From King Lear to Keats' Dear: Been There, Donne That

The metaphysics of enclosure, one ‘little world of man’ to the next.

The creation of a ‘world formed by art’, as Herbert Marcuse puts it, requires that it ‘emancipates itself from the given universe of discourse’ while still ‘preserving (the) overwhelming presence’ of ‘given reality’. The ‘given reality’ is necessary for what Keats would term the ‘vale of soul-making’, where suffering and pain is necessary for the facilitation of an individual into a higher plateau of existence. For the likes of Shakespeare, Keats, and Donne, this higher plateau of existence would be the recurring theme of the ‘little world of man’ that Shakespeare makes reference to in King Lear; to enclose oneself away entirely from the rest of the world. Keats’ Romantic poetry conveys an enclosed universe similar to that which Shakespeare conveys in King Lear, while Donne’s Metaphysical poetry helps to ‘facilitate’ this comparison. There preoccupations with the ‘little worlds’ of their discourses are almost paradoxically wide-ranging, yet also tread and re-tread along many similar paths, so as to almost form, between their three distinct worlds, one cumulative universe.

Donne’s ‘The Good-Morrow’ centres on a lover’s waking thoughts as he awakes next to his partner, transitioning gradually from the ‘first world of flesh to that of mind and thence to a world of spirit’ (Arnold Stein). Commonly seen as an ‘egocentric sensualist who ignored the feelings of the woman’ (Kenneth Muir), this poem displays a remarkable sensitivity that seems to go against yet in a paradoxical way, support this interpretation. Donne seems to care for the figure of his womanly lover and makes sure that the ‘little roome’ of the lover and his partner is ‘everywhere’ not in its universality, but rather its intimacy, esoteric to the extent that only the two of them can enter this room; yet at the same time, seems to internalise this as a discourse not between himself and his partner, but rather self to self. C.S. Lewis saw Donne’s poetry as having an ‘intellectual and fully conscious complexity that we soon come to the end of’ (C.S. Lewis); perhaps what he is referring to here is Donne’s esoteric restraint. His unconventional sonnet follows in vein of Wordsworth’s description of the ‘sonnet’s narrow room’. There is much intensity of intellect, yet it is also evidence self-restraint through implication; he doesn’t give the whole game away, so to speak, but rather shows ‘skill to convey something without full liberty’ (Graham Greene). This self-awareness of self-enclosure Greene speaks of is also an evident recurring theme throughout Shakespeare’s works; it is perhaps, most explicitly depicted in Henry V, where the figure of the Chorus establishes the world of Henry V as being an ‘unworthy scaffold’, an inadequate shrine to more glorious days and yet, still distinct and necessitating invitation for the audience to enter; or The Winter's Tale, where midway through the play, Time as one which pleases 'some' (a certain number) but affects/tries 'all', controls the universe of 'The Winter's Tale' by swiftly sliding over sixteen years, instilling into the play's second half a greater sense of mystique and magic by this addition of a fantastical element of time-skipping to the proceedings. Like in King Lear we feel more and more immersed in Shakespeare's world with every omniscient move by God, Choruses and Time, as it puts the characters down to scale, more along our own levels.

This concept of a ‘small world’ within which the actions of the play take place is particularly prevalent amongst those centring on monarchs. The excellent Shakespearean actor Ian Richardson once discussed the ‘expert stage-management of those about the Sovereign’, referring in particular to Richard II’s ‘parade of magnificence and the demonstration of power’; Richard II is perennially putting on an ‘act’ as a Christ figure, something which Lear does to in attempting to assert himself as a ‘man/ more sinned against than sinning’. The opening scene of King Lear involves the very ‘stage-management’ Richardson spoke of, but it is most decidedly not ‘expert’. He essentially lets Goneril and Regan win him over with their foppery of language; he has no control over the stage despite his exalted view of his own prerogative, for in a ‘tribe of fops’ he is the lead, a poor fool indeed to the manipulations of other through ‘that glib and oily art’ of manipulative speech. When Lear cries, ‘come not between a dragon and his wrath’ it is not nearly as expert a display of showmanship as say, Richard duelling the ‘man of few words’ (Richardson) Bollingbroke with his careful immersion of self into the ‘role of a holy martyr’ who ‘must what force will have us do’, or Henry V rousing his troops into battle with his St Crispin’s Day speech. The court is an enclosed world, but Lear fails to assert himself over it due to his failure to ‘see better’ past the ‘lendings’ of deceptive language.

The problem with Lear’s handling of his ‘small world of man’ at the outset, is that he clings onto his past and past powers, to ‘needs superflous’; he is at first unwilling to set aside these ‘lendings’ of his kingship, and the fickle matters of the court, and find his way into a new world of privacy and intimacy with Cordelia, whom he has banished from his court. Keats’ description of King Lear as being a ‘fierce dispute betwixt damnation and impassioned clay’ is rather fitting here, as Lear’s ‘impassioned’ existence as ‘clay’ (stoic and fixed) has limited him from the potential he can assert in ‘damnation’ and death. Clearly, Keats was a great believer in allowing oneself to be thrown into the unknown in favour of the known, to be banished from dull certainties into a world of one’s own, where contingencies of existence are irrelevant and the metaphysics thrive. In his ‘Ode to Psyche’ expressly mentions ‘a fane in some untrodden region of my mind’ as being the ideal situation for his ‘wander’d in a forest thoughtlessly’; he shows but doesn’t tell, of this little world within him where he explores. It is a recurring theme of Keats’ that he maintains restraint in describing his glimpses of the metaphysical (‘I have a mysterious tale, and I cannot speak it…to indistinct in the core of an eternal fierce destruction’ , he once wrote in an epistle to J.H. Reynolds), on one hand for fear of language being inadequate to express his visions (his ‘sandals more interwoven and complete to fit the naked foot of Poesy’, as he describes in ‘if by full rhymes our English must be chain’d’, are seen to ‘bound’ and nullify the impact of ‘the muse’, much in the same way Lear gradually begins to see language as not ‘valued, rich or rare’ like Goneril describes it, but actually means nothing); but also for want of privacy in his little world.

When he then proceeds to declare, ‘let us possess one world, each hath one, and is one of man to out-scorn’, Donne displays a similar desire for privacy and closeness with his partner, each having ‘one’ world to themselves, and finally to ‘out-scorn’ and alienate any outsiders, that Lear shows when he hopes they can like birds ‘i’the cage’, live together for all eternity. The difference, however, being that Lear had to be ‘pushed out beyond the boundaries of life…the reality of emptiness’ (Grigori Kozinstev), propelled into a void of nothingness before he could find this new unseen reality beyond the borders, whereas Donne’s ‘undeterminable desire of more, than this life can minister unto him’. His ‘t’was so’ at the beginning of ‘The Good Morrow’ is as Arnold Stein puts it, a dismissal, redefinition of reality in a ‘new, exclusive’ form; out of the force of imagination, comes a transformation of self from carnal neuroses to spiritual peace, and a transition from a world of flesh into a world of metaphysical purpose and passion. Yet within this little world remains reservations: as he remarks at one point in his 'Devotions upon Emergent Occassions', and extended discourse on morality and salvation, he wonders whether 'if man had been left alone in this world at first, shall I think that he would not have fallen?', making reference to the concept of original sin. Intimacy is equally susceptible to evil as it is to good, and with regards to the 'little worlds' of man, 'no man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main', and if we do not involve outselves in interchange of sympathies and 'misery' with others, this self-imposed exclusion may well prove to be a turn for the worse.

Keats’ admiration of the paths taken into the unknown by both these figure is palatable by his praise of the ‘golden-tongued Romance’, making it clear that he in a sense, has modelled himself after him; seeing him as a ‘begetter of our deep eternal theme’ means he holds a belief that the Bard holds influence beyond just historical reality, but extends beyond it into the world of metaphysics. Like Donne, who was ‘so conscious of himself that we are aware of him…in a manner and to a degree hardly to be paralleled in our reading of our lyric poetry’ (Sir Herbert Grierson), Keats has a supreme awareness of self which works nicely along Donne in facilitating the ‘little world of man’ in King Lear; in Keats’ Odes, in particular, we find a very esoteric, self-aware (and verging on self-absorption) narrative voice which escape from reality, reject the order of the present and implement sacraments of what is past (‘draught of vintage…cool’d a long age’ in ‘Ode to a Nightingale’) and prophetically, what is to come (previsions of the otherworld where ‘shade to shade will come to drowsily’). Tempering this, however, is the more cynical edge to the likes of 'La Belle Dame Sans Merci', were the intimacy of the 'elfin grot' is soon revealed to be nothing more than an illusion, the 'cold hill side' being the harsh reality of desolation.