No-yet still stedfast, still unchangeable, Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast, boldly printed heading of Shakespeare's poem, A Lover's Complaint, as if in that mournful moment Keats desired to appropriate to his last poetic utterance a style and title already immortal. Lord Houghton gives a variant of the last line Half-passionless, and so swoon on to death. As there is no trace of this in the Shakespeare, there must have been another manuscript—perhaps a pencilled draft—and it is to be presumed that the words fall and swell in line 11 of Lord Houghton's text occurred in that, swell and fall, the reading of the Shakespeare, being in that case an error of transcription on Keats's part. The date of the poem is about the end of September or beginning of October 1820. 364 [Keats and Brown went to the Isle of Wight for a summer sojourn in 1819; and during the months of July and August the following tragedy was written at intervals under very peculiar conditions. They are thus described by Brown in a note given by Lord Houghton in the Aldine edition of 1876 :-"At Shanklin he undertook a difficult task; I engaged to furnish him with the title, characters, and dramatic conduct of a tragedy, and he was to enwrap it in poetry. The progress of this work was curious, for while I sat opposite to him, he caught my description of each scene entire, with the characters to be brought forward, the events, and everything connected with it. Thus he went on, scene after scene, never knowing nor inquiring into the scene which was to follow, until four acts were completed. It was then he required to know at once all the events that were to occupy the fifth act; I explained them to him, but, after a patient hearing and some thought, he insisted that many incidents in it were too humorous, or, as he termed them, too melodramatic. He wrote the fifth act in accordance with his own views, and so contented was I with his poetry that at the time, and for a long time after, I thought he was in the right." There are numerous references to this undertaking in Keats's letters (which see); but one in particular should be quoted here. It is in a letter to Mr. Dilke dated "Shanklin, August 2, 1819", and is as follows:-" Brown and I are pretty well harnessed again to our dog-cart. I mean the tragedy, which goes on sinkingly. We are thinking of introducing an elephant, but have not historical reference within reach to determine as to Otho's menagerie. When Brown first mentioned this I took it for a joke; however, he brings such plausible reasons, and discourses so eloquently on the dramatic effect, that I am giving it a serious consideration". In The Papers of a Critic (1875), Volume I, page 9, Sir Charles Dilke gives the following extract from a letter dated August 12 1819, from Brown, in the Isle of Wight, to Mr. Dilke :-"Keats is very industrious, but I swear by the prompter's whistle, and by the bangs of stage-doors, he is obstinately monstrous. What think you of Otho's threatening cold pig to the newly-married couple? He says the Emperor must have a spice of drollery. His introduction of Grimm's adventure, lying three days on his back for love, though it spoils the unity of time, is not out of the way for the character of Ludolf, so I have consented to it; but I cannot endure his fancy of making the princess blow up her hairdresser, for smearing her cheek with pomatum and spoiling her rouge. It may be natural, as he observes, but so might many things. However, such as it is, it has advanced to nearly the end of the fourth act." The late 365 Joseph Severn possessed an autograph manuscript of this play, from which he was in the habit of giving away pieces as specimens of Keats's writing. After his death there were still many leaves entire a small portion of Act I, the greater part of scene II, Act IV, and most of Act V. I have collated these portions with the printed text, adopted some readings, and noted others, as will be seen. The exact order in which this tragedy and the two fragments of King Stephen and The Cap and Bells should be arranged in regard to the latest of Keats's other posthumous poems cannot, I imagine, be determined. Having regard to this circumstance and the entire difference of form and matter from what is characteristic of Keats, I have thought it well to place these three essays last, rather than disturb the sequence of those poems which are more representative, though of course the sonnet written in Shakespeare's Poems, at all events, was later than either of these three tentative pieces.-H. B. F.] |