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Yeats and the English Renaissance

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

T. McAlindon
T. McAlindon*
Affiliation:
University of Hull Hull, England
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Extract

The profound change which became evident in Yeats's poetry with the publication of The Green Helmet (1910) and Responsibilities (1914) was due in large measure to his defiant adoption of an aristocratic outlook and a corresponding expression of anti-democratic sentiments. It has generally been held that Castiglione's The Courtier, to which Lady Gregory introduced him in (probably) 1907, and his visit with her in the same year to Urbino, Ferrara, Ravenna, and Florence acted as the most important cultural stimuli behind his conversion to the aristocratic ideal and his conviction that this was most perfectly realized during the Renaissance. Yet during the period 1901–06 Yeats had been engaged in a continuous study of the three greatest writers of the English Renaissance. And it was in this process, I submit, that his commitment to the Renaissance, to aristocratic values, and, what is more, to an aristocratically oriented poetry, was finally accomplished.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 82 , Issue 2 , May 1967 , pp. 157 - 169
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1967

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References

1 There is some uncertainty regarding the exact date at which Yeats first became familiar with Castiglione's book. He referred to it for the first time in Discoveries, 1907 (Essays and Introductions, London, 1961, p. 293), but in The Bounty of Sweden, 1924, remarked that twenty years earlier a friend (Lady Gregory) read it to him on summer evenings (Autobiographies, London, 1961, p. 545). A. N. Jeffares, W. B. Yeats Man and Poet (London, 1949), pp. 170, 321, therefore specifies 1904; but “twenty years” in the given context seems more like a round figure than an exact estimate. J. M. Hone, W. B. Yeats, 1865–1939, 2nd ed. (London, 1962), p. 219, apparently had 1906–07 in mind.

2 Letters to the New Island, ed. H. Reynolds (Cambridge, Mass., 1934), pp. 214, 216.

3 For these points see The Genealogy of Morals, tr. B. Samuel (London, 1910), pp. 18–23, 34, 54, 75–82, 117, 199; Beyond Good and Evil, tr. B. Zimmern, 4th ed. (London, 1923), pp. 227–230, 254, 260; Thus Spake Zarathustra, tr. T. Common, 5th. ed. (London, 1923), p. 232; The Birth of Tragedy, tr. W. A. Haussman, 3rd. ed. (London, 1923), pp. 57, 161, 171; Ecce Homo, tr. A. M. Ludovici (London and New York, 1911), p. 73.

4 Yeats, Autobiographies, pp. 190, 192, 246, 354–355.

5 Morris, Collected Works, ed. May Morris (London, 1910–15), xxii, 56, 160, 321, 389–390.

6 Autobiographies, p. 189. For Yeats's reading of Chaucer see The Letters of W. B. Yeats, ed. Allan Wade (London, 1954), p. 457; hereafter cited as Letters. Cf. Autobiographies, p. 191.

7 Letters, pp. 349–350, 352; Allan Wade, A Bibliography of the Writings of W. B. Yeats (London, 1951), p. 88. The essay is contained in Essays and Introductions, pp. 96–110; subsequent references in my text are to this edition.

8 The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats, 2nd. ed. (London, 1950), pp. 166–167; hereafter cited as Poems.

9 Poems of Spenser, Selected and with an Introduction by W. B. Yeats, n.d. [1906], pp. 263; hereafter cited as Spenser. The essay is also in Essays and Introductions; references in my text are to this edition. The importance of the essay in relation to the development of Yeats's thought has also been stressed by Miss A. G. Stock, “Yeats on Spenser,” in In Excited Reverie: A Centenary Tribute to William Butler Yeats, 1865–1939, ed. A. N. Jeffares and K. G. W. Cross (London, 1965), pp. 93–101. See also E. Engleberg, The Vast Design: Patterns in Yeats's Aesthetic (London, 1965), pp. 51–53. For details concerning the composition of the essay see Letters. pp. 365, 380, 384, 386–387, 390–391.

10 Morris, Collected Works, xxiii, 52, 55.

11 Letters, p. 379.

12 Letters, p. 387.

13 Jonson's sensational assertion regarding the manner of Spenser's death was regarded as unreliable long before 1902 (see, for example, DNB, s.v. “Spenser, Edmund”), but Yeats presented it as fact since it suited his particular view of the Spenser phenomenon.

14 Ruines of Time, ll. 61–70, 344–371, 400–406, etc.; Yeats, Poems, pp. 7–8, Autobiographies, p. 92 (cf. p. 66).

15 Collected Plays of W. B. Yeats (London, 1953), pp. 127–128; Horace, Odes iv.viii–ix. The Horatian theme is frequent in Ben Jonson's “patronage” poems (e.g., The Forrest xii.41–64), and, of course, is thematic in Shakespeare's sonnets.

16 Hero and Leander iii.43, 52. The link with Chapman has already been noted by A. G. Stock—W. B. Yeats: His Poetry and Thought (Cambridge, 1961), p. 108—who expresses her indebtedness for the point to T. R. Henn.

17 See W. L. Renwick, ed. Spenser's Complaints (London, 1928), pp. 240–242.

18 Poems, pp. 274–275 (cf. pp. 219, 221, 229–230). Other echoes of Spenser in Yeats's mature poems can be conveniently specified here. The “moralist or mythological poet” who “compares the solitary soul to a swan” in “Nineteen Hundred and Nineteen” is Spenser. This whole passage (Poems, pp. 234–235) recalls the fine lines on the flight of the solitary swan (Sidney's soul) at the end of The Ruines (ll. 589–602). There are echoes of the same Spenserian stanzas in “Coole Park and Ballylee, 1931” (“And, like the soul, it sails into the sight / And in the morning's gone, no man knows why”). In the latter poem too (Poems, pp. 275–276), Yeats's conceit on the whiteness of the swan, “So arrogantly pure, a child might think / It can be murdered with a spot of ink,” probably originates in a similar conceit in the description of the swans in “Prothalamion”:

So purely white they were,
That euen the gentle streame, the which them bare,
Seem'd foule to them, and bad his billowes spare
To wet their silken feathers, least they might
Soyle their fayre plumes with water not so fayre,
And marre their beauties bright. (ll. 46–51)

These resemblances have already been noted in G. Melchiori, The Whole Mystery of Art (London, 1960), pp. 106–109. The Teares of the Muses, too, furnished an unusual phrase for “The Tower.” Spenser's Muse complains that love poetry is banished from England: “Faire Cytheree the mother of Delight, / And Queene of beautie, now thou maist go pack, / For lo thy kingdom is defaced quight” (Teares, ll. 397–398); Poems of Spenser, ed. Yeats, p. 12. Yeats complains that because of old age he must turn from passionate poetry to mystical philosophy: “It seems that I must bid the Muse go pack, / Choose Plato and Plotinus for a friend” (Poems, p. 218).

19 Explorations, sel. Mrs. W. B. Yeats (London, 1962), pp. 141–163, 164–180. References in my text are to this edition.

20 Explorations, pp. 161, 155, 207. See also Essays, pp. 277–278 (Discoveries, 1906).

21 Morris' medievalism accounts for Yeats's later preoccupation with Byzantium. See my article “The Idea of Byzantium in William Morris and W. B. Yeats,” MP, lxiv (1967).

22 Explorations, p. 181. For the source of this allusion see Jonson's Hymenaei [Masque of Hymen], ll. 568–586, in Ben Jonson, ed. C. H. Herford and P. & E. Simpson (Oxford, 1925–52), vii, 229.

23 Essays, pp. 278–280. Cf. Letters, p. 450 (1905: The Silent Woman), Autobiographies, p. 480 (1909: Poetaster).

24 “Ben Jonson's address to the Court of his time,” which Yeats recalled when he was received at the cultured Swedish court in 1923, and quoted in The Bounty of Sweden (Autobiographies, p. 545), was taken from the dedication to Cynthia's Revels (Herford & Simpson, iv, 33).

25 Poetaster v.iii.455–462 (Herford & Simpson, Vol. iv). Previous quotations: Poetaster v.iii.79 (cf. Cynthia's Revels v.viii.30–35); CR, Prologue, ll.13–14, 1–5; Poet. iii.i.247–259, iv.viii.15; Poet, iii.i.234–236 (cf. CR v.vi.100–107); Poet. v.i.34–37.

26 Poetaster, “To the Reader,” ll. 233–239 (the last two lines appear again in Jonson's “An Ode To Himself”—a rejection of the stage—in The Under-Wood, No. xxiii: H & S, vi, 492). For the preceding quotations see CR iii.iii.15–16; Poet., “To the Reader,” ll. 179–180.

27 For the above points see Hone, W. B. Yeats, 1865–1939, p. 275; Yeats, Explorations, p. 225; Letters, p. 671 (cf. the Preface to Synge's The Tinker's Wedding: “Ben Jonson and Molière can no more go out of fashion than the berries on the hedges”); Alan Price, Synge and the Anglo-Irish Drama (London, 1961), p. 116; Synge, Preface to the Poems; Yeats, Letters, p. 474.

28 “Ode to Himself,” appended to The New Inn (H. & S., Vi, 492). Yeats was familiar with this work; see Autobiographies, p. 325.

29 Explorations, p. 81.

30 Letters, p. 646. See also p. 648 where Yeats has discovered that Spenser was following Virgil.

31 H. & S., viii, 93 ff., 242 ff.

32 For these two quotations see The Forrest xiii.67, Under-Wood xiii.144. For rootedness and the flourishing aristocratic tree see further The Forrest xiii.97–100; Und. xxx.17–19, lxv.5–7, lxxiv.29–30, lxxiv (Pt. ii), 8–9, lxxiv (Pt. ix), 163–166; Epigrammes cix.13.

33 The Romantic Image (London, 1957), pp. 38–40.

34 The sombre opening stanza of Cowley's ode, the astrological imagery and the Castor and Pollux comparison used in developing the Friendship theme (st. iv), the notion of an intolerable fate (st. i) (related to the astrological imagery), the emphasis on rich and joyful but unfashionably stoic and sober comradeship (sts. iv, vii), the statement that death is better than life in this age (st. x), and, less specifically, the notion of great learning compressed into “such a short mortality” (st. vii), all point to Jonson's ode. Saintsbury, A Short History of English Literature (London, 1898), p. 404, remarked that Cowley's lyrics “are often quite Jonsonian.”