An Analysis of On Sitting Down To Read King Lear Once Again

1156 Words3 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Keats' excellence as a sonnet writer

An Analysis of On Sitting Down To Read King Lear Once Again

The poem "On Sitting Down to Read King Lear Once Again" by John Keats is a sonnet about Keats' relationship with the drama that became his idea of tragic perfection, and how it relates to his own struggle with the issues of short life and premature death. Keats uses the occasion of the rereading this play to explore his seduction by it and its influence on himself and his ways of looking at himself and his situation in spite of his negative capability.

From the first few lines Keats alludes to the great romances of the previous ages as opposed to William Shakespeare's great tragedies. While it could be discerned that Keats is referring to his poem Endymion: A Poetic Romance, the underlying meaning of the lines remains. Keats writes "O golden tongued Romance, with serene lute!/ Fair plumed Syren Queen of far-away!/ Leave melodizing on this wintry day,/ Shut up thine olden pages and be mute." (Lines 1 - 4). Keats here is shutting out the idyllic romantic notions he cannot at this time cling to due to the ever present spectre of death that hangs above him. Keats forsakes the romantic here leaning instead toward the tragic, which is what he perceives his short life to be. In these opening lines Keats seems to be a desperate, and morose storyteller who forbids himself the taste of the ideal, regardless of how strong a pull romance has for him. Keats is forced to command the romance to "Shut up thine olden pages and be mute!" (4) in order to pull himself away from it. This shows not only the strong attraction romance holds for Keats, but also Keats' recognition of the Romance as a personified thing he can converse with and bid "Adieu!" (5). The use of ...

... middle of paper ...

...ime it is clear that Keats has succeeded in accomplishing the transition of the Phoenix into immortality, as Keats still lives on over one hundred seventy five years after his death in his poetry and our memories

ON SITTING DOWN TO READ KING LEAR ONCE AGAIN by John Keats

O golden tongued Romance, with serene lute! Fair plumed Syren, Queen of far-away! Leave melodizing on this wintry day, Shut up thine olden pages, and be mute: Adieu! for once again the fierce dispute (5) Betwixt damnation and impassion'd clay Must I burn through; once more humbly assay The bitter-sweet of this Shakespearian fruit. Chief Poet! and ye clouds of Albion, Begetters of our deep eternal theme! (10) When through the old oak Forest I am gone, Let me not wander in a barren dream, But when I am consumed in the fire, Give me new Phoenix wings to fly at my desire.

Show More
Related

  • Examples Of Obituary For Medusa

    248 Words  | 1 Pages

    Medusa had once been a beautiful women and was a normal person. She was not beautiful until she was turned into a gorgon by goddes Athena, because she caught her with poseidon in the temple. Medusa was killed by poseidon's son Percy Jackson, by killing her with a riptide sword and cutting off her head. Medusa was born during the Bronze age, and was ancient in that time. Her age was unknown, but she was a mortal in her existence.

    Read More

  • Abrahamic Covenant Essay

    910 Words  | 2 Pages

    Land: A specific land was to be allocated to Abraham forever, with extensive boundaries starting from the border of Egypt to River Euphrates. God promised Abraham that his seed shall be made the dust of the earth and inherit the land. The control of the land was stretched out to the reign of King

    Read More

  • King Lear Essay

    1236 Words  | 3 Pages

    King Lear is a tragedy by William Shakespeare. It is a play that portrayed a world too cruel and unmerciful to be true to life. It is a play filled with endless horror and unrelieved suffering. However, in this environment, Shakespeare expresses human existence in its profound depth. He examines the motivation of the characters’ actions and the future consequences of their irrational thoughts. In the play, Shakespeare illustrates King Lear’s development as a tragic hero driven by emotion to a character of rational thoughts with the help of his reasonable daughter, Cordelia, and the contrast of the ambiguous Edmund. In the play, Shakespeare analyzes the characters’ emotional needs and their ability to resolve their problems with rational actions. He shows the consequences of acting rashly and irresponsibly through the sufferings of King Lear. He explores the struggle for power and the emotional need of a tired king. He created a play that illustrated the needs of reason and emotion for a human being.

    Read More

  • The Existential Progression of King Lear

    3669 Words  | 8 Pages

    1-William Shakespeare. King Lear edited by Russle Fraser.(New York: Penguin Putnam Inc., 1982). All future references will come from this text.

    Read More

  • Combined Experience of Suffering, Death and Love all at Once

    1547 Words  | 4 Pages

    John Keats’s illness caused him to write about his unfulfillment as a writer. In an analysis of Keats’s works, Cody Brotter states that Keats’s poems are “conscious of itself as the poem[s] of a poet.” The poems are written in the context of Keats tragically short and painful life. In his ...

    Read More

  • The Richness of Old Age: a New Critical Reading of "to Autumn"

    1026 Words  | 3 Pages

    "Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they? Think not of them, thou hast thy music too." So often, people look back upon their youth and wish that they still had it before them. Our natural tendency is to fear old age, to see it as the precursor to death, rather than a time of life, desirable in its own right. However, in John Keats' poem, To Autumn, he urges us not to take this view, but to see old age as a beautiful and enviable state of life, rather than something to be feared.

    Read More

  • Controversy in Greek Tragedy Medea

    571 Words  | 2 Pages

    Medea is a woman who murdered her brother and left her homeland to be with Jason, her love and eventual husband. After she bears him two children he leaves her and marries the daughter of the King of Corinth. Medea then proceeds to use her children to deliver gifts laced with violent poison to the princess. The princess dies and so does her father.

    Read More

  • When I Have Fears That I May Cease To Be By John Keats Analysis

    853 Words  | 2 Pages

    John Keats is an early nineteenth century Romantic poet. In his poem “When I have Fears that I May Cease to Be,” Keats makes excellent use of a majority of poetry elements. This sonnet concentrates merely on his fear of death and his reasons for fearing it. Though Keats’ emphasizes his greatest fear of death, he offers his own resolution by asserting that love and fame lacks any importance. Keats uses articulate wording to exemplify his tone, while using images, figures of speech, symbols, and allegory to illustrate his fear of death. His use of rhythm, sounds, and patters also contribute to his concentration of fear and the effects on his life. As one of the most famous Romantic poets, John Keats utilizes the elements of poetry in “When I Have Fears that I May Cease to Be” to convey his fears and allow the reader to realize how much these fears affect him.

    Read More

  • Shakespeare's King Lear - A World too Cruel?

    1688 Words  | 4 Pages

    King Lear is at once the most highly praised and intensely criticized of all Shakespeare's works. Samuel Johnson said it is "deservedly celebrated among the dramas of Shakespeare" yet at the same time he supported the changes made in the text by Tate in which Cordelia is allowed to retire with victory and felicity. "Shakespeare has suffered the virtue of Cordelia to perish in a just cause, contrary to the natural ideas of justice, to the hope of the reader, and, what is yet more strange, to the faith of chronicles."1 A.C. Bradley's judgement is that King Lear is "Shakespare's greatest work, but it is not...the best of his plays."2 He would wish that "the deaths of Edmund, Goneril, Regan and Gloucester should be followed by the escape of Lear and Cordelia from death," and even goes so far as to say: "I believe Shakespeare would have ended his play thus had he taken the subject in hand a few years later...."3

    Read More

  • La Belle Dam Sans Merci

    1159 Words  | 3 Pages

    Keats had a fear of endings. He wanted every pleasant sensation and every love affair to go on forever with the same intensity. There are two aspects of "La Belle Dame Sans Merci" that expresses Keats' wish to immortalize fleeting happiness. One is the existence of fairies and elfin magic in the poem. The "Lady in the Meads," (Keats p507 line 13) is "a faery's child."(Keats p507 line 14) She sings "A faery's song" (line 24) and takes the Knight at arms to her "elfin grot." (line 29) In mythology fairies are immortal and eternally youthful and beautiful. They live in a realm known as Faerie, which is always summer and forever twilight. This magical land would appeal to Keats...

    Read More

  • Allusion In Ode To A Nightingale

    1461 Words  | 3 Pages

    Arguably one of John Keats’ most famous poems, “Ode to a nightingale” in and of itself is an allegory on the frail, conflicting aspects of life while also standing as a commentary on the want to escape life’s problems and the unavoidability of death. Keats’ poem utilizes a heavy amount of symbolism, simile and allusion to idealize nature as a perfect, almost mystical, world that holds no problems while using imagery taken from nature, combined with alliteration and assonance, to idealize the dream of escape from the problems life often presents; more specifically, aging and our inevitable deaths by allowing the reader to feel as if they are experiencing the speaker’s experience listening to the nightingale.

    Read More

  • John Keats Dance With Death

    1071 Words  | 3 Pages

    For example, in the first line is him contemplating his fear that he may never live to share all of his knowledge. It is a strange fact that we, as humans, believe that we will not die; we think this until there is that one point in life that we first see death. For many, a sense of mortality does not hit until a loved one’s light suddenly goes out and all that is left is a stream of hazy memories of that person. Keats knew his flame was flickering, so he wrote down his feelings and thoughts with vigor. When people of his time read what he put down on paper, they were not ready to accept the inevitable because they only saw a man belligerent about his life. Is has been said that, “the generally conservative reviewers of the day attacked his work, with malicious zeal, as mawkish and bad-mannered, as the work of an upstart." (The Poetry Foundation) After his death at such a young age, people began to see why he was contemplating such a dark concept. Basically, Keats gives the example that although the words of today can sometimes be ignored, there may be a time in the future when those words mean the world to

    Read More

  • The Story Of English

    1238 Words  | 3 Pages

    It is generally agreed that Bishop Odo was the architect who commisioned the Bayeux Tapestry. It was designed and constructed reasonably soon after the battle in 1066. It was made without any shadow of a doubt to celebrate and record for posterity the events leading up to battle and its aftermath.

    Read More

  • An Analysis of the Symbols in Yeat’s Poems

    920 Words  | 2 Pages

    The first text entitled, “When you are Old” by William Yeats has the main message of his lover leaving him, but uses the symbolism of a book. The main message of this poem is William Yeats had a lover who loved Yeats has much as he loved her; the only problem was the woman Yeats loved was a “rebellious” women’s rights activist. She thought that if she were to marry, it would look bad on her for being controlled by a man, and trying to push for women’s rights. Yeats publishes a book of poetry, giving her one of his first copies. In this Yeats hopes that one day when she is old she will, “by the fire, take down this book, and slowly read, and dream of the soft look” (Yeats, When you are Old, page 1140, lines 2-3) and then he hopes she regrets not marrying him. The book of poetry that he publishes is a representation, a symbol, of future regret for his ...

    Read More

  • Analysis of the Sonnet, "My Mistress' Eyes are Nothing like the Sun"

    431 Words  | 1 Pages

    This poem speaks of a love that is truer than denoting a woman's physical perfection or her "angelic voice." As those traits are all ones that will fade with time, Shakespeare exclaims his true love by revealing her personality traits that caused his love. Shakespeare suggests that the eyes of the woman he loves are not twinkling like the sun: "My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun" (1). Her hair is compared to a wire: "If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head" (3). These negative comparisons may sound almost unloving, however, Shakespeare proves that the mistress outdistances any goddess. This shows that the poet appreciates her human beauties unlike a Petrarchan sonnet that stresses a woman's cheek as red a rose or her face white as snow. Straying away from the dazzling rhetoric, this Shakespearean poem projects a humane and friendly impression and elicits laughter while expressing a truer love. A Petrarchan sonnet states that love must never change; this poem offers a more genuine expression of love by describing a natural woman.

    Read More

More about An Analysis of On Sitting Down To Read King Lear Once Again

Open Document