Signs and signatures
The Shakespeare effect on Keats
Darshan Singh Maini

Though a very large number of critics have written on the influence of the Bard of Avon on Keats, I have perhaps a new view to offer.

If the index to The Letters of John Keats (which has over 200 references to Shakespeare and his work in as many as 241 letters) is any indication of the younger poet’s fascination with and early ‘intimations’ of his Elizabethan master, it is not surprising to see Keats deeply influenced by the Bard of Avon. Keats goes on in letter after letter, to enlarge the Shakespearian parameters of his tutelage from playful references to profound and penetrating comments on the nature of poetry qua poetry, and on the inevitability of dramatic utterance in the end. And in this ‘theatre’ of Shakespearian thought and images, there is not even a hint of distrust, disaffection or disloyalty at any point in the proceedings.

It is as though the great "Presider" had so possessed Keat’s mind and imagination that he seemed to have a presence in his blood and bones. Or, if we may use an Indian religious concept, Keats, the youthful, adoring acolyte and believer, surrenders wholly to his Guru, merging his poetic self in the larger spirit, and achieving a kind of ‘mystic compact’.

Keats’s comments on Shakespeare cover the Elizabethan poet’s genius, essence, a worldview and dramatic style among other things. And in traversing the Shakespearian terrain, he moves nimbly from the sonnets to the comedies, histories, tragedies and romances in swift and sudden leaps, seldom pausing for more than a breather en route.

Keats could, at best, savour gingerly the great Shakespearian spread, and move on from victuals and viands to the cellared spirits in a delirium of delight. Except perhaps for King Lear — which seems to have been the Bible of his poetic faith, and, therefore, a continual companion to light up the path — no play or poem really received an extended attention.

In his letter to Fanny Brawne of February 1820, he writes, "My greatest torment since I have known you has been my fear of your being a little inclined to the Cressida." It may be helpful to remember that Troilus and Cressida deeply engaged Keats’s imagination when he was deeply in love with his "dearest girl" who could not offer him that complete sovereignty of passion his heart craved. So Shakespeare is summoned, among others, to his aid, and canonised.

Keats’s statements and utterances on Shakespeare, then, should stand out as a critique so rare as to compel us to close with the Shakespearian text in their light. Affinities and correspondences between the two poets have, since Matthew Arnold’s time, continued to interest both the reader and the scholar. And, such critics as Murry and Trilling, among others, have gone into the heart of the problem, tracing the history of poetry and genius in tandem with that of Shakespear’s. My purpose, in this brief essay, is not only to establish Shakespeare as the "singing master" of his soul, but also to seek a pattern in his scattered comments.

The two important Shakespearian traits Keats noticed are "the neutral nature of the aesthetic temperament and the sovereignty of the life of the imagination." "Men of Genius", he observes, "are certain ethereal chemicals operating in the Mass of neutral intellect.... they have not any individuality, any determined character." He continues, "I am certain of nothing but the holiness of the heart’s affections, and the truth of imagination.... the imagination must be compared to Adam’s dream — he awoke and found its truth."

Keats was, at this time, deeply immersed in Shakespeare, and for him, the essence of the greatest poet in the language lay in his ability to maintain dramatic balance in the dialectic of experience. That is to say, a great poet or artist should always keep the conduits of his imagination free and open, allowing all manner of clashing emotions to find their own redemptive form and value.

This brings me to the last few days of Keats’s earthly sojourn. His letters by then had become a little frenetic and visionary. He knew that he had a date with death, and though he hadn’t the full spiritual equipment to face the dreaded truth, he was trying to work out his doom in Shakespearian terms. And on his voyage to Rome, "the Eternal City" where he would lie eternally, it’s only a copy of Shakespeare that would keep him company.

A.C. Bradley in his essay The Letters of Keats observes, "He was of Shakespeare’s tribe." Again several critics affirm that he is "the most Shakespearian of poets" in the English tongue. Clearly, the concept of poetic kinship or consanguinity that I have been trying to establish needs to be pursued with greater vigour and insight, if only to establish the thesis of "poetic families" and "poetic genes".

And to my mind a most interesting and revealing common familial trait in Shakespeare and Keats that seems almost to have gone unnoticed is the secondary nature of their literary impulse.

While Keats’s case may partly be explained in terms of Bloom’s Freudian categories, Shakespeare’s would almost entirely defy any such reductionist approach, I think. It’s thus that we may see the Shakespeare-Keats relationship — as a metaphor for a geminian poetics.

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