JULISA Volume 3 Nomor 2, 2003

ECHOES OF SHAKESPEARE IN T.S.ELIOT’S THE WASTE LAND

Purwarno English Department Universitas Islam Sumatera Utara, Medan e-mail: [email protected]

Abstract

T.S. Eliot in his works used many phrases, lines or references from previous writers either explicitly or implicitly. However, of the many phrases, the lines or references he used, the most dominant phrases are those of William Shakespeare. This article reveals that there are so many lines, phrases or references to Shakespeare's works quoted either in whole or in part by T.S. Eliot in one of his best poems entitled The Waste Land, especially the lines and phrases of Shakespeare's final drama The Tempest.

Keywords: echoes, reminiscence, T.S. Eliot, Shakespeare, The Waste Land, The Tempest

INTRODUCTION T.S. Eliot (1888-1965) was the most towering and allusive man of letters of the 20th century. He was a versatile genius who during his long span of productive activity achieved distinction as a poet, playwright, critic and journalist. Eliot‟s The Waste Land swings and sways with its memories of past masters among whom Shakespeare‟s is the dominant presence. His poetry marks a break from the 19th century tradition. He rejected the romantic theory that all art is basically an expression of the artist‟s personality, and that the artist should create according to the dictates of his own inner voice without owing allegiance to any outside authority. As a reaction of this subjectivism, he advocated his theory of impersonality of poetry. Eliot believes that inspiration alone cannot be safe guide. It often results in eccentricity and chaos. Some sort of guidance, some discipline, and some outside authority are necessary to save art from incoherence and emptiness.

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Eliot was a „classicist in literature‟ and one of his important contributions to literary criticism is that he paved the way for the rise of neo-classicism. Eliot, in his essay Tradition and the Individual Talent, regards the whole of European literature from Homer down to his own day as forming a single literary tradition. This tradition is not a dead one, it continues and lives in the present. A great poem or a great work of art can be possible only when the poet or the artist has a sense of this literary tradition. Eliot emphasized on the importance of historical sense. The historical sense compels a man to write not merely with his own generation in his bones, but with a feeling that the whole of the literature of a country has a simultaneous order. This historical sense is what makes a writer traditional. Eliot had a highest regard for Shakespeare, and this regard is the very reason why he has echoed Shakespeare in his poetical works. Eliot‟s classical bias appears both in his poetical and critical works. Among the voices found in Eliot‟s poetry, those of Shakespeare are the most predominant. Therefore, in order to understand Eliot better, it will be of much use to examine his indebtedness to Shakespeare, the great Elizabeth playwright. In this article, the writer searched out only on the echoes of Shakespeare in Eliot‟s The Waste Land.

DISCUSSION The Waste Land (1922) is the most influential poem of the modern age and an important landmark in the history of English. It constitutes T.S.Eliot‟s most important poem, written in 433 lines and divided into five parts entitled The Burial of The Dead, A Game of Chess, The Fire Sermon, Death By Water, and What the Thunder Said. T.S. Eliot is regarded as one of the greatest English poets. His poetry marks a break from 19th century tradition. He emphasized the need of establishing a new tradition. Eliot poetry is a new kind of poetry, his technique is new, and this very novelty creates difficulties. The reader of his poetry must be well versed with the literature of Europe so that he may understand the poet‟s references found in his poems. One of the causes which contribute to make his poetry difficult arises from his borrowings on an unprecedented scale. His poetry abounds in allusions, references, quotations, and literary reminiscences which bewilder and perplex his readers.

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In The Waste Land, there are a number of allusions and references of different writers. Frequently a quotation is modified and altered so that it becomes very tough to identify its sources. That is why critic after critic has described The Waste Land as a very obscure poem and the chief source of difficulty is the extreme allusiveness of his style. The echoes of Shakespeare found in „The Waste Land‟ are both verbal and ideological. Helen Gardener remarks that the Shakespearean echoes apart from direct adaptation, are everywhere in The Waste Land. Some characters in The Waste Land are reminiscent of Shakespeare‟s. Eliot‟s reference to Shakespeare‟s play The Tempest form part of an atmospheric and thematic design in The Waste Land. The line from Ariel‟s song follows Madame Sosotris‟s discovery of one of the Tarot cards-that of the Phoenician sailor, Eliot writes. Those are pearls that were his eyes (The Waste Land, I, line 48, and II, line 125)

The line quoted above is from Shakespeare‟s The Tempest (I, ii.)— that is Ariel‟s song to the ship-wrecked Ferdinand. The song is about the supposed drowning of Ferdinand‟s Father, Alonso: Ariel sings : Those are pearls that were his eyes: nothing of him that doth fade. But doth suffer a sea-change Into something rich and strange (The Tempest, I, ii)

The supposed drowning of Alonso and Ferdinand is regarded as their purification by water, and the “sea change” suffered by Alonso typifies, from one point of view, suffering transmuted into art. Alonso is a transformed person at the end. The Lady in A Game of Chess feels nervous and frightened as she hears there is some sound or noise. She asks her lover what that noise is. The lover replies that it is the wind under the door. As the noise is heard again, the lady asks what the wind is doing under the door. The lover merely replies:

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Nothing again nothing

The nervous lady then impatiently asks: You know nothing? Do you see nothing? Do you remember Nothing?

The lover replies that he remembers a line from Shakespeare‟s The Tempest— that is Ariel‟s song, “Those are pearls that were his eyes”. Then the girl asks again: “Are you alive, or not? Is there nothing in your head?”

In the conversation between the lady and her lover we find out that the word „nothing‟ is repeated again and again. It is repeated six times. The repetition of the word nothing is reminiscent of King Lear‟s warning to his youngest daughter, Cordelia:

Cordelia : Nothing, my lord King Lear : Nothing! Cordelia : Nothing. King Lear : Nothing will come of nothing: speak again. (King Lear, I, i)

Besides, there is also another passage, the conversation between the Fool and King Lear, which is worth quoting: Fool : Then „ tis like the breath of an unfee‟d Lawyer, — you gave me nothing for‟t —can you make no use of nothing, uncle? King Lear : Why, no, boy; nothing can be made out of nothing. (King Lear I, iv)

Another allusion of the word „nothing‟ perhaps can be referred to the echo of Ophelia‟s modest answer to Hamlet: Hamlet : Do you think I meant country matters? Ophelia : I think nothing, my lord.

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Then in the third part of The Waste Land, The Fire Sermon, the second Thames daughter who feels extreme humiliation after the loss of her virginity says: I can connect Nothing with nothing (lines: 301-2)

The girl feels frustrated and her life is equal to nothing. Just as nothing (O) added to nothing (O) is valueless so her life is a mere thing of naught. What the second daughter of the Thames says is also reminiscence to what King Lear says to the Fool. Lear : ………….. nothing can be made out of nothing.

Lines 71-72 of The Waste Land which are the farewell of the ladies visiting one bar to an another are reminiscent of Shakespeare‟s Hamlet in which in Shakespeare‟s Hamlet we find Ophelia bids farewell to the Queen and other ladies of the castle. Therefore the pub keeper‟s farewell to the ladies visiting the pub in part two of The Waste Land, A Game of Chess, is closely the echoes of Ophelia‟s farewell. ………. Goonight Goonight. Good night, ladies, good night, sweet ladies, good night, good night. (The Waste Land lines 171-72)

Ophelia: ……………….. Good night, ladies; good night, sweet ladies; good night, good night. (Hamlet, IV, v)

The farewell words of the ladies in the bar do not have any tragic note. The words are merely a routine words for them before departing the bar. Vulgar talk is heard in their words. However Ophelia‟s departing words in Shakespeare‟s Hamlet impart to the whole episode an added poignancy. In other words her farewell words have certain tragic notes. Besides, Ophelia also met her “death by water” which is the same as the sub-title of The Waste Land part IV, Death by Water. Line 191 of The Waste Land: “Musing upon the king my brother‟s week” is reminiscent of Prince Ferdinand‟s words in Shakespeare‟s The Tempest Line 191

132 Echoes of Shakespeare In T.S.Eliot‟s The Waste Land, Purwarno quoted above is the protagonist‟s words in The Waste Land, Tiresias, while sitting by the waters of Leman and weeping: By the waters of Leman I sat down and wept.

The situation is the same as Ferdinand who is thinking that his father is dead due to being drowned in the sea. Ferdinand is also, sitting by water and weeping. Sitting on a bank, Weeping again the king my father‟s wrack (The Tempest, Act I, ii)

In T.S. Eliot‟s The Waste Land, the protagonist, Tiresias as the brother of the King Fisher, mourned the King‟s sickness, impotency, etc, while in Shakespeare‟s The Tempest, Ferdinand, the prince of Naples, mourned for his father who was drowned in the sea. The title of part II of The Waste Land, A Game of Chess and line 127 of the same part, “And we shall play a game of chess” is reminiscent of Shakespeare‟s The Tempest. In the play there is a scene in which Propero discovers Ferdinand and Miranda playing chess in his cell. (Act V, i) However in Shakespeare‟s The Tempest, the game is played by two young persons who are really in love with each other, while in T.S Eliot‟s The Waste Land there is no love at all. The game of chess is a symbol of the failure of sex relationship in the modern waste land. Sex has become a matter of intrigue, a matter of moves and counter moves between men and women. It has become a mere source of pleasure and has lost its spiritual significance. In T.S Eliot‟s The Waste Land, the lover asks his girl to play a game of chess (line 127), but the game is only a desperate expedient of the lovers who are indifferent to each other and who want to get rid of the boredom of their life. There is no love lost at all between the lady and her lover. In part III of The Waste Land, The Fire Sermon, the lady typist puts a record on the gramophone so that its music may make her forget what she has committed with her lover just before. This music is quite different from Ariel‟s song which is heard by Ferdinand. “This music crept by me upon the waters” (The Tempest, I, ii)

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The line quoted above is Ferdinand‟s speech continuing after “weeping again the King, my father‟s wrack”. The same line is also found in T.S.Eliot‟s The Waste Land, line 256 which sounds as unpleasant as “A rat crept softly through the vegetation” (The Waste Land, line 187). The music of Ariel appears to Ferdinand as though it “waits upon some god o‟the island”. (The tempest, I, ii) Besides, the echoes or the reminiscences from The Tempest, T.S.Eliot‟s The Waste Land has also echoes or reminiscences from other plays of Shakespeare. In part II of The Waste Land, A Game of Chess, there is a lady named Lady of situations whose love is futile. The lady has all the luxuries of life: The chair she sat in, like a burnished throne, Gloved on the marble, ….. (The Waste Land, Lines: 77-78)

This is an echo of Shakespeare‟s play, Antony and Cleopatra in which Enobarbus‟s famous description of the first meeting of Antony and Cleopatra begins: The barge she sat in, like a burnish‟d throne, Burn on the water. The poop was beaten gold; (Antony and Cleopatra, II,ii)

The bed chamber of Eliot‟s Lady of situations recalls to our mind that of Imogen in Shakespeare‟s Cymbeline as described by Iachimo who makes her husband Posthumus believe that she is not chaste. It is so interesting to note that Imogen‟s chamber has tapestry with the story of Cleopatra meeting the Roman in her barge depicted on it: ……. tapestry of silk and silver; the story Proud Cleopatra, when she met her Roman And Cydnus swell‟d above the banks, or for The press of boats or pride…….. (Cymbeline II, ii)

In an earlier scene of Cymbeline, we find Iachimo soliloquizing in Imogen‟s bed- chamber: „Tis her breathing that Perfumes the chamber thus; the flame o‟the taper

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Bows toward her, and would under peep her lids To see the enclosed lights, now canopied. Under the windows, white and azure, lac‟d. With blue of heaven‟s own instinct. (Cymbeline II, ii)

In Eliot‟s The Waste Land we find that there are only “synthetic perfumes” in the lady‟s bed chamber which “troubled, confused/And drowned the sense in odors:…” (The Waste Land, lines 87-89). In Imogen‟s room, we find: Her andirons ………. Were two winking cupids Of silver (Cymbeline, II,iv)

In Shakespeare‟s Antony and Cleopatra, we see: Pretty dimpled boys like smiling cupids, With divers-coloured fans (Antony and Cleopatra, II, ii)

In Eliot‟s The Waste Land, we note that there are: “standards wrought with fruited vines From which a golden Cupidon peeped out…” (Lines: 79-80)

Eliot‟s Belladona, The lady of situations of the Tarot Pack, has neither the exuberant sprightliness of Cleopatra nor Imogen‟s tranquil chastity. In the Waste Land, Eliot makes use of Philomela a symbol of the violated woman. The story of Philomela as narrated by Ovid in his Metamorphosis depicts how she was raped by the barbarous King, Tarus, her brother-in-law and was later transformed into a nightingale, the bird with a golden throat. Tarus, the barbarous King, is a true representative of the ruthless males in Eliot‟s The Waste Land. The change of Philomel, by the barbarous king So rudely forced,…… (The Waste Land lines: 89-100)

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Eliot has introduced the story of Philomel as it was carved on the old mantle piece in the lady‟s bed chamber. On it there was carved a scene through which one could see a wood or a garden which depicts the story of Philomela. In Shakespeare‟s Cymbeline, Iachimo notices in Imogen‟s room: She hath been reading late The tale of Tereus; here the leaf turn‟d down Where Philomel gave up. (Cymbeline, II, ii)

In part IV of The Waste Land, Death by Water, we find “Gentile or Jew” (Line 319) which is reminiscent of Gratiano‟s words in Shakespeare‟s The Merchant of Venice. Now, by any hood, a Gentile, and now Jew. (The Merchant of Venice, II, iii)

In part III of The Waste Land, The Fire Sermon, we find a line, “the moon shone bright” (line: 199) which is reminiscent of Lorenzo‟s words addressed to Jessica: The moon shines bright:- (The Merchant of Venice V, i)

In the last section (part V) of The Waste Land, What the Thunder Said, Eliot introduces the traitor Ugolino and another traitor, “The broken Coriolanus” (line 417). The introduction of Coriolanus who lacked “Damyata” (self-control or control over one‟s own passions and desires) is really an adaptation of the story of Damyata which refers to the myth of the condition of utter draught and famine which once prevailed in India. The water level in the holy river Ganges was low. The leaves were hanging down in a lifeless manner, dry and withered. All waited anxiously for rain. There were black clouds over the distant Himalayas, but there was no rain. The beast of the jungle suffered from intense thirst, and sat helplessly. All men and beast alike sat crowded together in complete silence. They prayed to god (Prajapati) and the god replied to them in a loud thundering voice “DA, DA, DA” (Datta= „to give‟, Dayadharm= „to sympathise‟ and Damyata= „self-control‟ and „discipline‟). While in Shakespeare‟s Coriolanus, the protagonist of the play, Coriolanus, who acted out of pride rather than

136 Echoes of Shakespeare In T.S.Eliot‟s The Waste Land, Purwarno duty, is an obvious example of a man locked in the prison of his own self. He led the enemy against his native city out of injured pride.

CONCLUSION Eliot has the highest regard for Shakespeare and in his poem The Waste Land, we find that there are many references or phrases and lines borrowed from Shakespeare‟s works, i.e. „The Tempest, Hamlet, King Lear, Anthony and Cleopatra, The Merchant of Venice, Cymbeline and Coriolanus. However, one cannot say that Eliot is a mere imitator of the writers before him for his echoes have not adversely affected his works as Eliot was not without talent. Eliot is the most outstanding writer of the 20th century.

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REFERENCES

Bergonzi, Bernard. 1978. T.S. Eliot. London: Macmillan.

Nagarajan, S. and Viswanathan, S. 1987. Eliot and Shakespeare: A New Perspective. Delhi: Oxford Univ. Press.

Primlani, Mohan. 1980. Complete Works of William Shakespeare. New Delhi: Oxford & IBH Publishing Co.Pvt. Ltd.

Smith, Grover. 1967. T.S. Eliot’s Poetry and Plays. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

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