W&M ScholarWorks Arts & Sciences Books Arts and Sciences 1996 The Sexual Tensions of William Sharp: A Study of the Birth of Fiona Macleod, Incorporating Two Lost Works, “Ariadne in Naxos” and “Beatrice” Terry L. Meyers College of William and Mary,
[email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.wm.edu/asbook Part of the Literature in English, British Isles Commons Recommended Citation Meyers, Terry L.. "The Sexual Tensions of William Sharp: A Study of the Birth of Fiona Macleod, Incorporating Two Lost Works, “Ariadne in Naxos” and “Beatrice”" (1996). Peter Lang. https://scholarworks.wm.edu/asbook/9 This Book is brought to you for free and open access by the Arts and Sciences at W&M ScholarWorks. It has been accepted for inclusion in Arts & Sciences Books by an authorized administrator of W&M ScholarWorks. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. Introduction Printed here for the first time are two lost works by the nineteenth-century Scottish writer William Sharp (1855-1905), works that manifest the poetic and cultural impress of the Victorian age (especially its constrictions on gender and sexuality) and that illuminate Sharp's complex personality. The first work is "Ariadne in N axos," a moving and dark play of love and abandonment stimu lated by Algernon Charles Swinburne's Greek tragedy Atalanta in Calydon (1865); the second is "Beatrice," a poem in the idyllic mode popularized by Alfred, Lord Tennyson. William Sharp and the Victorian Pressures on Sexuality When he died, William Sharp was respected as journal ist, writer, and poet.