Practical Criticism: Class 1

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Critical Discussion

The poem opens enigmatically by evoking a group of wild creatures. The pronoun 'they' does not reveal exactly who or what would 'take bread' at the speaker's hand. They seem to be birds or deer, both of which can be both carefully looked after by man and hunted. This uncertainty is reinforced later in the poem. 'Danger' in line 5 may carry both its modern sense and an obsolete sense of 'to put yourself in the power of someone'; either way it hints that the relationship between the creatures and their feeder carries a hint of threat, and the echo of 'Danger' in 'range' and 'change' does not let the reader forget about that threat. That the unnamed and unidentifiable creatures are not just 'walking' but 'stalking' creates a real uncertainty about the balance of power in this stanza: are they 'treading timorously', like beasts (OED 1), or proceeding stealthily like a hunter (OED 2).

The second stanza appears to focus in on a more specific scene: the 'she' of line 12 is clearly a woman, and the speaker is remembering a time before the creatures in stanza 1 ceased to trust him. But even here the pronouns lead us enigmatically forwards. The lady's clothes ('in thin array'; 'loose gown') are described before we are offered a specific 'she' on which to hang them. The occasion too is left deliberately blurred: 'after a pleasant guise' might mean either 'after some courtly entertainment' or simply 'in a pleasing manner'. The poem only looks directly at the scene in the emphatic monosyllables of 'she me caught in her arms long and small' - and even here the word 'caught' might have sinister associations with entrapment. Those arms are delicate: the speaker is also conscious that they could ensnare. The image continues the hint of threat which is apparent in the first stanza. It also prompts a major, and amazed, rupture in the expected metrical structure: 'Therewith all sweetly did me kiss' is an octosyllabic line, drawn out to fill the space of the line by its weight of drama.

The lady's rhetorical question ('Dear heart...?') does not ask for a reply; but as the poem progresses into the third stanza the question seems to initiate uncertainty, and uncertainty of an increasingly radical kind. It is of course paralleled by the concluding indirect question of the speaker ('I would fain know what she hath deserved'); but his question combines complete bafflement in the face of her changefulness with a faint undertone of potential violence. It is as though the question is directed both to the speaker himself and to his audience. It is at once 'how can I make sense of this?' and 'how might I retaliate?'

That final question is prepared for by the extraordinarily enigmatic usages of abstract nouns and terms which one would expect to express simple moral qualities in the last stanza: 'gentleness' one might expect to refer to benevolence or mildness or aristocratic good manners; and yet it is 'gentleness' that has led to the speaker's abandonment. The moral virtue does not seem to be achieving the results which the speaker would wish. This unease over apparently simple reference points becomes outright bitterness in 'I have leave to go of her goodness'. 'Goodness' indeed: there is a heavy stress on the word which comes close to sarcasm. This growing stress on moral terminology comes to a head in 'But since that I so kindly am served'. That line is metrically awkward, and contains only nine syllables (unless the final 'ed' is pronounced as a separate syllable, in which case the line ends with a feminine, unstressed syllable, as though tailing off into perplexity). The best way to squeeze it out into ten syllables is to stretch and twist the word 'kindly' in pronunciation as much as the lady seems to have stretched and deformed its sense. The word can mean 'gently' or 'according to nature' or 'like a friend or member of the family'. None of those senses fit comfortably here. Those old simple terms no longer work: this betrayal is so violent in its effects that it wreaks havoc with words which one would expect to describe good attributes. This rough modification of the more or less expected iambic pattern is also found at the start of the last stanza, which is a nine syllable line with an unstressed final syllable: the shock of the scene described in the second stanza forces a breathless delay on the caesura, which comes to occupy the space of an entire syllable as the speaker pauses to emphasise the truth of the incredible tale which he is telling. Throughout the poem metre serves to emphasise emotion: metrical expectations as well as expectations about the meanings of individual words are pulled out of shape by the extraordinary scene which the speaker is describing.

What finally is one to make of this poem? It is enigmatic, systematically enigmatic, almost in a manner that implies the speaker has been so wounded by the one specific scene he can remember (the woman coming to him and then leaving him) that he can no longer focus on any specific event. He cannot rely on words like 'gentleness' to have their former consoling meanings: he is left busily seeking for a means of retribution, or a means of expressing his hurt. The only means at his disposal is to evoke the intensity of his pain by showing that his moral vocabulary has been left in a state of collapse by his affair.

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You might wish to record your notes on this critical discussion:

• How does it use the evidence we built up earlier in the class?
• How does it go beyond that evidence?
• How does it deal with the parts of the poem which are the most difficult to understand?
• Does it go too far beyond that evidence to a point where it engages in unconvincing speculation?

©Colin Burrow 1999