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The Dramatic Element in Donne's Poetry by Pierre Legouis That Donne possessed dramatic power has generally been acknowl-
edged. 1 Indeed, one of the generation that came to manhood in the last
decade of the sixteenth century might be credited with some measure of
the instinct at work in Shakespeare and so many lesser playwrights, even
before he had given evidence of it. In his fervid youth Donne was "a
great Frequenter of Plays," 2 though the theaters probably found in him ____________________
| | "The Dramatic Element in Donne's Poetry." From Donne the Craftsman, by Pierre Legouis
( Paris, 1928). Reprinted by permission of the author. [The pages reprinted
(pp. 47 - 61 and 71 -9) form the third section of Professor Legouis' defence of Donne as
an artist. They omit his interpretation of "The Ecstasy" as a dramatic poem. This has,
given rise to so much controversy that to reprint it would have necessitated printing
rebuttals. For a summary of the debate, see my article "The Argument about 'The
Ecstasy,'" Elizabethan and Jacobean Studies, edited by Herbert Davis and Helen Gardner
( Oxford, 1959). Professor Legouis approves this omission and has also kindly
supplied me with some corrections and minor alterations of the text for this reprint.
Ed.] | | 1 | Edward Dowden, New Studies in Literature ( London, 1895), p. 103, goes near to
denying it: "Touches of dramatic power are rare in Donne, whose genius was lyrical
and meditative, not that of a dramatist; but in this Elegy ["By our first strange and
fatall interview . . ."] there is one touch which might seem of triumphant power even
if it had occurred in a tragedy of Webster." The remark applies to ll. 50-54; when I
am gone on my continental journey, the lover says to his mistress, do not in bed fright thy Nurse
With midnight startings, crying out, oh oh,
Nurse, รด my love is slaine, I saw him goe
O'r the white Alps alone; I saw him I,
Assail'd, fight, taken, stabb'd, bleed, fall and die.
The passage is very beautiful and moving but it is not strictly dramatic since the lover
merely conjures up a vision of the future as in "The Apparition" (see infra). | | 2 | Sir Richard Baker, Chronicle of the Kings of England ( 1730), p. 424, quoted in
Grierson, Poems, ii. 172. Grierson also quotes a verse letter, addressed to Donne c. 1600
by "William Cornwaleys," which contains the lines: If then for change of howers you seem careles,
Agree with me to lose them at the playes.
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