Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Maud
Learner Resource 1 The Opening
Key Concepts: Monodrama, dramatic monologue, soliloquy, pathetic fallacy, speaker.
Look at Part I (lines 1 - 76). In these lines Tennyson establishes: the state of mind of the speaker, his attitude to the world around him, his memories of his father’s death and his mother’s reaction to it. The section ends with the first mention of Maud and her imminent return to the hall.
Contextual note: The poem was given the title Monodrama in 1875, 20 years after it was finished in July 1855.
· Why do you think Tennyson thought it was necessary to clarify the poem’s genre in this way?
· What do you understand by the term?
Dramatic monologues are similar but there is usually an implied audience or addressee to a dramatic monologue. For example in Browning’s ‘My Last Duchess’, the Duke of Ferrara is speaking to the emissary of his prospective bride’s family. There is also often a sense of an implied response or interaction between the speaker and his audience in dramatic monologues. The speaker of ‘Maud’ has no such implied audience. We could compare the form of ‘Maud’ to soliloquies as the speaker is voicing thoughts aloud to the reader or audience alone.
· What effects do you think this has on our response to the character?
· What does it suggest about his state of mind?
· What does it emphasise about the character’s place in society?
· What kind of relationship does it establish between speaker and reader?
Contextual note: Tennyson said about Maud ‘different phases of passion in one person take the place of different characters.’
· What do you think Tennyson meant by this statement?
· How can Tennyson’s statement inform our reading of the character?
Look at lines 1 - 4. Explore the use of pathetic fallacy in these lines.
· How does the language used convey the morbidity of the speaker’s feelings?
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Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Maud
Look at lines 5 - 16.
· How does the speaker present his father’s death and his mother’s reaction to it?
· What is ambiguous about his father’s death?
· What does he blame for his father’s despair?
· In these lines Tennyson uses the device of syndetic listing, (lists where ‘and' is used as a conjunction); ‘And ever he mutter’d and madden’d and ever wann’d with despair.’ What impact does this construction have on the meaning and tone?
Look at lines 17 - 20.
· How do the circumstances of the ‘lord of the broad estate and the Hall’ differ from the speaker’s family’s situation?
· What do you notice about the metaphor used to describe this difference? He ‘Dropt off gorged from a scheme that had left us flaccid and drain’d.’
Contextual note: These lines have been linked to a scheme proposed by Matthew Allen to make wooden carvings with steam driven carving machines. The Tennyson family invested £8000, which they lost when the scheme failed.
Look at lines 21 - 52. In this section the speaker contrasts the states of war and peace.
· Explore the way his attitudes to these contrary states are presented.
· What is unusual about his perspective?
· How far do you feel Tennyson expects us to agree with his feelings?
· In particular look at lines 47-48 ‘Is it peace or war? better war! loud war by land and by sea,/ War with a thousand battles, and shaking a hundred thrones!
Contextual note. Tennyson called his poem ‘a little Hamlet.’ In the early scenes of the play, Hamlet, like Tennyson’s speaker, is seen in a state of despair over his father’s death and as the play unfolds his intelligent cynicism is likewise directed at the corruption of the world. He also comes to wonder if there is something nobler in war than peace. A comparison to Hamlet’s soliloquy that begins: ‘How all occasions do inform against me’ (Hamlet, Act IV Sc IV Lines 33- 66) could be made here. Hamlet is comparing his own inaction to what he perceives to be the nobility of Fortinbras’s campaign.
‘Rightly to be great/ Is not to stir without great argument,/ But greatly to find quarrel in a straw/ When honour’s at the stake.’
· Do you feel Shakespeare expects his audience to agree with Hamlet here? Pay particular attention to the way this soliloquy ends.
· Shed light on Tennyson’s comparison of ‘Maud’ to ‘Hamlet’ – what connections is Tennyson making?
Look at lines 53 - 64.
· What fears does the speaker express in these lines?
· What considerations does he explore about how his death will be received?
· What does he mean when he asks ‘Can a sweeter chance ever come to me here?’
Look at lines 65 - 76. Maud is introduced to the reader in these lines.
· What do you notice about the way she is described?
· She is linked with his memories of her as a child. What effect does that have on our reaction to his attitude to her?
· His memories of her are linked to happy memories of his father and mother. What does this suggest about his feelings for her?
· The wealth of her family is established and yet she is linked with childhood energy and innocence. However, some readers suggest that the description of ‘her sweet purse mouth’ shows the speaker’s unconscious linking of her desirability with wealth. How far do you agree with this view?
· Lines 69-72 all begin with Maud’s name. What impact does this use of anaphora have on the reader?
· Why does the speaker feel he should avoid her? Are we convinced by this?
Extension work: A level.
Compare the way the opening scene of your drama text establishes key characters and the concerns of the play with the way Tennyson establishes key characters and concerns of ‘Maud’ here.
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Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Maud
Hamlet Act IV SC IV lines 33-66.
Exeunt all except HAMLET.
How all occasions do inform against me,
And spur my dull revenge! What is a man,
If his chief good and market of his time
Be but to sleep and feed? a beast, no more.
Sure, he that made us with such large discourse,
Looking before and after, gave us not
That capability and god-like reason
To fust in us unused. Now, whether it be
Bestial oblivion, or some craven scruple
Of thinking too precisely on the event,
A thought which, quarter'd, hath but one part wisdom
And ever three parts coward, I do not know
Why yet I live to say 'This thing's to do;'
Sith I have cause and will and strength and means
To do't. Examples gross as earth exhort me:
Witness this army of such mass and charge
Led by a delicate and tender prince,
Whose spirit with divine ambition puff'd
Makes mouths at the invisible event,
Exposing what is mortal and unsure
To all that fortune, death and danger dare,
Even for an egg-shell. Rightly to be great
Is not to stir without great argument,
But greatly to find quarrel in a straw
When honour's at the stake. How stand I then,
That have a father kill'd, a mother stain'd,
Excitements of my reason and my blood,
And let all sleep? while, to my shame, I see
The imminent death of twenty thousand men,
That, for a fantasy and trick of fame,
Go to their graves like beds, fight for a plot
Whereon the numbers cannot try the cause,
Which is not tomb enough and continent
To hide the slain? O, from this time forth,
My thoughts be bloody, or be nothing worth!
Exit
Porphyria's Lover
By Robert Browning
The rain set early in to-night,
The sullen wind was soon awake,
It tore the elm-tops down for spite,
And did its worst to vex the lake:
I listened with heart fit to break.
When glided in Porphyria; straight
She shut the cold out and the storm,
And kneeled and made the cheerless grate
Blaze up, and all the cottage warm;
Which done, she rose, and from her form
Withdrew the dripping cloak and shawl,
And laid her soiled gloves by, untied
Her hat and let the damp hair fall,
And, last, she sat down by my side
And called me. When no voice replied,
She put my arm about her waist,
And made her smooth white shoulder bare,
And all her yellow hair displaced,
And, stooping, made my cheek lie there,
And spread, o'er all, her yellow hair,
Murmuring how she loved me — she
Too weak, for all her heart's endeavour,
To set its struggling passion free
From pride, and vainer ties dissever,
And give herself to me for ever.
But passion sometimes would prevail,
Nor could to-night's gay feast restrain
A sudden thought of one so pale
For love of her, and all in vain:
So, she was come through wind and rain.
Be sure I looked up at her eyes
Happy and proud; at last I knew
Porphyria worshipped me; surprise
Made my heart swell, and still it grew
While I debated what to do.
That moment she was mine, mine, fair,
Perfectly pure and good: I found
A thing to do, and all her hair
In one long yellow string I wound
Three times her little throat around,
And strangled her. No pain felt she;
I am quite sure she felt no pain.
As a shut bud that holds a bee,
I warily oped her lids: again
Laughed the blue eyes without a stain.
And I untightened next the tress
About her neck; her cheek once more
Blushed bright beneath my burning kiss:
I propped her head up as before,
Only, this time my shoulder bore
Her head, which droops upon it still:
The smiling rosy little head,
So glad it has its utmost will,
That all it scorned at once is fled,
And I, its love, am gained instead!
Porphyria's love: she guessed not how
Her darling one wish would be heard.
And thus we sit together now,
And all night long we have not stirred,
And yet God has not said a word!
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Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Maud