'England in 1819' by Percy Shelley: Analysis (Worlds and Lives Poetry)

Hello everybody and welcome to today's video on the Percy Shelley poem, England in 1819. You can download a free worksheet to accompany the video through following the link in the description. Percy Shelley was born in 1792. He came from a wealthy family and was set to inherit riches and become a politician. He went to Oxford University but was asked to leave because he published a pamphlet promoting atheism. He eloped and married a 16-year-old, then a few years later ran off with Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin, author of Frankenstein. In 1816 his wife committed suicide and three weeks later he married Mary. In 1818 Shelley left England and moved to Italy and he drowned whilst sailing in 1822, aged 29. Shelley was not very successful as a writer during his own lifetime. He was associated with the much more successful poets Byron and Keats but was nowhere near as popular. Whereas Byron's poetry often sold as many as 10,000 copies in a single day, Shelley's work did not spark widespread public interest. The poem we're looking at today was not even written for publication but was simply sent to a friend in a private letter. Shelley was a deeply political person. He was a pacifist who believed in non-violent protest. Now if you're studying this poem on AQA, the exam board don't want to see long paragraphs on historical context. The context comes from the key words in the task and the ideas or perspectives element of the cluster. So, with that in mind, I don't want to spend much time on historical context but what I will do is give a 60-second overview of the important things you need to know for this poem to make sense. Firstly, the Peterloo Massacre. On August 16th, 1819, at St Peter's Fields in Manchester, around 60,000 people attended a peaceful protest against the government. The focus was on the right for the working class to vote. At the time, only rich men with property could vote. Now British troops on horseback, armed with sabres, attacked the crowd and a number of protesters were killed, with hundreds wounded. King George III had been indirectly criticised by Shelley in his 1817 poem, Ozymandias, but in England in 1819, Shelley went on an all-out attack of the king. This is probably because the poem was not meant for publication, so he didn't hold back. It was felt by many that King George III didn't care about the working class and that he was a king who was corrupt. By 1819, King George was still officially king but had stepped back from running the country as he was suffering from mental illness. His son, the Prince Regent, was in charge. Shelley belonged to what is referred to as the second generation of Romantic poets. One thing that united the Romantics was a love of nature and dislike of the urban world, particularly a hatred of the Industrial Revolution, which resulted in, among other things, child labour and poor working conditions for the lower classes. With those factors in mind, let's read the poem. England in 1819 An old, mad, blind, despised and dying king Princes the dregs of their dull race Who flow through public scorn Mud from a muddy spring Rulers who neither see nor feel nor know But leech-like to their fainting country cling Till they drop blind in blood without a blow A people starved and stabbed in the untilled field An army whom limiticide and prey Makes as a two-edged sword to all who wield Golden and sanguine laws which tempt and slay Religion Christless, godless, a book sealed A senate, time's worst statute, unrepealed Our graves from which a glorious phantom May burst to illumine our tempestuous day This isn't the easiest poem to understand, so let me give a translation in simple English. An old, mentally ill, blind, hated and dying king Princes the worst, least valuable of all Who keep power, even though everyone hates them Rubbish taken from a pile of rubbish People in charge who have no idea what real life is like And don't care, but just suck everything they can out of England, which is struggling Until they're finally full up The public, starved and murdered in a field An army who murder and take Which should be used to protect, but does the opposite Laws which seem like they should help, but actually cause suffering So-called religious people who are nothing like Christ, nothing like the Bible A government doing awful things, but still allowed to exist All these things are sources of oppression which revolution might jump out from to bring hope to this terrible time. At the time of writing England in 1819, Shelley was living in Italy. He wrote this poem as a scathing criticism of the state of England and sent it to his friend Lee Hunt. As I've already said, the poem wasn't written for publication. It didn't even have a title when it was written, and it was eventually published in 1839, after Shelley had died. If you're studying this poem as part of the AQA Worlds and Lives cluster, you might want to frame your focus around the way the world affects people's lives. The poem focuses on corrupt and oppressive leadership which causes suffering in the population. The poet is disillusioned with home and heritage. However, there is a glimmer of hope at the end of the poem, and an underlying love for England which we see through the poet's choice of form. Whilst lines written in early spring, which is another poem from the cluster, never specified what the causes of human suffering were, England in 1819 gives numerous focused examples. So how does the world affect people's lives? The answer is negatively. Let's look through the poem and identify those causes of suffering in the world. The opening line, an old, mad, blind, despised and dying king, is a reference to King George III. These negative adjectives are all easy to understand, but some have a possible deeper meaning. Old might literally describe the king, who would have been 81 years of age at the time the poem was written. However, on a symbolic level, Shelley's use of this adjective might be employed to criticise the monarchy itself as being outdated and irrelevant. Mad is a reference to the fact that, by 1819, King George was still officially king, but had stepped back from running the country as he was suffering from mental illness. Blind is an interesting one. There's no evidence the king's eyesight was an issue, even in his old age, so we could interpret this word as a symbol for the way the king could not understand the lives of the working classes. It ties in with the later line, rulers who neither see nor feel nor know, suggesting that the king and all in power have no idea what real life is like, and don't care. Dying certainly has a deeper meaning. Whilst the king was old and unwell, dying the year after this poem was written, we can see the adjective dying as a metaphor for the power of the monarchy. The reference to princes, the dregs of their dull race, might be a reference to the monarchy in 1819. King George was still officially king, but had stepped back from running the country as he was suffering from mental illness, and his son the Prince Regent was in charge. But notice Shelley's use of princes rather than the prince. Perhaps Shelley is broadening his criticism to the nine sons of King George who were all involved in some way or other in the control of the British Empire. Rulers of the country are described with the simile leech-like. Now leeches are these slug-looking things that suck the blood from animals, and when they're full to the brim with blood, they drop off the animal, which is what we see in the poem, leech-like to their fainting country cling till they drop blind in blood. This simile then dehumanises the leaders of England, suggesting that they just take, take, take from the already fainting country. An army whom liberticide and prey. Now, liberticide means killing liberty or killing freedom. Along with the word prey, it presents the army as being oppressive, and rather than protecting the people of England, the army is doing the exact opposite. Religion Christless presents a church which acts nothing like Jesus in the Bible. Shelley had a long-running problem with the church – remember his being asked to leave Oxford University for writing in favour of atheism. And so there are all of these oppressive forces, but what impact do they have on the world? What impact do they have on the lives of ordinary people? The main image to consider is a people starved and stabbed in the untilled field, and this image can be interpreted in a number of different ways. Firstly, there's a clear reference to the Peterloo massacre, where the protesters were indeed stabbed in a field. Along with the title of the poem, which references the exact year this massacre took place in, it seems a clear reference to this historic event. The idea of people being starved in an untilled field is also worthy of analysis. The word untilled refers to land typically on a farm that hasn't been prepared for the planting of crops. This word can be seen as a link to Shelley's criticism of the Industrial Revolution. During this period, people were moving to cities and away from rural areas. They moved in search of jobs in factories, and the result was that lots of the countryside was left abandoned. Working for low wages in the cities, many people suffered, represented by the word starved. Shelley belonged to what is known as the second generation of Romantic poets. We can define Romantic poetry by a number of conventions – a dislike of urban life, embracing instead the natural world, a love of the supernatural, and the use of ordinary, everyday language. The most famous early Romantics are Wordsworth and Coleridge, but by the time Shelley was writing, it was felt those early Romantics had sold out. Wordsworth, for example, was now working for the government. So the second generation of Romantics had to set themselves apart from the old guard. The second generation Romantic poets often wrote against religion and political control. They used rich language that was full of metaphor and classical allusion, and of course we see all of this in England in 1819. The image of the untilled field presents nature as a victim of industrialisation. Nature has been abandoned as people have moved to cities. If the suffering of the people is a result of this, then the poem suggests that nature is something to be valued and respected. Now England in 1819 is a sonnet. The sonnet is a genre of love poetry which originated in Italy in the 13th century. The 14th century poet Petrarch is the most recognised Italian sonneteer. Falling in love with a woman known only as Laura, he wrote 366 sonnets to her, but despite his literary outpourings, she rejected his proposals. Like the Shakespearean or Elizabethan sonnet, a Petrarchan or Italian sonnet has 14 lines. Both sonnet forms are written in iambic pentameter, that's lines of ten syllables with alternating stressed and unstressed syllables. The structure of a Petrarchan sonnet is different, however. The first eight lines, known as the octave, present a problem. The last six lines, known as the sestet, present a solution to the problem, and line 9, known as the volta, introduces a sharp twist or turn which brings about the move to the resolution. The octave, the first eight lines, have an A-B-B-A-A-B-B-A rhyme scheme, and the rhyme scheme of the sestet will vary, but can be, for example, C-D-C-D-C-D. In the 16th century, the sonnet made its way into English poetry, and Sir Philip Sidney developed it, but it came to be known as the Shakespearean sonnet after Shakespeare made it truly famous. This form is quite different to the Petrarchan sonnet. It's divided into three stanzas of four lines each, known as quatrains, and finished with a rhyming couplet, which typically serves as the volta. Its rhyme scheme is also different, A-B-A-B, C-D-C-D, E-F-E-F, G-G. However, the topic of Shakespearean sonnets, also called Elizabethan sonnets, remains the same. They are most often about love. When we look at England in 1819, we can see that it is a sonnet. Fourteen lines, iambit pentameter, with the rhyming couplet at the end functioning as the volta of the poem, introducing the glorious phantom which can emerge from the first twelve lines of criticism. The first question, then, is why did Shelley use the form of a love poem when England in 1819 is all about corruption and abuse of power? Perhaps we could say that the form is used to show how much the poet loves the country of England. It highlights the strength of emotion the poet feels on this topic, and their desire to see the country improve. We might also see the form as linking to the self-love of those in power who are corrupt in the country. But what kind of sonnet is it? The answer is that it doesn't fit neatly into any sonnet form. In terms of the Shakespearean sonnet, there's the rhyming couplet at the end, which functions as the volta, but it's also possible to see something of the Petrarchan sonnet in the poem, albeit not in a conventional sense. In The Art of the Sonnet, by Stephanie Burt and David Mykicks, the authors point out how the first six lines of the poem follow the rhyme scheme often associated with the last six lines of a Petrarchan sonnet, with the first line rhyming with the third and fifth, and the second rhyming with the fourth and sixth. It's as if Shelley is starting with the sestet, which is usually what a sonnet ends with, to highlight the disorder in the country. Or, we could say that the change to the standard sonnet form highlights the change the poet believes necessary in England, and this would tie in with how there are other elements that don't follow the standard sonnet form rules – the rhyme scheme itself. The poet changes from the historic sonnet forms to reflect how the country needs to change from its historic practices and structures. There's a sense that the country is still worthy of love, hence the sonnet form of poetry, but that it requires massive change. This optimism is also seen in the ending of the poem. The final couplet, Our graves from which a glorious phantom may burst to illumine our tempestuous day, suggests that all of the long list of things that have gone before can still be overcome. It's a glimmer of hope in an otherwise grim poem, and in terms of the worlds and lives cluster, it represents how the world can still be changed for the better. The use of the sonnet form suggests the country should be loved and is worth fighting for. It is significant that the poet waits until the very end of the poem to present the sense of hope that the world can be better. If we were to number the causes of disillusionment with the world in the poem, we would have this. 1. The king 2. Princes 3. Rulers 4. The army 5. The legal system 6. The church And the way the poem is structured, it essentially can be read like this. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 are graves from which a brighter future can emerge. So the long, overwhelming list reflects how the country and its people are overwhelmed, but that's not the end. Despite the poem's harsh criticisms, the glimmer of hope Shelley offers in the final line suggests that positive change is possible, reflecting the idea that although the world can negatively affect us, there's always potential for improvement.