• Abstract and Figures
• Public Full-text

presented to Xibran? or tbe IHni\>er0it of Toronto bg S. 1bart SWINBURNE'S DRAMAS SELECTED AND EDITED BY ARTHUR BEATTY, PH.D. OF THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN MICROFO BY PRESFv SERVICES DATE.MAY.Q.&.199Q NEW YORK THOMAS Y. CROWELL & CO. PUBLISHERS "PR COPYRIGHT, 1909, BY THOMAS Y. CROWELL & CO. CONTENTS PAGE PREFATORY NOTE v INTRODUCTION vii DRAMAS: Atalanta in Calydon I Erechtheus 103 Mary Stuart 179 CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF SWINBURNE'S WRITINGS . 359 BIBLIOGRAPHIES 360 LIVES 360 CRITICISMS 361 NOTES 363 PREFATORY NOTE Atalanta in Calydon and Erechtheus have been included in this volume of Swinburne's selected dramas because they are among the most characteristic products of his dramatic genius. Taken together, they stand among a very small company of poems which embody the spirit of Greek tragedy with any degree of completeness. More- contain some of Swinburne's finest verse over, they lyrical ; and these two considerations make inevitable the inclusion of the two plays, in spite of the fact that the author himself has classified them with his poems. The poet himself decided upon the representative of his plays written on the model of Shakespeare, for he was of the opinion that he had never written anything worthier of discriminating apprecia- tion than Mary Stuart. For the translation of the Greek dedication of Atalanta in Calydon, and for help in tracing Swinburne's Greek sources, I am indebted to my wife. ARTHUR BEATTY. JANUARY i, 1909. INTRODUCTION ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE was born in Chapel Street, London, April 5, 1837. He was the eldest child of Admiral Charles Henry Swinburne, who belonged to an old Northum- brian family which can be traced back as far as Sir William de Swinburne, in the time of Henry II. His mother was Lady Jane Henrietta, a daughter of George, third Earl of Ashburn- ham, of lineage at least as old as the Conquest. Although he was born in London, he does not properly belong to the honorable line of London bred and born English poets, as his family was merely making a short stay in Bel- gravia at the time of his birth. His youth was nourished in other scenes, for he spent his boyhood in the two geographical extremes of England; the winters at East Dene, Bonchurch, in the Isle of Wight, and the summers at the home of his grand- father, Sir John Edward Swinburne, at Capheaton, in Nor- thumberland. Thus he passed all his early years within sound and sight of the sea, and so we may understand why his poems are so uniformly inspired by the ocean. Indeed, by lineage and by early associations, he is a veritable "Thalassius," as he calls himself in his noble autobiographical poem, a child, or fosterling, of the sun and the wave. To adopt the last line of Erechtheus, no poet has so fully realized "the friendship and fame of the sea." In his twelfth year he was sent to Eton College, where he remained until his seventeenth year. In 1856 he went as a commoner to Balliol College, Oxford, where he spent four but he left without a While at years ; taking degree. Oxford, vii INTRODUCTION he mingled with a congenial group of men, among whom were the late John Nichol and G. Birkbeck Hill; and at this time began his lifelong friendship with William Morris, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and Edward Burne-Jones. During his undergraduate career he showed remarkable proficiency in French, Italian, and the classics; and that he possessed the literary impulse is shown by the publication of four articles in a college magazine, Undergraduate Papers. Swinburne later called these articles "crudities"; but, while they are marked by the weaknesses of youth, they show that he was already interested in the works of Marlowe and Webster, and that he was influenced by the early work of William Morris. In 1860, the year in which he left Oxford, he published his first volume of poetry, made up of two tragedies, The Queen Mother and Rosamond. In 1861 began his Wanderjahre. He went to Italy with his family and visited Walter Savage Landor, whom he fervently admired. After a few weeks he returned to England, and for a period of five years published very little; until, in 1865, he captured the critical world with Atalanta in Calydon. In this year he also published Chastelard, the first part of the Mary Stuart trilogy. The following year, 1866, he collected his miscellaneous poems, some written early and some late, in the first series of Poems and Ballads. The storm which Atalanta and the Poems and Ballads raised is a matter of literary history: the protests of those who objected to the atheism of Atalanta and the content of some of the Poems and Ballads, and the astonished applause of those who were captured by the new and enchanting melodies alike contributed to the poet's fame. There is but little to record concerning Swinburne's life, save the publication of his successive volumes in prose and verse and the dates of these will be found in the ; Chronological viii INTRODUCTION List of his writings. For the special purpose of this volume, however, we may note that in 1874 Bothwell, the second part of the Mary Stuart trilogy, appeared, and was followed in 1881 by the concluding part, Mary Stuart. In 1876 Erechtheus was published, the second and last drama after the Greek form. About 1872 he formed a friendship with the critic, novelist, and poet, Theodore Watts-Dunton, which culminated in their taking up residence together at The Pines, Putney Hill, near London, in 1879. Here he lived apart from the great world of men and affairs, in single-hearted devotion to the twin arts of poetry and criticism, until his death, on April 10, 1909, just five days after his seventy-second birthday. In late years a deafness had increased his natural inclination for a retired life, and he rarely met visitors. His chief recreation was long rambles across Putney Heath. His own wishes had been for a grave near the sea; and in obedience to them, his body was placed in the family vault at East Dene, Bonchurch, in the Isle of Wight. With the death of Swinburne the great Victorian generation is ended. We are still too near to the Victorian age to be cer- tain that we understand its essential tendencies, or to assign to any of its poets his relative rank, except in the most tentative way. Of this much, however, we may be certain: that the was influenced the scientific movement age profoundly by ; and the poets may be ranked and classified with regard to their in- terpretation of the results of the discoveries in the natural sciences and the attendant readjustments in theological, ethical, and Biblical criticism. Here Browning is ranged; and here, too, we find Tennyson, and in the supreme place as the almost official interpreter of scientific results to the human spirit. But we must remember that both Tennyson and Browning came early, and that In Memoriam antedates the time when ix INTRODUCTION the results of the newer science were known. In a very real sense, Browning and Tennyson do not interpret the results of The Origin of Species. Neither one was young enough in 1859. Here is the importance of Swinburne and Matthew Arnold; and both take a position directly contradictory to the faith of Tennyson and Browning. Atheism, and unfaith in the God of the time, is the dominant note of Atalanta in Calydon, and Poems and Ballads, with many youthful indiscretions and excesses. The same unbelief, with all restraint, had been ex- pressed ten years earlier in Arnold's Empedocles and Poems. This attitude both poets continued to maintain throughout their careers, Arnold reaching his climax in Thyrsis, The Scholar Gipsy, and the two Obermanns; and Swinburne cul- minating in the equally austere morality of Thalassius, and The Altar of Righteousness. Those who believe that Swin- burne has nothing to say should remember that as that stern moralist Henry Sidgwick calmly and manfully faced death he comforted himself by reciting portions of Super Flumina Babylonis. But the attitude of Swinburne and Henry Sidgwick was not that of the great majority of Victorians; and, in this as well as in other ways, Swinburne was in frank opposition to the main tendencies of his times. He began his career as an opponent of the idyllic school, and continued to assert a broader art and a more sweeping, various melody; he worshipped heroes, as well as to his as a critic of litera- gods, impossible generation ; ture he was a Romantic in method, with unbounded enthusi- asms and hatreds; as a critic of society he protested against the low ideals of duty and art prevalent in his day. In all these he ran counter to his time to the multitude he ; and great was a mere man of words, as he is to many yet. But in the face of his complete works such an opinion must be changed INTRODUCTION for a truer estimate. There are signs that he has a secure hold the future for he has been the of upon ; long model young poets, and in their verse we can see the future possibilities of the new music which is so amply preluded in his work. Moreover, we can see already how truly he judged the im- " perfect ideals of his own age the age of the Morte d'Albert." No doubt much of his writings will be forgotten, and in this he is not alone by any means, but in the coming years, when the accounts of the Victorian era can be more accurately cast, without a doubt he will be one of the most significant figures, both as interpreter and artist.

Load more

  416

Copy Link