“There Must Be Severed Heads”: Yeats’s Final Transumption of Oscar Wilde (1923–1939)

Doody, Noreen

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-89548-2_9

Noreen Doody²

158 Accesses

Abstract

The outcome of the Saloméan vein of influence in Yeats’s work culminates in his late dance plays, The King of the Great Clock Tower and A Full Moon in March.

The King of the Great Clock Tower contains all of the Saloméan elements that Yeats has been building within his own work since 1905 and that have become for him a constituent of his own creative armoury. In this play, Yeats dramatizes various philosophical issues that form the basis of much of his creative work.

Yeats establishes his creative difference and artistic independence from Wilde in his later, similar but more abstract dance play, A Full Moon in March. Wilde’s symbols have been reconstituted in this play as Yeats’s images, but carrying his meaning and merely suggesting their origins. It is as if Yeats’s is the prior text. Yeats succeeds in usurping the position of his precursor.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution

Chapter: USD 29.95; Price excludes VAT (USA)

eBook: USD 49.99; Price excludes VAT (USA)

Softcover Book: USD 64.99; Price excludes VAT (USA)

Hardcover Book: USD 99.99; Price excludes VAT (USA)

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

1.
See Sylvia Ellis, The Plays of W.B. Yeats and the Dancer; William Tydeman and Steven Price, Salomé; Kathrine Sorley Walker, Ninette de Valois: Idealist without Illusions (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1987); Ninette de Valois, Come Dance with Me: A Memoir, 1898–1956 (rpt., 1973; London: Hamilton, 1957).
2.
Richard Pine and Richard Cave, The Dublin Gate Theatre 1928–1978 (NJ: Cambridge and Teaneck, Chadwyck-Healey Ltd., 1984). Bulmer Hobson ed. The Gate Theatre, Dublin (Dublin: The Gate Theatre, 1934).
3.
W.B. Yeats, The Letters of W.B. Yeats, letter to Olivia Shakespeare, 2nd July [postmark 1929], p. 764.
4.
“To Olivia Shakespeare”, 7th August [postmark, Aug. 9, ’34], The Letters of W.B. Yeats, ed. Wade, p. 826.
5.
W.B. Yeats, Prefaces 87, 91, “Notes on Plays” in The Variorum Edition of Yeats’s Plays, pp. 1311, 1312.
6.
N.L.I. Ms./Micro-fiche 30,336. W.B. Yeats, A Full Moon in March and other material incl. Essay on the Irish Theatre. Description: red, loose leaf notebook circa 1934. Unnumbered, chronological pp. 5, 6.
7.
W.B. Yeats, The Variorum Edition of the Plays of W.B. Yeats, p. 1312.
8.
“To Edmund Dulac”, Monday [December 10, 1934], The Letters of W.B. Yeats, ed. Wade, p. 830.
9.
W.B. Yeats, A Vision: The Revised 1937 Edition. The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats Vol. XIV, ed. Catherine E. Paul and Margaret Mills Harper, p. 195.
10.
W.B. Yeats, The King of the Great Clock Tower. The Plays. The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats Vol. II, ed. David R. Clark and Rosalind E. Clark, p. 496.
11.
W.B. Yeats, A Vision: The Revised 1937 Edition. The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats Vol. XIV, ed. Catherine E. Paul and Margaret Mills Harper, p. 198.
12.
W.B. Yeats, The King of the Great Clock Tower. The Plays. The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats. Volume II, ed. David R. Clark and Rosalind E. Clark, p. 495.
13.
N.L.I. Ms. 8769/micro-film 7493: W.B. Yeats Papers: The King of the Great Clock Tower, 13ff., ms., in one folder. Second numbered ms., p. 5.
14.
W.B. Yeats, The King of the Great Clock Tower. The Plays. The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats. Volume II, ed. David R. Clark and Rosalind E. Clark, p. 496.
15.
Oscar Wilde, Salomé in The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: Volume V, ed. Joseph Donohue, pp. 722, 723, 724, 725.
16.
In Irish mythology, the River Boyne is where the ancient gods of Ireland dwell. It is named after the goddess of the Tuatha Dé Danann, Boann, who is the mother of Aengus, god of love and poetry, and whose father was her lover, The Dagda.
17.
W.B. Yeats, The King of the Great Clock Tower. The Plays. The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats. Volume II, ed. David R. Clark and Rosalind E. Clark, p. 496.
18.
N.L.I. Ms. 8769/M.film 7493, W.B. Yeats, The King of the Great Clock Tower, p. 7.
19.
W.B. Yeats, The King of the Great Clock Tower. The Plays. The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats. Volume II, ed. David R. Clark and Rosalind E. Clark, p. 497.
20.
Ibid., p. 498.
21.
Ibid.
22.
N.L.I. Ms. 8769/M.film 7493, W.B. Yeats, The King of the Great Clock Tower, p. 10.
23.
George Harper, The Making of Yeats’s A Vision: A Study of the Automatic Script, Volume II, p. 167.
24.
W.B. Yeats, A Vision: The Original 1925 Version. The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats Vol. XIII, ed. Catherine E. Paul and Margaret Mills Harper, p. 199.
25.
Neil Mann quotes from a lecture delivered by T.S. Eliot in 1933 that points to Yeats’s unconventional use of the term “evil”; Eliot stated that Yeats’s supernatural world “was not a world of spiritual significance, not a world of real Good and Evil, of holiness or sin, but a highly sophisticated lower mythology”. http://www.yeatsvision.com/Thirteen.html.
26.
W.B. Yeats, A Vision: The Original 1925 version. The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats Vol. XIII, ed. Catherine E. Paul and Margaret Mills Harper, p. 65.
27.
At the earlier Phase 1, the kiss of eternal life has been given by the spirit. George Mills Harper, The Making of Yeats’s A Vision: A Study of the Automatic Script. Volume II, p. 167.
28.
Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891) in The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: Volume III, ed. Joseph Bristow, p. 185.
29.
N.L.I. Ms. 8769/M.film 7493, The King of the Great Clock Tower, p. 7.
30.
Northrop Frye, “The Rising of the Moon: a study of A Vision” in Northrop Frye On Twentieth Century Literature. Glen Robert Gill, ed. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2010, p. 263.
31.
Neil Mann, “The Thirteenth Cone” in W.B. Yeats’s A Vision: Explications and Contexts, ed. Neil Mann, Matthew Gibson and Claire Nally p. 174. W.B. Yeats, A Vision: The Revised 1937 Edition. The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats Vol. XIV, ed. Catherine E. Paul and Margaret Mills Harper, pp. 37; 157.
32.
W.B. Yeats, The King of the Great Clock Tower. The Plays. The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats. Volume II, ed. David R. Clark and Rosalind E. Clark, p. 494.
33.
W.B. Yeats, A Vision: The Revised 1937 Edition. The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats Vol. XIV, ed. Catherine E. Paul and Margaret Mills Harper, p. 142.
34.
Matthew DeForrest, “Yeats’s A Vision: ‘Dove or Swan’” in W.B. Yeats’s A Vision: Explications and Contexts, ed. Neil Mann, Matthew Gibson and Claire Nally, p. 149.
35.
W.B. Yeats, The King of the Great Clock Tower. The Plays. The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats. Vol. II, ed. David R. Clark and Rosalind E. Clark, p. 499.
36.
Ibid.
37.
Ibid., p. 493.
38.
Ibid., p. 499.
39.
W.B. Yeats, “Nineteen Hundred and Nineteen”. The Poems (Second Edition). The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats Volume I, ed. Richard J. Finneran, p. 208.
40.
Oscar Wilde, ed., Ian Small, De Profundis (2005): “Epistola: In Carcere et Vinculis”, p. 106 and “De Profundis”, p. 170 (1905, 1908).
41.
“To Lady Elizabeth Pelham”, “Jan. 4, 1939”, The Letters of W.B. Yeats, ed. Wade, p. 922.
42.
W.B. Yeats, A Full Moon in March in The Plays. The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats, Vol. II, ed. David R. Clark and Rosalind E. Clark, p. 507.
43.
W.B. Yeats, Prefaces 87 and 91 Preface to A Full Moon in March in the Variorum Edition Yeats’s Poems, pp. 1311, 1312.
44.
W.B. Yeats, A Full Moon in March. The Plays. The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats Vol. II, ed. David R. Clark and Rosalind E. Clark, p. 506.
45.
N.L.I. Ms. 8906/M.film 7493. “W.B. Yeats: 13 pp. of Full Moon in March here called The Swineherd”, pp. 10, 11.
46.
See letters: “To Ethel Manin”, “June 24 [Post-mark 1935]”, p. 835; “To Lady Dorothy Wellesley”, “Nov. 28 [1935]”, p. 843. Wade, The Letters. Yeats completed work on the Oxford Book of Modern Verse in November 1935. A Full Moon in March was published in the same month.
47.
W.B. Yeats, A Full Moon in March. The Plays, The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats. Vol. II, ed. David R. Clark and Rosalind E. Clark, p. 506.
48.
W.B. Yeats, “Introduction” to the Oxford Book of Modern Verse 1892–1935 (rpt., Nov. 1936; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966), p. vii and Oscar Wilde, “The Ballad of Reading Gaol” in The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: Vol. I, ed., Karl Beckson and Bobby Fong, p. 195.
49.
W.B. Yeats, Notes to collected in The Variorum Edition of the Plays of W.B. Yeats, p. 789. “I have written the little songs of the chorus to please myself, confident that the singer and composer, when the time came for performance, would certainly make it impossible for the audience to know what the words were. I used to think that singers should sing a recipe for a good dish, or a list of local trains, or something else they want to get by heart, but I have changed my mind and now I prefer to give him some mystery or secret.”
50.
W.B. Yeats, A Full Moon in March. The Plays. The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats. Vol. II, ed. David R. Clark and Rosalind E. Clark, p. 503.
51.
Oscar Wilde, “The Preface”, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891) in The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: Vol. III, ed. Joseph Bristow, p. 168.
52.
W.B. Yeats, A Full Moon in March. The Plays. The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats. Vol. II, ed. David R. Clark and Rosalind E. Clark, p. 504.
53.
Ibid., p. 505.
54.
Oscar Wilde, Salomé in The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: Volume V, ed. Joseph Donohue, p. 714.
55.
W.B. Yeats, A Full Moon in March. The Plays. The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats. Volume II, ed. David R. Clark and Rosalind E. Clark, p. 503.
56.
Ibid., 505, 506.
57.
Ibid., p. 508.
58.
N.L.I. Ms. 8906/ M/F 7493: W.B. Yeats, A Full Moon in March, p. 13.
59.
Oscar Wilde, ed., Ian Small, De Profundis (2005): “Epistola: In Carcere et Vinculis”, p. 100 and “De Profundis”, p. 166 (1905, 1908).
60.
In “Crazy Jane Talks with the Bishop” Yeats again signals the necessity for opposing bodily and spiritual polarities, the intermingling of extremes of being, in order to realise unity of being: “A woman can be proud and stiff/When on love intent;/But Love has pitched his mansion in/ The place of excrement;/For nothing can be sole or whole/That has not been rent.” W.B. Yeats, “Crazy Jane and the Bishop” in “Words for Music Perhaps” in The Winding Stair and Other Poems (A Facsimile Edition) (New York: Scribner, 2011), p. 62.
61.
W.B. Yeats, A Full Moon in March. The Plays. The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats. Vol. II, ed. David R. Clark and Rosalind E. Clark, p. 508.
62.
W.B. Yeats, A Vision: The Revised 1937 Edition. The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats, Vol. XIV, ed. Catherine E. Paul and Margaret Mills Harper, p. 185.
63.
Ibid., p. 263.
64.
Ibid., p. 13.
65.
W.B. Yeats, A Vision: The Revised 1937 Edition. The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats, Vol. XIV, ed. Catherine E. Paul and Margaret Mills Harper, p. 178.
66.
Ibid., p. 178.
67.
W.B. Yeats, Ms. 8906. M/F 7493, A Full Moon in March, p. 1.
68.
W.B. Yeats, A Full Moon in March. The Plays. The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats, Vol. II, ed. David R. Clark and Rosalind E. Clark, p. 503.
69.
W.B. Yeats, A Vision: The Revised 1937 Edition. The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats, Vol. XIV, ed. Catherine E. Paul and Margaret Mills Harper, p. 150.
70.
W.B. Yeats, “The Magi”. See also “The Second Coming”. The Poems (Second Edition). The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats Vol. I, ed. Richard J. Finneran, pp. 126, 187.
71.
W.B. Yeats, A Vision: The Revised 1937 Edition. The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats Vol. XIV, ed. Catherine E. Paul and Margaret Mills Harper, p. 199.
72.
Margaret Mills Harper’s insight on the staging of the play, which allows for the Queen to dance with the head in her hands separated by an inner curtain from the speaking Attendants, facilitates and strengthens the image of the dual presence of life and death. “Of Dialogism in the Chorus’s Speech: the example of A Full Moon in March”. Yeats’s Mask: Yeats Annual No. 19. (Open Book Publishers, 2013), p. 113. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt5vjtxj.
73.
Neil Mann, “The Principles” http://www.yeatsvision.com/principles.html.
74.
W.B. Yeats, A Vision: The Original 1925 version. The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats Vol. XIII, ed. Catherine E. Paul and Margaret Mills Harper, p. 15.
75.
Oscar Wilde, Salomé in The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: Volume V, ed. Joseph Donohue, p. 727.
76.
W.B. Yeats, A Full Moon in March. The Plays. The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats. Vol. II, ed. David R. Clark and Rosalind E. Clark, p. 503.
77.
W.B. Yeats, A Vision: The Revised 1937 Edition. The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats Vol. XIV, ed. Catherine E. Paul and Margaret Mills Harper, p. 79.
78.
Ibid.
79.
W.B. Yeats, A Full Moon in March. The Plays. The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats. Vol. II, ed. David R. Clark and Rosalind E. Clark, pp. 503, 504.
80.
W.B. Yeats, “Ego Dominus Tuus” in Per Amica Silentia Lunae in Later Essays. The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats, Vol. V, ed. William H. O’Donnell, p. 3.
81.
W.B. Yeats, A Full Moon in March. The Plays. The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats. Vol. II, ed. David R. Clark and Rosalind E. Clark, p. 508.
82.
Ibid., p. 507.
83.
Neil Mann, “The Is and the Ought, the Knower and the Known” in W.B. Yeats’s A Vision: Explications and Contexts, ed. Neil Mann, Matthew Gibson and Claire Nally, p. 30.
84.
W.B. Yeats, Per Amica Silentia Lunae. W.B. Yeats, “Ego Dominus Tuus” in Per Amica Silentia Lunae in Later Essays. The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats, Vol. V, ed. William H. O’Donnell, p. 11.
85.
Yeats’s initial admiration for Wilde’s work is evidenced in his use of it as creative material. Bloom’s second revisionary ratio is present in Yeats’s completion of Wilde’s text. He completes Wilde’s story in the male protagonist’s reciprocal desire for the Queen. Yeats demonstrates Bloom’s third revisionary ratio, daemonization, in emptying Salomé of its meaning and completing this action by restituting a meaning of his own, in line with Bloom’s fourth ratio. Bloom’s fifth revisionary ratio in his theory of influence, askesis, or self-discipline is present in the simple, restrictive nature of Yeats’s prose. The final ratio, apophrades, in which the poet subverts time and appears to have originated himself is also evident in Yeats’s play. See Harold Bloom, The Anxiety of Influence, 1973.
86.
W.B. Yeats, “What Then?” The Poems (Second Edition). The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats, Vol. I, ed. Richard J. Finneran, p. 302.

References

Manuscripts

Yeats, W.B. A Full Moon in March and other material incl. essay on the Irish Theatre. (red, loose leaf notebook circa 1934. Unnumbered). N.L.I. Ms./Micro-fiche 30,336.
Google Scholar
——— W.B. Yeats Papers: The King of the Great Clock Tower. N.L.I. Ms. 8769. M/F 7493.
Google Scholar
———. A Full Moon in March. N.L.I. Ms. 8906. M/F 7493.
Google Scholar

Articles

Gould, Warwick. “The Mask before The Mask.” Yeats’s Mask: Yeats Annual No. 19. Vol. 19. Open Book Publishers, 2013. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt5vjtxj.
Harper, Margaret Mills. “Of Dialogism in the Chorus’s Speech: The Example of A Full Moon in March.” Yeats’s Mask: Yeats Annual No. 19. Vol. 19 (Open Book Publishers, 2013), p. 113. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt5vjtxj.
Mann, Neil. “The System of W.B. Yeats’s A Vision.” http://www.yeatsvision.com

Books

Bloom, Harold. The Anxiety of Influence. New York: Oxford University Press, 1973.
Google Scholar
De Valois, Ninette. Come Dance With Me: a memoir, 1898–1956 (1957; rpt.). London: Hamilton, 1973.
Google Scholar
Ellis, Sylvia C. The Plays of W.B. Yeats: Yeats and the Dancer. London: Macmillan, 1995.
Google Scholar
Frye, Northrop. Northrop Frye On Twentieth Century Literature, ed. Glen Robert Gill. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2010.
Google Scholar
Harper, George Mills. The Making of Yeats’s A Vision: A Study of the Automatic Script, Volume 2. Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 1987.
Google Scholar
Hobson, Bulmer, ed. The Gate Theatre, Dublin. Dublin: The Gate Theatre, 1934.
Google Scholar
Mann, Neil, Matthew Gibson and Claire V. Nally, eds. W.B. Yeats’s A Vision: Explications and Contexts. South Carolina: Clemson University Digital Press, 2012.
Google Scholar
Pine, Richard and Richard Cave. The Dublin Gate Theatre 1928–1978. New Jersey: Cambridge and Teaneck, Chadwyck-Healey Ltd., 1984.
Google Scholar
Tydeman, William and Steven Price. Wilde: Salomé. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
Google Scholar
Walker, Kathrine Sorley. Ninette de Valois: Idealist without Illusions. London: Hamish Hamilton, 1987.
Google Scholar
Wilde, Oscar. The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde. Volume I: Poems and Poems in Prose, ed. Bobby Fong and Karl Beckson. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.
Google Scholar
———. The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde. Volume II: De Profundis; Epistola: In Carcere et Vinculis, ed. Ian Small. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.
Google Scholar
———. The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: Volume III: The Picture of Dorian Gray: The 1890 and 1891 Texts, ed. Joseph Bristow. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.
Google Scholar
———. The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: Volume V: Plays I: The Duchess of Padua, Salomé: Drame en un Acte, Salome: Tragedy in One Act, ed. Joseph Donohue. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013.
Google Scholar
Yeats, W.B. The Poems (Second Edition). Volume I: The Collected Works of W. B. Yeats, ed. Richard J. Finneran. New York: Scribner, 1997.
Google Scholar
———. The Plays. Volume II: The Collected Works of W. B. Yeats, ed. David R. Clark & Rosalind E. Clark. New York & London: Palgrave, 2001; New York: Scribner, 2001.
Google Scholar
———. Later Essays. Volume V: The Collected Works of W. B. Yeats, ed. William H. O’Donnell with Elizabeth Bergmann Loizeaux. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1994.
Google Scholar
———. A Vision: The Original 1925 Version. Vol. XIII, ed. Catherine E. Paul & Margaret Mills Harper. New York: Scribner, 2008.
Google Scholar
———. A Vision: The Revised 1937 Edition. The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats. Vol. XIV, ed. Catherine E. Paul and Margaret Mills Harper. New York: Scribner, 2015.
Google Scholar
———. The Letters of W.B. Yeats, ed. Allan Wade. London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1954.
Google Scholar
———. The Variorum Edition of the Plays of W.B. Yeats, ed. Russell K. Alspach, assisted by Catherine C. Alspach. 1966; London: Macmillan, 1979.
Google Scholar
———. The Oxford Book of Modern Verse, 1892–1935, ed. W.B. Yeats. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 32.
Google Scholar
———. The Winding Stair and Other Poems (A Facsimile Edition). New York: Scribner, 2011.
Google Scholar

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Dublin City University, Dublin, Ireland
Noreen Doody

Authors

Noreen Doody
View author publications
You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Doody, N. (2018). “There Must Be Severed Heads”: Yeats’s Final Transumption of Oscar Wilde (1923–1939). In: The Influence of Oscar Wilde on W.B. Yeats. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-89548-2_9

Download citation

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-89548-2_9
Published: 08 August 2018
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-89547-5
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-89548-2
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics