Ralegh: The Last Act

Abstract

In Ralegh’s last years we find the main themes of his life brought together, recapitulated more starkly than ever in the brief space that remained to him. There is the obsession with Guiana, now more clamorous since it offered the only chance of liberty, of escape from the Tower. There is the self-justification, the continued assertion of his innocence, now fortified in his mind, if in no-one else’s, by King James letting him out to go on the voyage. The voyage itself was an anachronistic return, in quite changed conditions, to the days of Elizabeth, haunted with memories of Drake, Grenville and Cadiz. Ralegh was twenty years older, an ageing man; but we see the same traits of character more sharply accentuated than ever in too sanguine hope and final failure. We see the worst and the best of him, in concentrated form: as gambler — though one cannot blame him for gambling his way out of the Tower — promoter, plausible schemer, actor. We see him energetic, ingenious, persuasive; unreliable, hysterical, despairing; obstinate and unyielding, in spite of everything unable to relax his hold on life; he might break, but he could not yield. It is an excellent perception of Edwards’s to note his ‘unconquerable love of hitting hard, whatever the recoil’; whatever else of psychological there is in that, there is also the artist.