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The
Hunted
Beheaded
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and
Stag
the
King
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o.
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of kings," and yet the feelings conjured and the images depicted
indicate a "heartfully profound" remembrance of a monarchy and
a way of life now past.18 In its delineation of natural fear and simplistic animal response Cavendish's poem mimics the bold, honest
emotion of Charles's own work, the Eikon Basilike. Laying bare
his insecurities and regrets in the Eikon, Charles posthumously
invites readers to accept him not as the untouchable king but as
the persecuted man, the hunted animal. Wheeler suggests that
the Eikon "Abandon[s] the formal genres of parliamentary and
ceremonial discourse for the popular genres of religion and sensibility." 19Relying on the growing presence of sensibility within the
culture, the king dons the hat of the poet and tries to convince
audiences to step into his shoes and endure his torment. With
such penetrating observations as "My soul is among lions . . .
whose teeth are spears and arrows, their tongue a sharp sword,"
the king creates an aura of helplessness and terror.20 And in her
poem Cavendish relies upon similar imagery. For Charles, the
Roundhead soldiers are a pack of hungry lions; in Cavendish they
are bloodthirsty hounds whose 'Tongues out of their Mouths hung
long, / Their sides did like a Feaverish Pulse beat strong." The
stag, running blindly, wildly, cannot escape the rowdy 'Troop of
Men, Horse, [and] Dogs," just as Charles, finally trapped by an
angry army, has nowhere to turn.21
Unlike the poetic detachment one finds in Denham's Coopers
Hill, where the "view from a hill," as John M. Wallace establishes,
"afford[s]" the narrative voice the distance necessary to see "all
the problems of the crown and the capital in perspective," Cavendish never lets go of the stag, and she never permits her readers
to lose sight of the sublime creature either.22 She is on intimate
terms with this deer and forces her audience to be thus also.
The poem is about the "human" progress of the animal, a narrative of his life from beginning to end encapsulated in the final
moments of his final day. She depicts, for instance, the stag's
newborn-like innocence seen in his unrestrained enthusiasm in
the wheat field. Led by his senses and appetite, he runs toward
the open pasture:
He 'spied a Field, which Sow'd was with Wheat-feed,
The Blades were grown a handfull high and more,
Which Sight to Taste did soon Invite him o're;
In haste he went, Fed full, then down did lye.
(lines 52-5)
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And later she shows us the strength and virility of a young man
in his prime as she suggests a comparison with Caesar:
Had he the Valour had of Caesar stout,
Yet Yield he must to them, or Dye, no doubt;
Turning his Head, as if he Dar'd their spight,
Prepar'd himself against them all to Fight.
(lines 127-30)
In her study "Green Languages? Women Poets as Naturalists," Donna Landry maintains that Cavendish's poetry and prose
point to a "democratizing of relations between humans and other
species." Over time the line between mankind and the lesser
mammals becomes blurred, inviting more sentimental juxtapositions such as that offered by the duchess. Invoking the phrase
"imaginative animism," Frye discerns as one of the key ingredients of sensibility an unrestricted pity that "treat[s] everything
in nature as though it had human feelings or qualities."23Extant
in Cavendish's oeuvre, this free-flowing pity informs the central
themes of this poem. We see the emergence of a more emotionally
consequential literature, of poetry that takes risks by addressing the heart. And in order to reach the heart, Cavendish knows
that she must somehow establish a kinship between the poem's
protagonist and the reader.
Prior to the chase, the poet imbues the stag with distinctly
human traits in her efforts to draw the spectator into this tragedy.
She presents the deer in the initial phase of the piece as self-absorbed, hampered by the classic flaws of pride and vanity, and yet
these flaws are mitigated by the writer's philanthropic attitude:
In Evenings Cool and Dewy Morning he
Would early Rise and all the Forest see;
Then was he Walking to some Crystal brook,
Not for to Drink, but on his Horns to Look,
Taking such pleasure in his stately Crown,
His Pride forgot that Dogs might pull him down.
(lines 9-14)
That Cavendish had Charles I in mind is obvious: the "stately
Crown," the forest spread out before him, his kingdom to see, but
despite the majestic language and the stag's ultraregal air, the
picture is one of forgivable human weaknesses. She illustrates the
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In the eighteenth century one of the major concerns associated with the incipient "cult of sensibility" was what many,
according to Janet Todd, disdainfully labeled the "unfortunate
feminization of culture." Barbara Benedict explains, "'female
values' exemplified] the dangers as well as advances of new culture," while G. J. Barker-Benfield's study emphasizes that the
tendencies to which some men were prone in light of this cult
of sensibility were likely to transform such men into feminized
versions of themselves.27 Qualities such as passivity, excessive
female traits-were
delicacy, and self-absorption-stereotypically
understood as trademarks of this brand of sentimental expression. And here, in an early guise of this style of literature, we also
discern these "feminine" qualities. Marvell's nymph brings such
"suspect" characteristics to the forefront of the poem.
Initially, the young girl speaks of her fears and her poignant
memories of Sylvio as she complains of the death of her fawn-a
gift from her beloved. Later, however, as realized through the
maiden's lamentations, the humanistic deer gradually comes to
supplant Sylvio; the creature appropriates the "beloved" designation. The nymph's heartfelt wailings re-envision the animal as
one with appreciable feelings and behaviorisms. Like Cavendish's
stag, the fawn also passes through the various stages of man.
The animal is a baby suckled by its mother: "With sweetest milk,
and sugar, first/ I it at mine own fingers nurst"; it is an energetic
child, playful and happy: "With what a pretty skipping grace / It
oft would challenge me the Race"; it is flirtatious and amorous:
"And then to me 'twould boldly trip, / And print those Roses on
my Lip"; at last, it is a pensive and dying mortal being: "See how it
weeps. The Tears do come / Sad, slowly dropping like a Gumme"
(lines 55-6, 65-6, 85-6, 95-6).
While reading Marvell's fawn as an allegorical Charles I does
not seem a popular interpretation, several critics do agree that the
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Beyond these less conventional poetic requiems that interpolate images of persecuted stags or fawns, a number of traditional elegists employ animal imagery to the same ends. Henry
King, instead of "wanton troopers," in his Elegy presents an
"unkennell'd crew of Lawless men" in pursuit of the monarch.29
Using words such as "unkennell'd," King establishes the hunters as the true beasts. Charles meanwhile becomes their frantic,
wild-eyed prey:
Then all Dissenters in Both Houses Bay'd.
At which the King amaz'd is forc'd to flye,
The whilst your Mouth's laid on maintain the Cry.
The Royal Game dislodg'd and under Chase,
Your hot Pursute dogs him from place to place.
(lines 140-4)
Up to this point in the poem, the author assays to portray Charles
in an eminent, martial light using phrases such as: "Bold as Jehosaphat" and "Europes Most Glorious King" (lines 33, 72). However, following the treachery of the "Faction," the king's mighty
image shrinks. Depicting Charles as a defenseless animal on
the run, the poet begets a version of the monarch equal to every
man: 'The Mountain Partridge or the Chased Roe / Might now
for Emblemes of His Fortune go" (lines 149-50). As a stalked
deer, or partridge especially, Charles is no longer the formidable
Caesar, but a miserable wretch. We feel for the king because the
writer suddenly situates him as an underdog who cannot possibly
prevail; the entire nation is incriminated in this "King-catching
Sport" (line 154).
In an elegy published the year of Charles's execution and
later presented to Charles II upon his restoration to the throne,
Anthony Sadler, depending on the usual litany of mournful
prayer and funereal utterance, also incorporates the image of
the hunted hart:
I Hope, some true Historian will impart,
his Observations on this Royall HART;
which was so Foully Hunted, and became,
so great a Prey; to such as scorn'd the GAME.30
Sadler, combining the question of historical accuracy with poetic
lament, addresses an issue that occupies a number of writers of
this postwar era.31 By presenting a purely historical rendering of
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Charles the father, whose paternal eyes fill "with tears of joy and
admiration," and Charles the husband who prizes his "conjugal
tenderness" above all else (p. 376). The man behind the crown
is susceptible to ordinary human sensitivities and reactions: he
weeps, he loves, he regrets. Hume produces the sentimental story
of a vulnerable ruler who, though he may have begun his reign
as a prince "incapable of giving way to the spirit of liberty" which
was slowly inflaming England, is at last exalted in his death,
suddenly loved by and deeply connected to the people who once
believed him a tyrant (p. 64). The animal figures that Cavendish
and others utilize represent primitive precursors to this sentimentalized Charles of Hume's History. In Cavendish's stag, for
instance, readers witness the transformation of the self-satisfied
stalwart into a creature who comes to realize his infinitesimality
in the face of impending death. Like Hume's "sweet but melancholy" king, in his desperation, the duchess's deer responds as
any sentimental hero might: "His Heart so heavy grew with Griefe,
and Care," and in the face of his demise he "[s]hed[s] some Tears
at his own Funeral" (p. 380; lines 121, 140).
While Hume's portrayal is a more evolved version of the sentimentality exhibited in the works of these post-Civil War poets,
the key to understanding both generations of sensibility is sympathy. Hume finds resemblance to be the impetus precipitating
sympathetic response: "All human creatures are related to us
by resemblance. Their persons, therefore, their interests, their
passions, their pains and pleasures must strike upon us in a
lively manner, and produce an emotion similar to the original
one." Adam Smith offers a more intense explanation for sympathy suggesting that "[b]y the imagination we place ourselves in
[the sufferer's] situation, we conceive ourselves enduring all the
same torments, we enter as it were into his body, and become in
some measure the same person with him, and thence form some
idea of his sensations."34 In either scenario it is a man's ability to
relate to another by drawing on the example of his own emotional
disposition that enables him to feel pity for the distressed subject. In his narrative of the king's final days, Hume demonstrates
his own capacity for manipulating the average reader. He forces
people to evaluate Charles while considering their own emotional
response; the monarch's pain strikes audiences in a "lively manner." A century earlier, Denham, Cavendish, Marvell, and King,
anticipating Smith and Hume, realize that in order to evoke a
commiserative reaction to Charles's downfall they must tell a story
in which the central character, while maintaining a royal posture,
is not unlike the common man or woman. For Charles's tragedy
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20
Charles I, Eikon Basilike: The Portraiture of his Sacred Majesty in his
Solitudes and Sufferings, ed. Philip A. Knachel, Folger Documents of Tudor
and Stuart Civilization (Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press, 1966), p. 93.
21 Margaret Cavendish, 'The Hunting of a Stag," in Early Modern Women
Poets, ed. Jane Stevenson and Peter Davidson (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press,
2001), pp. 304-7, lines 71-2, 61. All subsequent references to Cavendish's
poem will be taken from this edition and cited parenthetically by line number.
22John M. Wallace, "Coopers Hill: The Manifesto of Parliamentary Royalism, 1641," ELH41, 4 (Winter 1974): 494-540, 497.
23 Donna Landry, "Green
Languages? Women Poets as Naturalists in
1653 and 1807," Huntington Library Quarterly 63, 4 (2000): 467-89, 471;
Frye, p. 135.
24 Sigmund Freud, "On Narcissism," in General
Psychological Theory:
Papers on Metapsychology, ed. Philip Rieff, The Collected Papers of Sigmund
Freud (New York: Collier Books, 1963), pp. 56-82, 71.
25Andrew Marvell, "The Nymph Complaining for the Death of her Faun,"
in Andrew Marvell: Complete Poetry, ed. George deF. Lord (New York: Random House, 1968), pp. 19-22, lines 115-8. All future references to Marvell's
poem will be taken from this edition and cited parenthetically in the text by
line number.
26 Barbara M. Benedict on the values endorsed by a culture of
sensibility
(Framing Feeling: Sentiment and Style in English Prose Fiction, 1745-1800 [New
York: AMS Press, 1994], p. 9); also see Daniel Jaeckle, "Marvell's Dialogized
Nymph" (SEL 43, 1 [Winter 2003]: 137-50, especially 144) for a reading of
the relationship between the nymph's use of "self-reflexive imagery" and the
language of Civil War poetics.
27Janet Todd, Sensibility: An Introduction (London: Metheun, 1986), p.
43; Benedict, p. 13; G. J. Barker-Benfield, The Culture of Sensibility: Sex
and Society in Eighteenth-Century Britain (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press,
1992), p. 99.
28Victoria Silver, "The Obscure Script of Regicide: Ambivalence and Little
Girls in Marvell's Pastorals," ELH 68, 1 (Spring 2001): 29-55, 44; Potter, p. 193.
29
Henry King, An Elegy upon the Most Incomparable King Charles the
I: Persecuted by Two Implacable Factions, Imprisoned by the One, and Murthered by the Other, January 30th 1648, 1st edn. (London, 1648), line 137.
All subsequent references to King's Elegy will be from this edition and cited
parenthetically in the text.
30 Anthony Sadler, The Loyall Mourner, Shewing the Murdering of King
Charles the First. Shewing the Restoring of King Charles the Second., 2d edn.
(London, 1648, 1660), p. 6, sec. VI.
31 In Time's Witness: Historical
Representations in English Poetry, 16031660 (Madison: Univ. of Wisconsin Press, 1990), Gerald Maclean looks at
the "limitations" afforded by traditional historical verse and the struggle that
mid-century poets faced when trying to reconcile elegy with history.
32
Stephen Zwicker contends that Milton, for example, aims to "depersonalize the king's struggle so that civil war might be elevated into history,
a realm distant from the mixed and trivial genres" (Lines ofAuthority: Politics
and English Literary Culture, 1649-1689 [Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press, 1993],
p. 45).
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