The Princess (poem)
Encyclopedia
Blank verse
Blank verse is poetry written in unrhymed iambic pentameter. It has been described as "probably the most common and influential form that English poetry has taken since the sixteenth century" and Paul Fussell has claimed that "about three-quarters of all English poetry is in blank verse."The first...
narrative poem, written by Alfred Tennyson
Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson
Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson, FRS was Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom during much of Queen Victoria's reign and remains one of the most popular poets in the English language....
, published in 1847. Tennyson was Poet Laureate
Poet Laureate
A poet laureate is a poet officially appointed by a government and is often expected to compose poems for state occasions and other government events...
of the United Kingdom from 1850 to 1892 and remains one of the most popular English poets.
The poem tells the story of an heroic princess who forswears the world of men and founds a women's university where men are forbidden to enter. The prince to whom she was betrothed in infancy enters the university with two friends, disguised as women students. They are discovered and flee, but eventually they fight a battle for the princess's hand. They lose and are wounded, but the women nurse the men back to health. Eventually the princess returns the prince's love.
Several later works have been based upon the poem, including Gilbert and Sullivan
Gilbert and Sullivan
Gilbert and Sullivan refers to the Victorian-era theatrical partnership of the librettist W. S. Gilbert and the composer Arthur Sullivan . The two men collaborated on fourteen comic operas between 1871 and 1896, of which H.M.S...
's comic opera
Comic opera
Comic opera denotes a sung dramatic work of a light or comic nature, usually with a happy ending.Forms of comic opera first developed in late 17th-century Italy. By the 1730s, a new operatic genre, opera buffa, emerged as an alternative to opera seria...
Princess Ida
Princess Ida
Princess Ida; or, Castle Adamant is a comic opera with music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W. S. Gilbert. It was their eighth operatic collaboration of fourteen. Princess Ida opened at the Savoy Theatre on January 5, 1884, for a run of 246 performances...
.
Background
Tennyson planned the poem in the late 1830s after discussing the idea with Emily Sellwood, whom he later married in 1850. It seems to have been a response to criticism that he was not writing about serious issues. It was also a response, in part, to the founding of Queen's College, LondonQueen's College, London
Queen's College is an independent school for girls aged 11–18. It is located in central London at numbers 43-49, Harley Street. Founded in 1848 by F. D. Maurice, Professor of English Literature and History at King's College London along with a committee of patrons, the College was the first...
, Britain's first college for women, in 1847. Two of Tennyson's friends were part-time professors there. Other critics speculate that the poem was partly inspired by the opening of Love's Labour's Lost
Love's Labour's Lost
Love's Labour's Lost is one of William Shakespeare's early comedies, believed to have been written in the mid-1590s, and first published in 1598.-Title:...
and other literary works.
Tennyson is reported as saying, in the 1840s, that "the two great social questions impending in England were 'the education of the poor man before making him our master, and the higher education of women'." The women's rights movement, including the right to higher education, was still at an early stage in 1847. In Britain, the first university-level women's school, Girton College, Cambridge
Girton College, Cambridge
Girton College is one of the 31 constituent colleges of the University of Cambridge. It was England's first residential women's college, established in 1869 by Emily Davies and Barbara Bodichon. The full college status was only received in 1948 and marked the official admittance of women to the...
was not opened until 1869, more than two decades after Tennyson wrote The Princess. In A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman: with Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects , written by the 18th-century British feminist Mary Wollstonecraft, is one of the earliest works of feminist philosophy. In it, Wollstonecraft responds to those educational and political theorists of the 18th...
(1792), however, Mary Wollstonecraft
Mary Wollstonecraft
Mary Wollstonecraft was an eighteenth-century British writer, philosopher, and advocate of women's rights. During her brief career, she wrote novels, treatises, a travel narrative, a history of the French Revolution, a conduct book, and a children's book...
had been an early advocate of the equality of men and women, and writers such as John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill was a British philosopher, economist and civil servant. An influential contributor to social theory, political theory, and political economy, his conception of liberty justified the freedom of the individual in opposition to unlimited state control. He was a proponent of...
had argued for female emancipation. Nevertheless, "Tennyson was in the vanguard in writing of the subject and although feminist critics have complained about the conservative ending of his poem, he must be credited with broaching the topic and voicing some of the injustices women suffered." In The Princess, "Tennyson describes with such clarity the principal problems of feminism".
As in the case of many other Tennyson poems, The Princess is framed by a prologue and a conclusion outside of the main narrative. The description of a summer fête that opens the poem is based on a feast of the Mechanics' Institute at a country house, Park House, near Maidstone
Maidstone
Maidstone is the county town of Kent, England, south-east of London. The River Medway runs through the centre of the town linking Maidstone to Rochester and the Thames Estuary. Historically, the river was a source and route for much of the town's trade. Maidstone was the centre of the agricultural...
, in 1842. The narrative device is a tale of fancy composed in turn by some university undergraduates, based on an old chronicle. Though the poem was moderately successful, Tennyson wrote to a friend, saying "I hate it and so will you". He revised the work after its first publication. Some of the best-known lyrics, including "The splendour falls on castle walls" were added for the third edition (1850).
Synopsis
As with many of Tennyson's works, The Princess has an outer setting to the main narrative, consisting of a Prologue and a Conclusion that take place at a Victorian eraVictorian era
The Victorian era of British history was the period of Queen Victoria's reign from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. It was a long period of peace, prosperity, refined sensibilities and national self-confidence...
summer fete
Fête
Fête is a French word meaning festival, celebration or party, which has passed into English as a label that may be given to certain events.-Description:It is widely used in England and Australia in the context of a village fête,...
. The characters in the Prologue agree to participate in a storytelling game about a heroic princess in days of old, based on an ancient family chronicle
Chronicle
Generally a chronicle is a historical account of facts and events ranged in chronological order, as in a time line. Typically, equal weight is given for historically important events and local events, the purpose being the recording of events that occurred, seen from the perspective of the...
. The main narrative follows, given in seven lengthy "Canto
Canto
The canto is a principal form of division in a long poem, especially the epic. The word comes from Italian, meaning "song" or singing. Famous examples of epic poetry which employ the canto division are Lord Byron's Don Juan, Valmiki's Ramayana , Dante's The Divine Comedy , and Ezra Pound's The...
s", with the prince as narrator.
The prince seeks Princess Ida
The "new students" are taken to see the princess, who tells them that they must "cast and fling the tricks, which make us toys of men", so that they may become equal with men. The men are impressed by the princess and debate the merits of women's equality. They move around the university, listening and learning. Their tutors, Lady Psyche and Lady Blanche, discover the men's subterfuge, but hide their knowledge for reasons of their own. Blanche and Psyche are intellectual and political rivals at the university, and Blanche vows to force Psyche out.
The prince is discovered
Ida and the prince walk together, and, still posing as a woman student, he tells her news of the prince and his court, and they discuss the marriage contract between Ida and the prince. He tells her how the prince loves her from afar. She speaks of her ideals of equality. The prince touches hands with Ida on the path. At a picnic, Ida invites the prince to sing a song from her [his] homeland. He sings of love, but Ida mocks it and talks of the inequality of love between men and women. She invites another song about the women of her [his] land. Cyril sings a drunken tavern song, and chaos breaks out as the men's identities become obvious to all. In the confusion, Ida falls into the river, and the prince saves her from drowning.The men flee (and Psyche flees with Cyril, leaving her child behind in the castle), but the prince and Florian are recaptured. Letters arrives from the prince's father (the king) and Ida's father (Gama). Gama tells how he started to come to Ida to plead for the prince but was taken hostage by the king. The king tells Ida not to harm the prince and to free him, or the king's army will storm the castle. The prince declares his love for Ida, saying, "except you slay me here according to your bitter statute-book, I cannot cease to follow you... but half without you; with you, whole; and of those halves you worthiest". Word comes that the king has arrived to storm the castle. Ida gives a stirring speech, saying that she will lead the maidens into battle. Though Ida appears to be forming an interest in the prince, she renounces her marriage contract. The prince and Florian are freed and pushed out of the castle. Psyche is distraught at having betrayed Ida and her cause, and having lost her child.
Battle and aftermath
The king wants to make war, but the prince wants to win Ida's love. He says, "wild natures need wise curbs... not war: lest I lose all". Gama and the prince have developed a warm relationship, and Gama supports the prince's cause, but Ida's brothers support their sister at all costs. The prince and his friends offer to fight Ida's brother and to let the battle decide whether Ida must keep her contract. Ida's brother Arac sends word of this proposal to Ida, who rants against the harm done to women, but confident of her brothers' victory, she agrees to abide by the contest. Meanwhile, Ida has been growing to love Psyche's child.In the battle, Ida's brothers defeat and wound the prince and his friends. The prince acknowledges defeat and pleads with Ida to let Psyche reclaim her child, but he falls into a coma. Ida rants against Psyche's betrayal. The king says that he cannot let such a hard woman tend his son. Ida relents and asks the king to let her tend the prince's injuries, and to let the ladies tend to Cyril and Florian. This shows her willingness to bend her own laws. By ministering to the men, the ladies of the university become more fair, and Ida finds peace. Love blossoms between the nurses and the nursed.
Ida eventually comes to love the prince. As he regains consciousness at times, they discuss their ideas of love, and she discovers that they agree on the equality of love; not, as she had always feared, women's servitude in love – he has been well-schooled in this by his mother. The prince envisages a future where "The man may be more of woman, she of man". He says "my hopes and thine are one" and asks her to place her trust in him.
Conclusion
In the Conclusion, the narrator reflects on how to tell the long story, noting that the events are "Too comic for the solemn things they are, / Too solemn for the comic touches in them."Critical opinion
The Princess has divided opinion about where Tennyson's sympathies lay. The poet's son Hallam wrote that his father held that "the sooner woman finds out, before the great educational movement begins, that 'woman is not undevelopt man, but diverse', the better it will be for the progress of the world." The cool reception of the piece "seems to have led Tennyson to revise the poem after publication more extensively than any of his others". The early view that Tennyson was sympathetic to a progressive view of women's education but found it expedient to subordinate it to the dictates of VictorianVictorian era
The Victorian era of British history was the period of Queen Victoria's reign from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. It was a long period of peace, prosperity, refined sensibilities and national self-confidence...
society led the poet to rebalance The Princess by adding the interlude songs in his 1850 revision: "I thought that the poem would explain itself, but the public did not see the drift."
The songs, which relate to the contemporary world of Tennyson's time, are in contrast to the main narrative, which is male-oriented, with a mock-mediaeval setting. Thus, it can be argued, Tennyson balanced the anti-feminist message of the men's narrative with the practical progressiveness displayed in the women's songs. Other critics conclude that the final message of the narrative is plain and anti-feminist.
Works based on The Princess
W. S. GilbertW. S. Gilbert
Sir William Schwenck Gilbert was an English dramatist, librettist, poet and illustrator best known for his fourteen comic operas produced in collaboration with the composer Sir Arthur Sullivan, of which the most famous include H.M.S...
, perhaps attracted by Tennyson's serio-comic treatment of the subject of women's education, adapted and parodied the poem twice. First, in 1870, he produced a musical farce called The Princess
The Princess (play)
The Princess is a blank verse farcical play, in five scenes with music, by W. S. Gilbert which adapts and parodies Alfred Lord Tennyson's humorous 1847 narrative poem, The Princess: A Medley. It was first produced at the Olympic Theatre in London on 8 January 1870.Gilbert called the piece "a...
. Later, in 1884, he adapted his farce into a comic opera
Comic opera
Comic opera denotes a sung dramatic work of a light or comic nature, usually with a happy ending.Forms of comic opera first developed in late 17th-century Italy. By the 1730s, a new operatic genre, opera buffa, emerged as an alternative to opera seria...
with composer Arthur Sullivan
Arthur Sullivan
Sir Arthur Seymour Sullivan MVO was an English composer of Irish and Italian ancestry. He is best known for his series of 14 operatic collaborations with the dramatist W. S. Gilbert, including such enduring works as H.M.S. Pinafore, The Pirates of Penzance and The Mikado...
entitled Princess Ida
Princess Ida
Princess Ida; or, Castle Adamant is a comic opera with music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W. S. Gilbert. It was their eighth operatic collaboration of fourteen. Princess Ida opened at the Savoy Theatre on January 5, 1884, for a run of 246 performances...
, which is still performed regularly today.
Other musical works inspired by the poem include a setting of "As through the land" composed by the poet Edward Lear
Edward Lear
Edward Lear was an English artist, illustrator, author, and poet, renowned today primarily for his literary nonsense, in poetry and prose, and especially his limericks, a form that he popularised.-Biography:...
in his lesser-known capacity as a composer. Both Ralph Vaughan Williams
Ralph Vaughan Williams
Ralph Vaughan Williams OM was an English composer of symphonies, chamber music, opera, choral music, and film scores. He was also a collector of English folk music and song: this activity both influenced his editorial approach to the English Hymnal, beginning in 1904, in which he included many...
and Frank Bridge
Frank Bridge
Frank Bridge was an English composer and violist.-Life:Bridge was born in Brighton and studied at the Royal College of Music in London from 1899 to 1903 under Charles Villiers Stanford and others...
composed settings for the "Tears, idle tears
Tears, Idle Tears
"Tears, Idle Tears" is a lyric poem written in 1847 by Alfred, Lord Tennyson , the Victorian-era English poet. Published as one of the "songs" in his The Princess , it is regarded for the quality of its lyrics. A Tennyson anthology describes the poem as "one of the most Virgilian of Tennyson's...
" section of The Princess. Gustav Holst
Gustav Holst
Gustav Theodore Holst was an English composer. He is most famous for his orchestral suite The Planets....
set "Home they brought her warrior dead." Among later musical works inspired by The Princess are Benjamin Britten
Benjamin Britten
Edward Benjamin Britten, Baron Britten, OM CH was an English composer, conductor, and pianist. He showed talent from an early age, and first came to public attention with the a cappella choral work A Boy Was Born in 1934. With the premiere of his opera Peter Grimes in 1945, he leapt to...
's Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings
Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings
The Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings is a song cycle written in 1943 by the English composer Benjamin Britten, scored for tenor accompanied by a solo horn and a small string orchestra...
, which includes a setting of "The splendour falls", and a setting of "Ask me no more" by Ned Rorem
Ned Rorem
Ned Rorem is a Pulitzer prize-winning American composer and diarist. He is best known and most praised for his song settings.-Life:...
.
John Melhuish Strudwick
John Melhuish Strudwick
John Melhuish Strudwick , was a Victorian Pre-Raphaelite painter, the son of William Strudwick and Sarah Melhuish .John Strudwick attended St Saviour's Grammar School in Southwark...
's painting "Oh Swallow, Swallow" is based on this poem.