens often in Beddoes--relieving himself of any real responsi­

bility in the ensuing action. Like Leopold and Hesperus

before him, he is merely responding to what Fate has all along decreed. He is the instrument of Necessity.

As Athulf exits cursing his brother, the ghost of

Wolfram enters disguised as a holy father. The interview

that ensues is an extreme iy odd mixture of the language

of love and death. Sibylla, longing for the comfort of

the grave, is answered by Wolfram: "The word was Comfort./

A name by which the master, whose I am,/is named by many wise and many wretched. Will ye with me to the place where

sighs are not;/A shore of blessing, which disease doth

beat/Sea-1ike, and dashes there whom he would wreck/into

the arms of Peace?" But Wolfram realizes that he has 155 been ©ver-serious and turns, ironically and cruelly, to mocking all the things that a young girl has to live for:

"You1re young and must be merry in the world;/Have friends to envy, lovers to betray you;/And feed young children with the blood of your heart,/Till they have sucked up strength enough to break it." Sibylla finds mystery and music in much of their conversation, but Wolfram urges her not to be overly-attentive to or persuaded by the appeal he makes for death. But Sibylla will not be dissuaded. She, like many of Beddoes1 characters, hungers after death and love.

She will even, this quickly, accept the love of this stranger

if he will give it; otherwise she wants to be shown "The shortest path to solitary death." She pleads with him to have pity on her. Wolfram then, in a sense, woos her, helps her understand that his essence is spiritual and that he wears now a semblance ©f a garb he has cast off. When

the girl shows no fear and once again expresses her desire

to die, Wolfram reveals his identity. Urging her not to

be frightened because "the dead are ever good and innocent, he explains that "'Tis better too/To die, as thou art, young, in the first grace/And full of beauty, and so be

remembered/As one chosen from the earth to be an angel;/

Not left to droop and wither, and be borne/Down by the

breath of time." Thus Sibylla happily anticipates love

in death:

O Death1. I am thy friend, 1 struggle not with thee, I love thy state: Thou canst be sweet and gentle, be so now: 156

And let me pass praying away Into thee, As twilight still does into starry night. Act IV, sc. II.

Scene three of this fourth act is a fast-paced one that ends with a fratricide. Athulf, alone, desires to look upon Amala once more before she is wed to Adalmar: "And then my soul shall cut itself a door/Out of this planet."

He attests to his own earlier profligacy, and in so doing, implies that he definitely recognizes a difference between good and bad, between worthless and worthwhile, between a life well spent and "A life ridiculous":

I've been wild and heartless, Laughed at the feasts where love had never place, And pledged by light faith to a hundred women, Forgotten all next day. A worthless life, A life ridiculous'. Day after day, Folly on folly1. But I'll not repent. Remorse and weeping shall not be my virtues: Let fools do both, and, having had their evil, And tickled their young hearts with the sweet sins That feather Cupid's shafts, turn timid, weep, Be penitent. Act IV, sc. ill.

Like others of Beddoes' characters, Athulf sees himself as somehow "dev 11-inspI red," once again a character's apparent attempt to avcid the responsibility for his own action. It appears that once the character decides on a course of action that flies in the face of every value, he is reluctant to assume personally the consequences. Beddoes' characters often neatly avoid the extensive moral question by relin­ quishing their own personalities to Fate, Destiny, or

Necessity. In the moral void they struggle for eminence, only to find that they have willed their own destruction. It is in this spirit of villainous resignation that

Athulf greets Amala who enters with her bridesmaids. The

bride-to-be is in good spirits: ,fThe past is pale to me;/

But 1 do see my future plain of life,/Full of rejoicings

and of harvest-dances,/Cl early it is so sunny." But the

speech of the bridesmaids never lets the reader lose him­

self altogether in the happiness of the hour: for example,

"Amala . . . Thou'rt happy. In these delightful times,/

It does the human heart much good to think/On deepest woe,

which may be waiting for us,/tasked even in a marriage

hour0" Or again: "Take this flower from me,/(A white

rose, fitting for a wedding gift)/And lay it on your pillow

Pray to live/So fair and innocently; pray to die,/Leaf

after leaf, so softly." The bridesmaids leave Amala alone

and suddenly she becomes aware of Athulf. He laments the

training he had as a child, and blames his youth and ig­

norance for the wrongs he has committed: "Had 1 received

lessons in thought and nature,/We might have been together.

The hot-blooded youth makes a serious plea for love, all

in a tone that belies his recently stated and often con­

firmed attitude of fickleness and carelessness toward both

love and women. He seems perversely bent on self-destruc­

tion, both emotionally and physically, and is able to con­

vince himseif that through such pain and suffering he will

show himself a man: "Now no need of comfort./I'm somehow

glad that it did thus fall out./Then had I lived too softly 158

In these woes/l can stand up, and show myself a man.”

When Amala, frightened by him and pitying him, leaves,

Athulf renounces the world and love, and hoping to commit

suicide, drinks from a vial supplied him by Ziba. Athulf

is the very picture of a man who acts on the momentary

passion, who gives little thought to the past and no con­

sideration to the future. At this point he is willing to

kill himself for the lack of a love which he had earlier

renounced. In this mood he Is confronted by his brother

Adalmar who, although he represents a degree of control

and reason unknown to Athulf, demonstrates a more detached

and analytical brotherly hatred. For example, when he

learns that Athulf has drunk from the vial supplied by Ziba,

he is angry that this wayward brother has denied himself

the scorn of the living:

Thou hast been wicked; caused much misery; Dishonoured maidens; broken fathers’ hearts; Maddened some; made others wicked as thyself; And darest thou die, leaving a world behind thee That groans of thee to heaven:

Thou should’st have lived; Devoting every minute to the work Of useful, penitent amendment: then, After long years, you might have knelt t© Fate, And ta’en her blow not fearing. Wretch, thou diest not, But goest living into hell. Act IV, sc. iii.

When Adalmar discovers that Ziba supplied the potion, he

leaves to find the Arab so that he may supply a counteracting

drug to save Athulf1s life.

While Adalmar searches for Ziba, a group of singers 159 come to serenade Amala. The supposedly dying Athulf ridi­ cules the pleasant and sentimental songs, and after the group leaves, he sings what he describes as a bridal song and dirge in one. Amala appears and claims that she is miserable and, again, that she still has a great affection for Athulf: "I am wretched/Love thee and ever did most fervently,/Sti11 hoping thou would’st turn and merit it,"

But she puts duty and obedience above love and swears to be his in the hereafter. She leaves him with these parting words: "Our bliss will be greater for the sorrow/We now in parting feel." So while we might admire her for sub­ scribing to the finer virtues of duty and obedience, we must not forget that in doing so she has, in part, betrayed her own desires and feelings. She has made a practical and earthly compromise in hopes ©f attaining the richness of an eternal lover’s union with Athulf.

Adalmar now returns with Ziba whom he threatens unless he restores Athulf to health. In a comic reversal of cir­ cumstances which will nevertheless produce uncomical results, we learn that, thanks to Ziba's strange good sense, Athulf will not die after all:

ZIba. Let him rise. Why, think you that I’d de*l a benefit, So precious to the noble as is death, To such a pampered darling of delight As he that shivers there? O, not for him, Blooms my dark Nightshade, nor doth Hemlock brew Murder for cups within her cavernous root. Not for him is the metal blessed to kill, Nor lets the poppy her leaves fall for him. 160

To heroes such are sacred. He may live, As long as 'tis the Gout and Dropsy's pleasure. He wished to play at suicide, and swallowed A draught, that may depress and shake his powers Until he sleeps awhile; then all is o'er. And so good night, my princes. Act IV, sc. iii.

Athulf is no sooner granted a reprieve than he stabs Adalmar.

It Is a moment much like the earlier one in Act 1 in which kindness and love are rewarded with hatred and murder.

These most unexpected situations obviously give rise to many of the passages throughout Beddoes' work that mock hope, friendship and human creation. The Beddoesian world, if anything Is completely unpredictable. The most natural relationships (e.g. brother and brother, lover and loved, father and son) are tne most unmanageable and the most potentially incendiary, however, we must remember that while the world of Beddoes seems a markedly unhappy place, it is made unhappy by the strong, willful and even fasci­ nating personality, bent on realizing, at almost anyone's emotional and physical expense, the fulfillment of his self.

There is little attempt to arrive at any delicate balance between one's own selfish and ultimately destructive desires and a complete surrender of one's own personality to the seemingly ungovernable forces of Fate or Necessity.

To return to the plot-line, Amala, from her window, calls out for Adalmar. In a soft voice, Athulf answers for his brother and says that he will come to her soon.

She retires and Athulf delivers an end-of-the-scene soliloquy. 161

Recognizing the error of his way, he feels a change coming over him:

It is God's sentence muttered over me. The spell of my creation Is read backwards. Humanity is taken from my form, And my soul's Immortality's annulled. 1 am unsouled, dishumanized, uncreated; My passions swell and grow like brutes conceived; My feet are fixing roots, and every limb Is billowy and gigantic, till I seem A wild old wicked mountain in the sea: And the abhorred conscience of this murder, Shall be created and become a Lion All alone in the darkness of my spirit, And lair him in my caves, And when I lie tremendous in the billows, Murderers, and men half ghosts, stricken with madness, Will come to live upon my rugged sides, Die and be buried in me. Act IV, sc. iii.

He recognizes, of course, the wrench in creation that has occurred; the reader feels, too, how everything and every­ one connected with Athulf's existence has been correspond­

ingly modified. But given the tenuous hold that Beddoes1 characters have on the world, there is little hope that

the path to mass destruction can be diverted.

Act IV, scene four, opens as Isbrand and Siegfried

discuss the imminent coup. Isbrand feels that it will mark his real birth, that he will be a new man: "Tomorrow, with what pity and contempt,/Sha11 1 look back new-born upon myself'." Guests and fe 1 low-conspi rators arrive for the wedding celebration, and It is here that Isbrand had de­ cided to strike for power. Thorwald is appalled at the

action Instigated by one who was so recently the court fool.

Nonetheless, the bloodless coup is achieved. Isbrand, dis- 162 playing that god-like pride typical of other Beddoes1 creations, declaims, "O stingy nature,/To make me but one man I Had I but body/For every several measure of thought and will,/This night should see me world crowned.” Good

news regarding the coup throughout the city is brought to

Isbrand and makes him ecstatic. Alone, the arch-conspirator

closes the scene with a soliloquy on the theme of man*s

restlessness at being merely human:

Adam, thy soul was happy that it wore The first, new, mortal members.

Now we’re common, And man is tired of being no more than human; And I’ll be something better:— not by tearing This chrysalis of psyche ere its hour, Will 1 break through Elysium. There are sometimes, Even here, the means of being more than men: And 1 by wine, and women, and the sceptre, Will be, my own way, heavenly in my clay. 0 you small star-mob, had 1 been one of you, 1 would have seized the sky some moonless night, And made myself the sun; whose morrow rising Shall see me new-created by myself. Come, come; to rest, my soul. 1 must sleep off This old plebeian creature that I am. Act IV, sc. lv.

The last act of Death's Jes t-Book opens with a short

scene between Isbrand and Siegfried. The rebellion has

been achieved and the council is waiting In its chambers

demanding of Isbrand ”the keys of the treasure,/The stores

of arms, lists of the troops you’ve hi red,/Reports of your

past acts, and your Intentions/Toward the new republic.”

As one might expect, Isbrand laughs at such demands. The

scene becomes an extension of the preceding one In which 163

Isbrand berates nature for having made him Just one man.

He is angry and frustrated that he must operate as a man not only within the laws established by a body politic, but also within the formative, creative--and to him, restrictive--laws of nature. He seems to feel that the body imprisons the really creative aspect of man. Bringing together much of what Beddoes has touched on before, Isbrand is very much a man of the moment ("Tomorrow is the greatest fool I know,/Excepting those that put their trust in him."); he is the strong-willed individual capable of his own creation ("I have a bit of FIAT In my soul,/And can create my little world."). In the soliloquy that ends this scene he suggests that man, by an act of will, can become godlike.

He goes neatly through the great chain of being and concludes that, although he does not yet know the way to godhead, he will, through occult sciences and patience, discover how he may "fly higher."

How 1 despise All you mere men of muscle'. It was ever My study to find out a way to godhead, And on reflection soon 1 found that first 1 was but half-created; that a power Was wanting in my soul to be Its soul, And this was mine to make. Therefore 1 fashioned A wi11 above my will, that plays upon it, As the first soul doth use in men and cattle. There's lifeless matter; add the power of shaping, And you've the crystal: add again the organs, Wherewith to subdue sustenance to the form And manner of one's self, and you've the plant: And power of motion, senses, and so forth, And you've all kind of beasts; suppose a pig: To J)Ig add foresight, reason, and such stuff, Then you have man. What shall we add to man, T© bring him higher? I begin to think That's a discovery 1 soon shall make. Thus I, owing nought to books, but being read In the odd nature of much fish and fowl, And cabbages and beasts, have 1 raised myself, By this comparative philosophy, Above your shoulders, my sage gentlemen. Have patience but a little, and keep still, I'll find means, bye and bye, of flying higher. Act V, sc. I.

Scene two, another short one (68 lines), brings to­ gether the major conspirators who feel that their trust and faith in Isbrand have been betrayed. Siegfried suggests and we've been made aware of this before in Beddoes--that

Isbrand's physical appearance has been altered considerably because his spirit has altered, as If he had "made a bloody compact with some fiend/His being Is grown greater than it was." While one of the conspirators laments that they have overthrown the "mild familiar laws our fathers left," Ziba,

in a strong move, suggests that "In this triumph [we] pull away his throne,/And let him into hell." The Duke, yet disguised, agrees: "He Is the foe of all; let all be his,/

And he must be o1erwhelmed." All exit except Ziba and

Siegfried. The slave, whose allegiances seem readily trans­

ferable, says he means to act while others talk. Ironically he claims that nothing can weaken his resolve, when, In fact he seems to have very little resolve. The reader strongly suspects that Ziba wants to be on the winning side, what­ ever that may be. Of course Ziba has no real stake in

Munsterberg's politics; he has no family that we know of: born of a dead mother, his main desire Is to remain alive. 165

An alien, he Is a free agent whose loyalties are easily changed by shifting political winds. Siegfried and Ziba agree that the latter, as cup bearer to Isbrand, should administer poison. And on an ironic, mocking note the scene ends: "Let him beware, who shows a dogged slave/Pity or mercy."

This brief and especially masculine scene is followed by an equally brief one of great, if morbid, tenderness between Sibylla and some ladies gathering flowers. It Is a curious scene, advancing the plot in scarcely any way, but providing us with hints at the correspondences, or lack of them, between man and nature. One sf Sibylla's ladies-

In waiting says, for example, that "earth and all its orna ments,/Which are the symbols of humanlty/ln forms refined, and efforts uncompleted,/Al1 Innocent and grateful, temper the heart,/Of him who muses and compares them skillfully,/

To glad belief and cheerful gratitude./This is the sacred source of poesy." But Sibylla provides us with another point of view which, she suggests, comes with old age and

sorrow;

While we are young and free from care, we think so. But, when old age or sorrow brings us nearer To spirits and their interests, we see Few features of mankind in outward nature; But rather signs inviting us to heaven. I love flowers too; not for a young girl's reason, But because these brief visitors to us Rise yearly from the neighborhood of the dead, To show us how far fairer and more lovely Their world is; and return thither again, Like parting friends that beckon us to follow, And lead the way silent and smilingly. Fair is the season when they come to us, Unfolding the delights of that existence Which is below us: 'tis the time of spirits, Who with the flowers, and like them, leave their graves: But when the earth is sealed, and none dare come Upwards to cheer us, and man's left alone, We have cold, cutting winter. For no bridal, Excepting with the grave, are flowers fit emblems. Act V, sc. iii.

The implication is, then, that in our later years, when

life has been so mod 1fied--even enlarged--with sorrow and the awareness of death, the mind turns more upon itself, turns more to contemplation of the Impenetrable world than to the objects which heretofore evoked mere sensuous re­ sponse. The concepts of change and immutability, of creation and destruction, as represented in the natural world by, for example, flowers or rivers or the sunrise, begin to occupy our minds more than the natural phenomena themselves.

Sibylla concludes this scene by telling her maidens that

she is dying and that she would like to have the flowers strewn upon her grave.

Such a scene, in a sense, prepares us for the impending

rush of death that overtakes every major character in the

last scene of the play. The catastrophe is partly a result of

a startling mixture of the natural and supernatural worlds;

in fact, the scene opens when the figures that had comprised

a painting of the Dance of Death leave their places on the wall and "dance fantastlca1ly to si rattling mus ic.” The

particular combination of the light, rollicking rhythm with words that generally call up our emotions of pity and/or 167 delight results in a gretesquely humorous scene. It is a marvel of verse that needs to be quoted in part:

Mummies and skeletons, out of your stones; Every age, every fashion, and figure of Death: The death of the giant with petrified hones; The death of the infant who never drew breath. Little and gristly, or bony and big, White and clattering, grassy and yellow; The partners are waiting, so strike up a Jig, Dance and be merry, for Death's a droll fellow. The emperor and empress, the king and the queen, The knight and the abbot, friar fat, friar thin, The gipsy and beggar, are met on the green; Where's Death and his sweetheart? We want to begin. Act V, sc. iv.

When these figures have resumed their places, most of the principal characters enter, including Wolfram, who is, this time, disguised as the court fool. Ziba has come prepared with the poisoned wine, and Siegfried has the temerity to offer the toast to none other than Death. Wolfram warns

Isbrand away from the wine, and as a result Siegfr I ed--up to this moment Isbrand*s confidant--is taken away to be hanged on the morrow. He goes with such bravura--

My lords, good sleep This night, the next I hope you'll be as well As 1 shall. Should there be a lack of rope, I recommend my bowstring as a strong one. Once more, farewell: I wish you all, believe me, Happily old, mad, sick and dead, and cursed. Act V, sc. Iv.

--that Isbrand remarks "That gentleman should have applied his talent/To writing new-year's wishes.Wolfram decides to turn the conversation with a story, but he is interrup­ ted by a funeral procession. Sibylla is dead. Isbrand sends a fellow with a flower for the grave, and at just this 168 moment Mario, one of the minor conspirators and a blind

Italian alien who has Joined the cause, stabs Isbrand.

Beddoes* work is full of these minor ironies which, when considered as a part of the larger picture, take on a grander significance. Here Isbrand dies at the hand of a foreigner who has some vague notion of Liberty. He has not been a part of the localized plot; he seeks no personal revenge; he had sworn fidelity to Isbrand. Conversely, the persons who had the greatest "right" to kill Isbrand were denied that "right," e.g. his fellow conspirators whom he betrayed; the Duke whose political power Isbrand usurped; the native population whose hope for political freedom had been stifled.

Following Isbrand's death, things happen very fast. The

Duke calls for his sons: Adalmar is brought in on a bier, a fratricide; Athulf follows and, unable to admit the murder of his brother, stabs himself. The Duke, whose crown is nothing if he has lost his sons, abdicates in favor of Thorwald, and is led by Wolfram into the sepulchre and death, bringing an end to what must be one of the most curious and at the same time marvelous literary creations of the first half ©f the nineteenth century.

What are we to make ©f It? What is this drama all about? As one might expect, critics have attempted to ex­ plain various parts of the work, and such criticism is often 169 valuable as far as it gees. But no theory has explained satisfactorily the overall meaning of the work. Such an explanation, of course, is difficult.. First, the drama does not have a simple, single plot and the easily Identi­ fied sub-plot that characterizes many plays. Second, the drama seems now to focus on one or two characters only to shift to other figures as the play progresses. And third,

Beddoes' constant rev Isions--up to the time of his death-- make a unified, coherent interpretation next to impossible.

In spite of these obvious drawbacks, I believe we can dis­ cover in the play itself a central theme--no matter how obscured by the clumsy construction--which will explain much of the apparent disorder and many of the complications.

The most important attitude that informs Death1s Jest-

Book is that we live in an irrational, unpredictable world

that resists any kind of philosophical or natural systemi- zation. It is a world devoid of beneficent nature. It

is a world in which man's spirit is repressed by his physi­ cal limitations. It Is a world in which mostmen, discover­

ing that their lives are bound inextricably to other men and time and realizing that they are powerless to order

their own universe, inevitably resort to despair. It is a world not far removed— and this may, in part, account

for an increasing interest in Beddoes--from the world por­

trayed in our own Drama of the Absurd. The recognition

that death is the great leveler, that the natural world •bserves him not, and that he is trapped and regulated by farces social and political often beyond his centrel--"such is the way by which man arrives at a knowledge of the absur­ dity of this world, an absurdity born of the Juxtaposition of all that he would wish life to be with the way that life actually seems to be, Man yearns t© defy time, to feel at home in the world, to rest confident of his humanity; but he comes to know his mortality, his loneliness, his . . . rigidity. The absurd is, Camus writes, 'That divorce between the mind that desires and the world that disappoints,1

No other critical opinion applies so appropriately to Beddoes and at the same time recounts for the plot construction and character building that make such a thesis dramatically operative. With this in mind, we might now turn to an examination of the structure and content of Death1s Jest-Book that make it the kind of play It is.

If the combined action and dialogue of the drama bears out any one single truth it is that of the unknowable, unpre­ dictable human mind. At one point in the play, when Isbrand brags about knowing the thoughts of all the citizens of

Grussau, the Duke responds with the following remarks which

1 feel are crucial to the understanding of the entire play:

O perilous boast’. Fathom the wavy caverns of all stars, Know every side of every sand in earth, And hold in little all the lore of man, As a dew's drop doth miniature the sun: But never hope to learn the alphabet, In which the hieroglyphic human soul 171 More changeably is painted than the rainbow Upon the cloudy pages of a shower, Whose thunderous hinges a wild wind doth turn. Know all of each', when each doth shift his thought More often in a minute, than the air Dust on a summer path. Act III, sc. iii. From the opening scenes to the closing lines this admonition is borne out in various ways. First, there is a constant reversal of plot and personality structure, of which the following are merely the most obvious: brothers begin by loving each other and then hate enough to kill one another; the Duke and Sibylla want to be saved and when they are saved by Wolfram they are sorry; the friendship of the Duke and Wolfram ends quickly in ’’Perfect hate”; Wolfram saves the Duke, then refuses, then saves him again only to meet death as a reward; Ziba the slave is supposed to poison Wolfram, but has a change of heart at the last min­ ute; Athulf has a reputation for loving rather lightly but kills his brother and himself because he loves too deeply; Ziba, long devoted tc Isbrand, decided to kill him when the rebellion is over; Mario, the most insigni­ ficant of the minor characters, and devoted to the cause of isbrand, kills the jester-turned-tyrant. These constant and often surprising reversals in the plot are closely allied to Beddoes' emphasis on the here-and-now. The poet frequently derides any effort to get caught up in the past or to anticipate the future. Obviously in a world in which no human relationships are predictable or stable, it would 172

be foolish t© construct a system of orthodox virtues or conventional behavior. The importance of the present mo­ ment is implicit throughout the play and is often made quite explicit in such passages as the following:

Let the past be past, And Lethe freeze unwept on over it. What is, be patient with; and what shall be, Silence the body-bursting spirit's yearnings. Act III, sc. Hi.

■jr # a

Think of now. This Hope and Memory are wild horses, tearing The precious now to pieces. Grasp and use The breath within you; for you know not, whether That wind about the trees brings you one more. Act IV, sc. ii.

Tomorrow is the greatest fool 1 know, Except those that put their trust in him. Act V, sc. i. Such emphasis on the present may also account for the fact that the soliloquies in Death1s Jest-Book are rarely used, as they often are in Beddoes1 Elizabethan models, to explore the philosophical implications of an action or idea. In a soliloquy like nT© be or not to be" there is a reaching out, a probing for a guiding principle. Another soliloquy may be used to generalize regarding the human condition. But universally applicable principles and generalizations about mankind have little place in Beddoes. The soliloquies in Death1s Jest-Book most regularly serve as brief summa­ ries of the preceding action. Occasionally, of course, a

speaker does extend his comments a bit beyond his rwn per­ 173 sonal predicament, but only in terms of his >wn experience. He leaves little room far speculating about mankind out­ side his ewn sphere of influence or action. Such a solilo­ quy is Isbrand's lamentations about the inadequacies of mankind (quoted above, p. 163). We begin, then, with two important ideas: 1) that we live in an irrational, uncontrollable, and impassioned world and 2) that we cannot know, and hence predict the reactions to, the human mind. These ideas are further re­ inforced by Beddoes1 mockery of virtues and attitudes long thought to be respectable and, indeed, necessary among mankind. Death1s Jest-Book is replete with such references, some extremely bitter, others comic. But the important thing is that, bitter or comic, Beddoes is relentless with his ridicule. Note such typical passages as these: Isbr. Revenge, Revenge lend me your torch, that 1 may by its bloody fire see the furrows of this the philtres of charity and friendship have made of my poor brother. Act I, sc. i.

Duke. All things like these, Friendship, esteem, sympathy, hope, faith, We need no more: away with them for ever1. Act I, sc. ii.

Athulf. Well, sir, laud, WorsTTTp, and swear by them, your native country And virtues past; a phantom and a corpse: Such airy stuff may please you. My desires Are hot and hungry; they will have their f ill m Of living dalliance, gazes, and lip-t©uches, Or swallaw up their l*rd. Act II, sc. ill.

Duke. Yeuth, is it possible that th#u art telling here f#r liberty, And ethers1 welfare, and such virtueus shadews As philesephic feels and beggars raise Out ef the world that's gene? Act IV, sc. il.

K Vr -5S-

Wo 1f r . You're young and must be merry in the world; Have friends to envy, lovers to betray you; And feed young children with the blood of your heart, Till they have sucked up strength enough to break it. Act Iv, sc. il. These passages imply the worst kind of despair that, in the absence of order and faith, quickly consumes the despairing man. What strikes me as a healthier sort of mockery-- healthier because it suggests a perspective about the human condition that untempered ridicule does not suggest--is evident in such passages as the following: Mandr. Look for a true friend, a wit who me'er borrowed money or stole verses, a woman with­ out envy; there are legions of such, but they have anointed their virtues with the pomatum till they disappeared. Act I, sc, iv.

Isbr. Madam, I pray thee pardon us [fools]. The fair have wrested the tongue from us, and we must give our speeches a sting of some metal **-s tee 1 or gold. And I beseech thee, lady, call me fool no longer: I grow old, and in old age you know what men become. We are at court, and there it were sin to call a thing by its right name; therefore call me a fool no longer, for my wisdom is on the wane, 175 and 1 am almost as sententious as the governor. Act II, sc. i i i . In short, there Is a ridicule of nearly every social, p o li­ tical, and personal value known to man: love, honor, friendship, work, liberty, youth, old age. Such ridicule is a natural outgrowth of a world view whose central focus is distrust, accident, even whim. Beddoes’ persistent bitterness is tied very closely to the constant reversals of plot and action. Obviously there is no reason to be­ lieve in permanency, in long-established values if, with any single action that man is capable of (and there seems scarcely any limit), the world of men is constantly shifting. In the Beddoesian world, every part shifts when one part shifts, and, judging from the results, man, controlled by selfish passion, is unable or unwilling to direct what seems I nev i tab le. Other aspects of the drama also serve to support the idea of the tenuousness of all human aspirations and endea­ vors. The individuality of each character seems often guided by the most blatant egotism, but it is an egotism without much conviction, or at best an egotism without responsibility. An idea that has occurred often in Beddoes1 work comes to full flower here, the abdication of respon­ s ib ility for one’s actions. Ziba, Kario, Athulf, the Duke, and Isbrand are the most obvious examples of persons who seek causes outside themselves for dreadful acts that they 176 commit. Most often they claim (like Leopold in The Improvisatore, Hesperus in The Brides' Tragedy, or Marcello in The Second Brother) that their being has become inhabited by a fiend and that hence they are not to be held accountable for their current thoughts or deeds. This

attitude, of course, modifies considerably the moral judg­ ment that one might assume toward the characters, but at the same time reinforces Beddoes' idea of a thoroughly amoral world, a world made for the taking by the strong, and almost always evil, personality. The really good people--1ike Wolfram and Sibylla—of course are pulled down by the strong evil people. The ruination of everyone results from uncontrolled and inexplicable passion, from a failure to reason things out, a failure to compromise, a failure to put things in their proper perspective. Other features, such as the easy combination of natural and supernatural elements, the use of disguise by nearly every significant character, and the use Beddoes makes of the occult and magical, all contribute to making Death's Jest-Book the kind of monument to despair that it is. As has been noted before, Beddoes set out to "uncypress Death," but in the end Death remains the victor and man the victim. The most lamentable aspect of Death1s Jes t-Book is that

there is nothing in it to relieve the rush to death. Unable to will the form he will take at birth and incapable of directing his life on this "wheeling globe," man ends in selfish despair as Death in various guises closes in on him. In such a world there is no hope, no memory, no light, no earthly love; there is no trust, no honor. There is no order that man may grasp to steady himself. Man's spirit that yearns to break from its bodily prison, that aspires "to know more than it can know," is doomed to the arbitrary machinations that result from man's being earth- bound, sin-ridden and imperfect. In light of such a world view, who would not yearn for or even be the instrument of his own death? FOOTNOTES FOR CHAPTER I I I

^Curiously, Beddoes* brother was glad to see the character of Mandrake left undeveloped: "1 was glad to find the Mandrake so much suppressed. It was a character in which my brother delighted long ago when a boy, and the idea I can imagine ever haunted his imagination. 1 was teased by the frequent repetition of the word Ghost." The Browning Box, ed. H. W. Donner (London, 193$)» P. U6. ^Beddoes felt strongly enough about silence to write in a letter that "the most exquisite happiness is silent, its delights unutterable." Works , p. 633. ^Among his numerous references to the two poets men­ tioned are the following: "Will no one anatomize Mr. T. Campbell? even after 'But reaching home, te rrific omeni There/The straw-laid street preluded him despair—/The servant's look--the table that revea led/His letter sent to Charlotte last still sealed.'" And the "tender, full- faced L. E. L. the milk-and-watery moon of our darkness." Works, p. $89. ^Works, p. 6U$. $BeddosS was well aware of his tendency to over-wrought prose and occasionally mocked his own. For example, Works, p. 568. Also cf. note Lj.1 of Chapter II. ^William R. Mueller and Josephine Jacobsen, "The Absurd Quest," The Kenyon Rev iew, XXIX (March 1967), 2lj.O.

176 CHAPTER IV

A SUMMARY

Throughout this study reference has been made to "the

Beddoesian world," as if the concept represented an easily defined entity composed of certain values, particular atti­ tudes, and consistent reactions to the world of objects and

ideas. While it is not "easily defined," the concept is a valid one which does reveal a larger world view than Beddoes has heretofore been credited with.

Our first critical obligation is to do what can be done to balance out prior interpretations of Beddoes as an ex­ treme artistic eccentric. Such a confining image has been fostered by critics because of Beddoes1 marked personal and artistic individuality and because of the mystery that sur­

rounds him for lack of much biographical detail. But nothing could be clearer than that Beddoes is very much a part of the nineteenth-century milieu and that he shared much, both

ideologically and emotionally, with even the major Romantics.

His subject matter and his treatment are, it will be seen, akin to that of his contemporaries. This is not to suggest

179 180 that he was a mere Imitator; nor does it mean that, in the final analysis, Beddoes was the equal of either Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Keats or Shelley. Rather we must concede that Beddoes drew much of his inspiration from ideas preva­ lent at the time and went on to anticipate devolopments that were to come to full flower later In his own century and in ours. As obvious as this last statement seems, there are yet critics, as I suggested at the beginning of this study, who examine Beddoes more as an historical or a psychological oddity than as a man taking from and contributing to the times in which he lived. Although it may be risky to hint at a definition of an historical era by citing qualities shared by its writers, 1 think It is helpful In this particular case, and for the reasons stated above, to suggest broadly and briefly some of the characteristics that Beddoes shared with his better known contemporaries. The most important characteristic, one that can scarcely be separated from all the others, Is the intense interest that Beddoes had In the individual psyche. Whatever may be said of Beddoes* characters, they are not essentially social creatures. They are individual creations subject to all the passion and paradox that flesh is heir to. 1 do not think that Beddoes is out to prove the ’’worth of the Individual life" or the basically good or evil nature of man. Rather he seems interested in individual

complexity and in the fact that individual predilection 181 diverges boundlessly. Wordsworth may have had something like this in mind when he wrote, in a note appended to

The Borderers, that "the study of human nature suggests this awful truth, that, as in the trials to which life sub­ jects us, sin and crime are apt to start from their very opposite qualities, so there are no limits to the hardening of the heart, and the perversion of the understanding to which they may carry their slaves." Oswald of The Borderers certainly confirms this truth, as does Conrad of Keats'

Otho, Emerick of Coleridge's Zapolya, Ordonio of Coleridge's

Remorse, or Beddoes' Isbrand.

Closely related to this intense interest in each indi­ vidual man is the fact that conflict grows inevitably out of the involvement of close friends or, more often, close relatives. This in and of itself is hardly surprising: we think of Hamlet, King Lear, Qed i pus Rex. But it is a char­ acteristic that we need to be reminded of again when we are told that the conflict in Beddoes arises out of a father-son antagonism that has its roots deep in Beddoes' relationship with his father. While we have no desire to discredit such a thesis, we must admit the great degree of speculation that must, perforce, be applied. What we can more accurately note is the use, even in Beddoes* day, of the conflicting family. Here is Keats' Ludolph on his father, Otho the

Great:

[My father will] hear none of it; You know his temper, hot, proud, obstinate; 182 Endanger not yourself so uselessly. 1 will encounter his thwart spleen myself, To-day, at the Duke Conrad's, where he keeps His crowded state after the victory. There will I be, a most unwelcome guest, And parley with him, as a son should do, Who doubly loathes, a father's tyranny; Tell him how feeble is that tyranny; How the relationship of father and son Is no more valid than a silken leash Where lions tug adverse, if love grow not From interchanged love through many years. Act I, sc. i. Or note this harsh exchange between Raab Kluprili and his son Casimir in Coleridge's 2apolya, a verse drama built entirely on the conflict of brothers and fathers and sons;

Raab Kiupri1i The son of Raab K lu p rili1. a bought bond-slave, Guilt's pander, treason's mouthpiece, a gay parrot, School'd to shrill forth his feeder's usurp'd titles, And scream, Long live king Emerick*.

And shall 1 now be branded by a traitor, A bought bribed wretch, who, being called son Doth libel a chaste matron's name, and plant Hensbane and aconite on a mother's grave? The underling accomplice of a robber, That frcm a widow and widow's offspring Would steal their heritage? To god a rebel, And to the common father of his country A recreant ingrate '.

Cas imi r Sire I Your words grow dangerous. High-flown romantic fancies ill-beseem Your age and wisdom. 'Tis a stateman's virtue, To guard his country's safety by what means It best may be protected—come what will Of these monk's morals'. Along with these important features that Beddoes shared with other nineteenth-century writers there are other related characteristics that we may briefly note. Beddoes shares 183 with many writers of the period the theme of revolt against political authority. In Beddoes, as in others, it often amounts to exchanging one kind of tyranny for another. From

Leopold on, in the work of Beddoes, there is rebellion against social convention, against the ordinary traditional virtues.

And there is a marked fascination with the passionate, evil man, the man who aspires to know and be more than he can.

There are perhaps other similarities between these writers, but these seem the most important and do attest to the fact that Beddoes was working with a body of ideas that was not peculiar to him.

The world articulated in the body of Beddoes' poetry is,

I feel, largely the result of Beddoes' consuming interest In the abstract or disembodied world. Such an interest is not so astounding in itself, especially In a man of Beddoes' intellect, but is remarkable because it often dictates and sometimes obscures the narrative construction in the early works and the dramatic unity of the later ones. Despite his early training, which was rigidly rationalistic, and his ultimate attachment to science and medicine— the world of exacting measurement--Beddoes still reveals, even in his earliest poetry, his inclination to, and his strong belief in, the world of the abstract. Again, if we begin with this assumption, much that has heretofore appeared topical or eccentric in Beddoes will more easily be understood as part of a larger pattern of thought. Such a summary aims not to 16k claim for Beddoes a place in the line of English poets greater than his due, but rather to pull together, as much as possible, those ideas that account for his appeal and that assure him a minor, but secure, place in that line.

If anything has been obvious in the foregoing analyses,

it is probably Beddoes’ reluctance to keep his characters and situations within the realm of human probability, indeed

the realm of possibility. This one feature of his work governs much else. his flights of fancy lead us with Rodolph, a momentarily discontented lover, to visit an Imaginary love goddess who disappears when he professes love. Leopold, a human creature born of blood and holocaust, and rescued and

raised by a holy hermit, is transformed into a supernatural monster who roams at will through the heavens. In Peath1s

Jest-Book, of course, we have the earth visited not by a conventional Elizabethan ghost, whose life is usually gov­

erned by sunrise and sunset, but by Wolfram's ghost who assumes a human form and indeed, from the time he appears

until the end of the play, a place as jester among court

society. It is in this play, too, that we are entertained

by figures from the Dance of Death which step down from the wall, dance, and return to the wall upon the intrusion of humans into their merry celebration.

Even in scenes where supernatural creatures do not

actually move about, we are made very much aware of another mode of reality. In "Albert and Emily," for example, the 18£ real conflict in the poem is between these two lovers pitted against the evil forces of nature. Either through their active minds or hallucinations Albert and Emily, vague char­ acterizations at best, feel an inexplicable Presence over which they have no control. Closely related, also, to the knowledge of and movement through another world is the fact that when a Beddoes character cannot reasonably and with some ease will his way out of this or that difficulty, he calls upon a fiend or demon with the strength to act in his stead. Most murders and other outrageous acts are per­ petrated under this impersonal guise. The personal respon­ sibility has been removed, and the individual man, whether

it be Hesperus, Leopold, Isbrand, Athulf or the Duke in

Peath's Jest-Book, has foregone his responsibility as the agent of catastrophe.

Beyond these obvious manifestations of the mixture of reality and unrea1ity--or perhaps just two modes of

reality--a general aura pervades Beddoes' work tnat tends

to reinforce our awareness of the impenetrable. From the horrifying storms in "Albert and Emily," through the quests

for ideal love and power to rule the universe in "Leopold" and The Second Brother, to the fatalistic atmosphere that hangs very low over each line and action of Death1s Jest-Book, we are never out of touch with unnamed and ever-present

spirits of another worlo, with phenomena that cannot be

stated in literal terms. That such feelings, fears, or 186

"knowledge” of another sphere of habitation may be other names or images for a person’s private frustrations, ambi­ tions, limitations, passions, or dreams changes not in the least the fact of their existence. It would be difficult, perhaps even foolhardy, to suggest, on the basis of this, that Beddoes was a mystic. But there can be little doubt that he entertained the possibility of a kind of knowledge beyond that fostered by the utilitarian and practical view of the world.

Related in one way to a confusion of the concrete and imagined worlds, is the quest, in every one of Beddoes' longer works, for the ideal. The world beyond the natural, as discussed in the preceding paragraphs, is, as far as

Beddoes is concerned, a world in its own right, whether or not the human world is cognizant of it. The distinction

1 want to make now is that this quest for the ideal that pervades most of Beddoes' work is actively pursued by the earthly characters. Sometimes the notion seems not very clear to the characters; nonetheless, many of them go to their death in search of the ever-elusive ideal. Take

Rodolph, for example, who lusts after a love unknown, though promised, to him as a man; or Leopold, who wants nothing less than universal power. Both die in their search. In more human terms, Floribel, Torrismond, Amala, Sibylla,

^ielveric, and Adalmar all search for the great love. pe­ culiarly enough in Beddoes, everyone is willing to die and k ill for love, though he is unwilling to do very much else for it. Every potential love affair in Beddoes' work is in some way thwarted. Nevertheless, the various characters direct much of their energy to finding it. The other idealized search in Beddoes' work is for a com­ bined po1itic a 1-personal power. This works in a negative way with Marcello of The Second Brother and Isbrand of

Death's Jest-Book. They both have an ideal of what abso­ lute political power must be like, and the attitudes assumed by both, once they have achieved as much political power as they can, are identical: from this position they aspire to god-head. But such aspirations, in Beddo.es, are as doomed as any others when, forever discontent with their lot, the characters are made to answer to their fellow-men. The kind of blatant egotism that pushes Marcello and Isbrand to grab for political power and then to misuse it also motivates other principal characters in Beddoes' work. This megalomania, coupled with the emphasis that Beddoes puts on the here-and-now, ultimately causes the destruction of persons directly involved as well as those characters on the periphery of the action. We cannot deny, however, that it also accounts for some of the most intensely dra­ matic scenes in Beddoes. Rodolph, in The Improvisatore, forsaking a lovely earth maiden for a very doubtful voice that cries "Follow," is the first Instance of such self- indulgence. In his haste to follow his guide to the deceptive 168

love goddess, he forsakes the past, reason forsakes him, and madness and death result. Leopold, concerned more with self than with any other being, willingly sacrifices his master in order to wander widely, but absolutely and unhappily alone, through the universe. Hesperus' rank egotism grows out of pure and quick sensuality, urged on him by his father's impecunious circumstances. The same kind of extreme groping for self-satisfaction is the down­

fall of, as well as much of the interest in, Torrismond,

Orazio, Athulf, Melveric, and Isbrand. The relationship of such egotism to the idealism often discovered in Beddoes' work becomes clear when we realize that such an extreme concern for self is a form of idealization of what a com­

bined body and spirit shouId be. In every case the charac­

ter would like to Ignore the real limitations of the human

frame and mind. In a sense, the character sees himself as what he would like to be if he were not imprisoned in this earthly clay and chained to "this wheeling globe."

Given this tendency to retreat Into oneself and to aspire to forms and forces unknown to mankind, it is hardly

surprising that we get in Beddoes1 work a mockery of those

conventional virtues that have long been respected among men.

Such a mockery is a natural corrollary in one who finds

fault at every turn with his own creation. As has been indi­

cated in the various analyses, Beddoes' characters ridicule

hope, personal integrity, friendship, honor, and child- 189 bearing; they are terribly cynical toward life, death, and even love. If the speeches in the works do not expli­ citly develop such scorn, the situation does. Thus In

"Albert and Emily" the main characters are, though unaware, merely the victims of forces well out of their control*

No matter how much they love, how good they are, how chaste they remain, they still suffer destruction. In "Rodolph" the main character attempts to place himself above the mundane relationships and aspire to a union with an unearth­ ly ideal, only to discover that he should have remained where he was. In The Brides1 Tragedy we get an obvious condemnation of friendship, and a subtle mockery of father- son relationships, of loved and lover. In Torrlsmond,

The Second Brother, and Death1s Jest-Book deception, trickery, and whimsy have usurped the power of every quality and vir­ tue known to man. Scarcely anything is what it seems.

When we discover that we cannot depend on the time- honored, traditional, and unwritten codes of conduct, we become aware of just how unpredictable, risky and precipi­ tous is our movement through the world. This great uncer­ tainty of life accounts for much in Beddoes' work, especially the constant reversals of character and situation. From

The Improv isatore on, we are aware of the rapidly changing, absurd, and senseless quality of life. Albert is slain on the eve of his wedding day; Emily goes mad. Rodolph an­ swers the call to love and discovers death. Leopold craves 190 monstrous powers, receives them and then disappears. Hes­

perus and Floribel, on the eve of great happiness, die In­

stant and violent deaths. Sons disappoint fathers. Friends

become ferocious enemies. Idealistic revolutionaries be­

come merciless tyrants.

All this--the surprising reversals, the throwing over

of conventional attitudes, the blatant egotism, the disap­

pointment of ideals--tends to emphasize the human being's

singular struggle to manage his own affairs in the world.

There is little for him to depend on. His gods forsake him.

Nature is indifferent toward him. There is no fool-proof

philosophical system within which he can operate satisfac­

torily. There is not even a tacit agreement with his fellows

that cannot be broken for self-aggrandizement. The indivi­

dual is pulled along, seemingly the victim of a force--

call it Fate, Destiny, Necessity--beyond his control. His

own volition counts for little.

The Beddoesian world is, in the main, peopled by men

and women more important for the ideas they represent than

for the individual people they are. Many types of human

beings are represented, but there is no single being who

could move with any assurance through the world of normal

human intercourse. The character drawing approaches some­

thing like a system of humors which, I strongly suspect,

derives from Beddoes1 passionate desire to have scientific--

and useful--answers, absolute answers, to non-sclentific 191 questions. His mind, through training and mature develop­

ment, was bent on having the exact answer. Yet he knew--

and this is borne out in his letters as well as in his

poetry--that the answers were not, nor could ever be, forth­

coming. Nature, whose mysteries serve as so much inspira­

tion, was to be respected; but she was also detestable for

denying us the knowledge of her mysteries. Such a denial,

to a man of Beddoes* genius and temperament, led to frus­

tration, doubt, withdrawal, and finally suicide.

Rather than see hir. work narrowly as the result of

father-son conflict or of an eccentric man much taken by

Elizabethan drama or of sadistic and grandiose egoism or

of a father fixation or of any other limited theory, 1 think

we must understand his v/crk as representing the pull against

one another of large and sometimes ill-defined ideas, merely

represented by characters accidentally named Albert or

Hesperus or Isbrand. At any rate, the Idea, rather than

the particular character, is always the important entity

in Beddoes. That these ideas, working through the charac­

ters, occasionally account for a dramatic scene is not really

significant. What is significant is that Beddoes, a man

of unquestioned integrity and great poetic talent, took up

the age-old battle between what we know and what we feel,

between our intellect and our imagination, between what we

hope for and what we get. He heightens our awareness of the world beyond the object: and he extends our sensibilities 192

into regions where they are not likely to wander on their own.

Beddoes is not a great poet. He had not the ability

to structure a complete work of art with the synthesis and

compression that are required. And we must not make the mistake of praising formless poetry with the critical assessment of "That's the way life is." On the other hand we must not let his inability obscure his ever-increasing appeal to the modern reader. Aside from his considerable

poetic talent and his ability to probe to the center of

our feelings and imagination, I suspect that part of his

appeal stems from his anticipation of the drama that was to

follow him. He remarks in one of his letters that "Say what

you will--! am convinced the man who is to awaken the drama must be a bold trampling iellow--no creeper into worm-holes--

1 no reviser even--however good. And when one thinks that

Ibsen and Strindberg and the expressionist drama were not

far in the future, Beddoes' remark seems particularly

prophetic and perhaps throws a new light on his own work.

For his own characters, like those in the expressionist's work, suggest psychic forces as much as, or more than, they

suggest real human beings. Similarly, his plays and poetry

contain elements of distortion, exaggeration, grotesqueness,

and implausibi1ity that clearly look forward to the alienating

effects of the avant-garde theater of our own time. And, as we have seen, Beddoes' poetry lacks an Identifiable emotional 193 and moral centrality, a characteristic that might instantly engage modern sympathies. Each reader, of course, will

respond differently, but almost all would agree on the poetic strength, the artistic vitality, and the philosophic via­

bility of the man who, according to S. C. Chew, "was a good poet and ought to have been a great one." FOOTNOTES FOR THE SUMMARY

^Works, p. 595.

^Chew, Literary H 1story of Eng land , p. 125&.

19U BIBLIOGRAPHY

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______. Studies in Thomas Love 11 Beddoes. A disser­ tation. Columbia Univers1ty! New York, T96l.

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