Death's Jest Book

Rating:
Summary: A Great Play at the Mercy of a Bad Editor
Review: Beddoes has still not achieved canonical status as a Romantic poet. Though his very best work rivals that of Shelley or Keats, many scholars are squeamish about Beddoes, admitting that his verse shows formidable technical prowess and visionary intensity yet remaining uncomfortable with his all-consuming obsession with human mortality. And Beddoes' Thanatos-fetishism is not Yeats' melancholy reflection on temporality; rather Beddoes is interested in all of the physical trappings of death and corruption with a pronounced focus on human physicality (Beddoes was also an anatomist) that is markedly incongruous with the emphasis that Romanticism places on the spirit. "Death's Jest Book" is a beautiful expression of Beddoes' lifelong obsessions, filled with suicide, necromancy and the confusion of Eros and Thanatos. In Beddoes, mortality becomes a way of discussing the existential crises which would come to dominate literature in the 20th century; Beddoes presents human life as a more absurd and horrifying nightmare than death could ever be, death is only an empty threat, a jest compared to what we must endure before our eternal repose. It's not suprising that Beddoes has recently been gaining in popularity as a missing link between Romanticism and Modernism.

It must be noted that one doesn't read Beddoes for his characters, plot or realism. Beddoes is a poet, not a playwright, and it is a mistake to evaluate Death's Jest-Book as purely a drama. Everything in the Jest Book is heightened (sometimes teetering on the brink of the ridiculous) and dramatic effect sometimes suffers, but the surrealistically hyperbolic emotions which drive the play open up poetic vistas which are not possible in conventional drama concerned only with verisimilitude and catharsis. Love is only an incitement to hatred, suicide and murder, all the characters wish for oblivion and spend their lives rhapsodizing on the beauty of the grave and the play is filled with Iagos, Flamineos and Edmonds yet entirely lacking in any noble characters (except maybe Wolfram). All of the characters are much larger than life and their dialogue recalls Middleton, Marston and Webster at their most morbid, despairing moments but with EVERYTHING ELSE EXCISED. Beddoes has isolated and purified only the most morbid strains running throughout Elizabethan and Jacobean drama and his entire oeuvre blossoms from this fetid, ill soil. His poetic language is beautiful and his descriptions of death and the kingdom of the grave are among the most powerful in the language. Yet he is also able to wax rhapsodical about all the stock natural and Classical references of Romantic literature. Often he does both at once, queasily combining soaring flights of poetic fancy with meditations on decay and emptiness. This play is a beautiful, singular creation, and the fact that it succeeds on its own terms rather than by the standards of conventional drama is to be admired rather than disparaged.

The only complaint that I have about this edition of the Jest Book is that the editor has chosen to present the 1829 text, a text which Beddoes never published due to severe criticism from his friends and which he spent the rest of his life revising. Later versions of the Jest Book are substantially different and evince more clearly the mordant, morbid irony which distances Beddoes from the naive sincerity of Romanticism. They also contain many more embedded lyrics and Beddoes often achieved much more structured, concentrated effects in his lyric poetry (one would be hard-pressed to find many Romantic poets who were finer prosodists than Beddoes). Yet this is a minor quibble, as this edition is interesting from a historical standpoint and the editor presents convincing arguments on why it is important to read Beddoes' original version of the drama. For anyone interested in the most morbid manifestation of British Romanticism, Beddoes is a must.
[Note: For those who simply must read a later version of the Jest Book but don't have the money for the Works, Alan Halsey has edited and presented a version based on Donner's later text. It's available from West House Books (a British small press) and it's not easy to track down, but worth it for the fanatic]

Rating:
Summary: Brilliant play marred by unfortunate editorial decisions
Review: Beddoes has still not achieved canonical status as a Romantic poet. Though the sheer power of his best work rivals that of Shelley or Keats, many scholars are squeamish about Beddoes, admitting that he often wrote verse of a visionary power and intensity yet remaining uncomfortable with his all-consuming obsession with human mortality. And Beddoes' Thanatos-fetishism is not Yeats' melancholy reflection on temporality; rather Beddoes is interested in all of the physical trappings of death and corruption with an anatomical focus on human physicality (Beddoes was also a surgeon) that is markedly incongruous with the emphasis that Romanticism places on the human spirit. "Death's Jest Book" is a beautiful expression of Beddoes' lifelong obsessions, filled with suicide, necromancy and the confusion of Eros and Thanatos. In Beddoes, mortality becomes a way of discussing the existential crises which would dominate literature in the 20th century, and his treatment of death becomes a way to get at the essential absurdity and horror of the human condition. It's not suprising that Beddoes has recently been gaining in popularity as a missing link between Romanticism and 20th century movements such as Surrealism and Theater of the Absurd. He also shares many characteristics of the French decadents and symbolists. One doesn't read Beddoes for his characters, plot or realism. Everything in the Jest Book is heightened (sometimes teetering on the brink of the ridiculous); love is only an incitement to hatred, suicide and murder, all the characters wish for oblivion and spend their lives rhapsodizing on the beauty of the grave and the play is filled with Iagos, Claudiuses and Edmonds yet entirely lacking in any noble characters (except maybe Wolfram). All of the characters are much larger than life, and their dialogue recalls Shakespeare and Webster at their most morbid, despairing moments but with EVERYTHING ELSE EXCISED. Beddoes has isolated and purified only the most morbid strains running throughout Elizabethan tragedy, and his entire oeuvre blossoms from this fetid, ill soil. His poetic language is beautiful, his descriptions of death and the kingdom of the grave among the most powerful in the language, yet he is also able to wax rhapsodical about all the stock natural and Classical references of Romantic literature. Often he does both at once, queasily combining soaring flights of poetic fancy with meditations on decay and emptiness. This play is a beautiful, singular creation.
The only complaint that I have about this edition of the Jest Book is that the editor has chosen only to present the 1829 text, a text which Beddoes never published due to severe criticism from his friends and which he spent the rest of his life revising. One of the Jest Book's most attractive features is the use of embedded songs and lyrics, as these songs are where Beddoes often achieves his most concentrated and structured effects. Later versions of the Jest Book contain many more of these embedded songs, many of which rank among Beddoes' finest poems. Unfortunately they are not to be found in this edition, and they can be difficult to track down as only fragments of Beddoes' work remain in print. An appendix containing these poems would have been greatly appreciated. Yet this is a minor quibble, as this edition is interesting from a historical standpoint, and the editor presents convincing arguments on why it is important to read Beddoes' original version of the drama. For anyone interested in the most morbid manifestation of British Romanticism, Beddoes is a must.

Rating:
Summary: A Great Play at the Mercy of a Bad Editor
Review: I don't intend to write a lengthy review since the first reviewer has already done a good job of that - I merely wish to comment on some of the unfortunate opinions and views of the editor, Mr Bradshaw, in the introduction to this latest edition of Death's Jest Book. My main complaint is this: precisely what does the "area of enquiry, " namely, "that of gender and sexuality" (p. xxv) have to do with a work that is ostensibly devoid of any material on, or treatment of the subject being inquired into? The text reprinted in this volume dates from 1829, well before the era of literary deconstruction and poltiticization in the late 20th century; so one can say without presumption that the editor Mr Bradshaw and his fellow acedemians are taking liberties with an early 19th century work that resists late 20th century academic impositions, namely the categories of gender and sexuality. The subject of Beddoes' "sexuality" would only be as (if not more)important as any other more visable thematic or schematic dimension in his writings to those whose main interest lie in performing the banal baptizimal ritual know as "homosexualizing" yet another long dead writer. It would seem that the absurd and unfounded practice of uncovering "encoded homoerotic narratives" and tracking down any hint or trace of so-called "gender and sexuality" are the only hermenutic innovations that the present editor can suggest. I daresay that phrases like, "the presence of same-sex desire in a text can interrogate and subvert hitherto accepted norms of literary style and genre" are not only altogether meaningless, but pointless additions for those who are not fully indoctrinated into the postmodern/deconstruction school of suspicion and paranoia. What pre-requisite knowledge of history or literature does one require in order to go about such researches? Absolutely none, since any knowledge of history or literature would "subvert" any such "paradigm" as the meaningless sniffing-out and detection of "gender and sexuality" in works that have far more serious business to accomplish than taking the obsessions usually confined to teenage diaries and acting as though something more serious then we can imagine is going on. Ironically, it seems that there is no more expedient way to rid a book of all of its native tones and shades of sensuality, mystery, charm - in short, everything pleasurable and aesthetic - than to quibble over whether Beddoes, Melville, or Baudelaire were fully practicing homosexuals, part time practicioners, or just dabblers in the stuff. Have any such "discoveries" ever made the reading of your favorite poem, novel, or play any more rewarding or enjoyable or illuminating? What sort of addition is the supposed fact that "Beddoes was probably gay" supposed to make in anybody's mind as they read Death's Jest Book? Besides, if you, dear reader, can find any trace of "encoded homoerotic narratives" in this play, I suppose you deserve an award; I have been through the book in school, and on my own several times, and I must own that to say I have detected anything of that nature (whatever its nature) would be nonsense. I find it curious that Mr Bradshaw calls the application of "queer theory" and the relentless project of detecting "encoded homoerotic narratives," "just a few of the more established methods of reading the text." How is this possible since Mr Donner, the only scholar and biographer of Beddoes in the 20th century (and decidedly not an implacable hunter of homosexuals and other embedded and encoded gibberish) ceased publishing on Beddoes in the 1950's; and after Mr Donner, there was almost nothing published on Beddoes until roughly a decade ago? So much for the so-called "established methods" that in chronological reality have no predecessors or parentage in literary studies, ancient or modern... Beddoes is one of my favorites, and I would recommend that if anyone is interested in Beddoes, the bibliography in Mr Bradshaw's book is far more useful than any single word in the introduction (most of which, if it has any merit, is merely a re-hashing of Mr Donner's opinions anyway); Mr Donner is really the only authority on Beddoes' works, and deserves the credit for establishing the only approaches to Beddoes' writings that have yielded anything in the way of insights and approaches. His book, "Thomas Lovell Beddoes: The Making of a Poet" has an excellent background on that species of drama in the 19th century known as the "Elizabethan revival;" without some knowledge of that loose aggrate of 19th century writers there can be no solid understanding of Beddoes' writings - this is the sort of background Mr Bradshaw ought to spend his time rehearsing in his introduction, and cease trying to "come out" with anything novel in the way of how Beddoes might be better understood by a generation that has no interest in poetry or drama anyway. Even if you sex-up Beddoes and his books, I doubt this would add one person to his readership, or lengthen his fame by one day; such efforts to produce a "Thomas Lovell Beddoes, Extreeeem!!!!" is, if not childishly impudent, rather more deliberately grotesque than any of the graveyard imagery in his plays and poems.