Engliterarium

Like typical comedy of manners, “The Rivals” has a complicated plot. There are three love-affairs in it – the Absolute-Lydia love-affair, the Faulkland-Julia love-affair, and the Mrs. Malaprop-Sir Lucius love-affair. All these love-affairs have a parallel development, so that the interest keeps shifting from one love-affair to the other quite rapidly. Again, like a typical comedy of manner, “The Rivals” abounds in wit. We have the wit of Captain Absolute, the wit of Sir Anthony, the wit of even Sir Lucius and Acres who are otherwise the targets of the play’s satire.

“The Rivals” is an amusing satire on the fashionable upper-class of Sheridan's time. The scene of this play is set in Bath. In the second half of the eighteenth century, Bath was a famous centre of fashionable life. The manner in which Fag dwells upon this life is quite amusing.

The Faulkland-Julia love-affair is undoubtedly a parody of the sentimental comedy of the eighteenth century. Julia is portrayed as an excessively sentimental girl, while Faulkland is portrayed as the most whimsical and eccentric lover. Faulkland greatly amuses us by his account of the anxieties that fill his mind regarding Julia. Every hour he is alarmed on Julia’s account. If it rains, if the wind is sharp, he feels afraid. All this is very funny. Similarly, Faulkland’s feeling upset on hearing about the gay life that Julia has been leading also amuses us. Julia’s over-sentimentality in idealizing her lover and repeatedly forgiving his faults and silly suspicions is also funny.

Captain Absolute & Lydia

 The portrayal of Lydia is a satire on the romantic notions which young, fashionable girls of upper-class families of the time entertained. She is fond of reading romantic novels and stories. Fed on such stories, she does not want a conventional and routine kind of wedding. When Captain Absolute’s real identity is revealed to Lydia, she feels terribly disappointed at the collapse of her romantic dreams and hopes. The manner in which she recalls her secret meetings with her lover during the cold nights of January is very amusing to us.

The most amusing scenes in the play are those in which Captain Absolute comes face to face with his father, Sir Anthony. Sir Anthony is portrayed as a self-willed, dictatorial kind of father who demands implicit obedience from his son. He threatens to disinherit his son, to disown his son in case his son does not carry out his wishes. Sir Anthony in his own prime of life was a gay fellow.

Sheridan also makes us laugh at some of the contemporary fashions. When Bob Acres comes to Bath, he decides to discard his country clothes and to dress himself according to the fashion prevailing in the city. Then he tries to practice some French dancing steps and discovers to his disappointment that his are “true-born English legs” which can never learn French dancing steps. He is also fond of swearing and has developed a new way of swearing. We find him swearing, by “Gods’ balls and barrels”, by “God’s bullets and blades”, by “God’s levels and aims” and so on. Then there is a satirical treatment of dueling. The manner in which Sir Lucius instigates Acres to send a challenge to Beverley is most amusing. Sir Lucius gives the following argument absurdly in favour of Acre’s sending a challenge to Beverley:

Can a man commit a more heinous offence against another than to fall in love with the same woman?

The portrayal of Sir Lucius is also satirical. Sir Lucius is an Irishman, easily duped by the maid-servant Lucy, who tells him that the love-letters which she brings for him have been sent by the seventeen-year old niece of Mrs. Malaprop. This wrong impression ultimately leads him to challenge Captain Absolute to a duel and the manner in which Sir Lucius picks up a quarrel with Captain Absolute is itself very funny.

The portrayal of Lydia's “tough old aunt” is also satirical. We laugh at the contradiction in this elderly woman who puts restrictions on her niece, while herself falling in love with a tall Irish baronet and writing letters to him under the assumed name of Delia. Beverley’s description of Mrs. Malaprop as an “old weather-beaten, she-dragon” is most amusing.

Sir Anthony & Mrs Malaprop

One of the most striking features of “The Rivals” is witty dialogue. The manner in which Sir Anthony snubs and scolds his son for disobeying his wishes, the manner in which Captain Absolute deals with Mrs. Malaprop when he meets her first, Sir Lucius manner of dealing with Acres when he instructs Acres in the rules of dueling is also witty.

Humorous and farcical situations are also generally found in a comedy of manner. Captain Absolute’s disguising himself as Ensign Beverley and then unmasking himself when finally he has to face Lydia in his true character are such situations. Then there are two more farcical situations. One is that in which Captain Absolute tricks his father into believing that his is going to make up his quarrel with Lydia when his is actually going to fight a duel. The second is when David shouts to Sir Anthony to stop Absolute because there is going to be fight, murder, bloodshed and so on.

Instead of moral sentiments, Sheridan gives quick and witty dialogues, fast moving actions with its highly comic situations and above all the absence of any serious complication or conflict. Right from the beginning to the end, the play sends the audience into peals of laughter. The criticism that elements of sentimentality have penetrated into the play is based on misunderstanding.

Spleen was the Augustan name what Elizabethan described as melancholy. It is less of a disease than a fashionable affectation. Fashionable ladies, poets, and playwrights pretend to suffer from it so as to give an impression that he victims are serious thinkers of creative writers. Pope exalts Spleen to the level of Goddess and cave of Spleen to the level of underworld and personifies her as the Queen of underworld. This suits his scheme to mock the epic conventions systematically because the serious epics like “Illiad” and “Aenied” show heroes taking a voyage to the underworld. In travesty of this convention, however, Pope packs a lot of social criticism, especially the criticism of fashionable vanities and affectations of the fashionable women.

Sylphs were in attendance to Belinda when she plays Omber. They hover around her when she sips coffee. They withdraw when Ariel sees “an earthly lover lurking at her heart”. A gnome, called ‘Umbriel’ holds the place of Ariel. After the rape of the lock of Belinda, Umbriel wanted to inflict her with Spleen. So he took a journey to the underworld to the cave of spleen.

It is reported that the Queen of Spleen as a capricious and eccentric goddess holds full control over the fashionable ladies ranging from fifteen to fifty. She, the Goddess of Spleen is the aspiration behind the affectation of melancholy as well as the pretension to the poetry by the female sex.

The effect of Spleen on the women varies according to their temperament. While some consults the physician for their treatments. Some begin to write scurrilous plays and those who are proud give them an air and try to delay their visit as to show their importance.

While speaking of the cave of Spleen, Pope gives a vivid picture of the fantastic vision to which the men and women plagued with spleen are exposed to. At the moment we see flaming devils and snakes erected on their coils, lustrous ghosts, opening sepulchers and red fires and the other moment we visualizes the lakes of liquid gold, scenes of paradise, transparent places and angles coming to solve the difficulties in human life. Thus the description of the cave of Spleen is highly symbolic and conveys the accurate picture of the people suffering from Spleen.

Moreover, Pope points out the illusion from which morbidly melancholic people suffer. Such people are often plagued with fantastic ideas or visions and often imagine themselves transformed into various objects.

 

Then, there are two hand maidens who wait upon the Goddess of Spleen, are Ill-Nature and Affectation. Apparently, it is seemed that Pope has delineated the pictures of two hand-maidens just to emphasize the splendour of Goddess of Spleen. But since Spleen, Ill-Nature and Affectation are the typical feminine vices in Pope’s time, therefore, the delineation of their portraits provide the vivid picture of the fashionable women who affected so many things.

Ill-Nature is presented as an ugly, wrinkled and decayed woman who pretends to be virtuous and pious but essentially a vicious creature who takes delight in murdering reputations of the other people. The black and white lines of her dress presents the contrast between her pretension and reality – the while colour suggests purity, innocence and religiosity and the black colour suggest malice, envy and scorn. In fact, Pope has satirized the double role of the woman’s nature of his times who pretends to be pious and virtuous just to maintain their good reputation i.e. the woman of his age gives importance to their reputation than their virtues. In other words they are hypocrite.

The, Pope delineates the portrait of the Affectation, the second hand maiden of the Goddess of Spleen. Affectation is personified as an old woman who is beautiful, young and tender though she is fairly old. Delineation of the portrait of the Affectation provides a vivid picture of the fashionable woman. It includes a sharp, ironical commentary on the vanity, frivolity d hypocrisy of fashionable women.

There Affectation, with a sickly mien,
Shows in he cheek the roses of eighteen,
Practiced to lisp, and hang the head aside,
Faints into airs, and languishes with pride,
On the rich quilt sinks with becoming woe,
Wrapt in a gown, for sickness, and for show.
The fair ones feel such maladies as these,
When each new night-dress gives a new disease.

Then, the bag, which the Goddess of Spleen gives to gnome, Umbriel, is the clever mimicry of the bag in which Ulysses entrapped the winds. The bag contains all the violent and noisy emotions while the Phial contains the noisiest sort of sufferings. This bag is indicative of female weaknesses. Thus, Pope seems to imply that the women are capable of all sorts of antics to demonstrate their sufferings.

To sum up, the visit to the cave of Spleen is introduced for the sake of mock-heroic effect, which gives an opportunity to the poet to satirize the evil nature and the affectations of ladies and gentlemen of his society. Furthermore, it also serves the action of the poem.

An epic, according to Aristotle, is the tragedy of a conspicuous person, who is involved in adventurous events and meets a tragic fall on account of some error of judgment i.e. hamartia which throws him from prosperity into adversity, however, his death is not essential. So, the subject matter of an epic is grand and that’s why it is written in bombastic language and heroic couplet. Its style, too, is grand.

A mock-epic is a satire of an epic. It shows us that even a trivial subject can also be treated on epical scale. The subject of “The Rape of the Lock” is trivial – a love dispute between a lady ad a gentleman. Lord Byron proposes Belinda who rejects his proposal. Baron cuts one of her beautiful looks. This trivial theme has been given epical treatment as if it were some grave event of paramount importance.

The style of the poet is mock-heroic. He employs bombastic and showy diction for thoughts and ideas which are not really grand – pompous expression for low action – for example, the game of Ombre had been described as a war of nerves, the table has been termed as the battlefield, the dispersed cards have been dubbed as routed army etc.

Similarly, the process of Belinda’s make–up has been termed s adoration and the sacred rites of priced. Belinda is called ‘inferior priestess’ and her toilet an ‘alter’ etc.

The poet has employed the epical method to heighten the effect i.e. the great has been made look small and vice versa. The introduction of the aerial machinery is used for heightening of effect. Belinda is an ordinary fashionable girl, but she has been shown being protected by thousands of spirits. The trivial game of Ombre has been compared with a grave war of nerves. The ordinary flight between the supports of Belinda and those of Peter has been compared with the fatal war between gods and goddesses and their hair pins, fans, etc. with which they fought have been termed as ‘deadly weapons’, spears, etc. The grief of Belinda at the loss of the lock has been compared with the shock at the death of a husband or a lapdog or at the breakage of a China vessel. Thus the poet raises a lapdog to the level of a husband or reduces a husband to the level of a lapdog.

The poet has also employed epical and heroic images, which is one of the prerequisites of a mock-epic. For example, Belinda has been named as ‘the fairest of mortals’, the ‘bright fair’. The cards have been called ‘parti-coloured troops’. The pair of scissors has been termed as a two-edged ‘weapon’, ‘little engine’, ‘forfex’, ‘fatal engine’, etc.

Belinda’s dreams have been called mystic vision. The air-pins have been compared with ‘deadly weapons’ and ‘deadly spears’ etc. Belinda’s eyes have been dubbed as ‘fair suns’.

Humour is one of the prerequisites of a mock-epic and the poem is full of humour and its humour is pleasing as compared to Swift’s humour.

Moral is an essential part of a mock-epic. This poem is full of morals from the beginning till the end. However, the speeches of Belinda and Clarissa are especially soaked in moral. Belinda repents that she would have been ten times happier if she had indulged herself in the pursuits of the fashionable circle. So, the more a woman exposes herself and her beauty, the more her chastity is in danger.

As Shakespeare is the poet of man, Pope is a poet of society. “The Rape of the Lock” is a social document because it mirrors contemporary society and contains a social satire, too. Pope paints about England in 18th century.

The whole panorama of “The Rape of the Lock” revolves around the false standard of 18th century. Pope satirizes the young girls and boys, aristocratic women and men, their free time activities, nature of husbands and wives, the professional judges and politicians of the day.

Pope clearly depicts the absurdities and the frivolities of the fashionable circle of the 18th century England. The world of Belinda – the world of fashion is a trivial world. The whole life of Belinda is confined to sleeping, make-up, enjoyment and alluring the lords. There are no transcendental elements in her life. This life is marked by ill-nature, affection, mischievousness, coquetry, yielding and submissive nature, fierce and unruly nature, infidelity, cheapness, meanness, trivialities and frivolities etc. Belinda represents all the fashion struck women, busy in such stupidities.

The gallants of the time have not been spared by Pope. Baron not only represents Peter but also typifies the aristocratic gallants of the age.

Pope satirizes man’s nature that is always weak at beauty. Men sacrifice everything at the altar of beauty and even the most intelligent man behaves foolishly when he fall a victim to beauty.

In order to make his satire sharper and all the more effective, Pope introduces the aerial machinery, which facilitates the satire. Through this weapon, the poet throws in contrast the weaknesses of the fashionable women of that age. He satirizes women who are interested in fashionable life and its pursuits and who go on exercising their evil influence even after their death. For the sake of worldly grandeur, they can bid farewell even to their chastity and honour. He satirizes women of fiery, coquettish mischievous and yielding nature and gives them different names. It also provides the poet with an opportunity to satirize the class consciousness of women.

All the women and beaus gather at the place where they exchange talks on trivial things e.g. visits, balls, films, motions, looks, eyes, etc. and “at every word, a reputation dies”.

A beau and witling perished in the throng,
One died in metaphor, and one in song.

Man’s favourite activity is to take suffered women to play with fan. There is singing, dancing, laughing, ogling, etc. and nothing else. Women are busy alluring the dukes and lords. The poet reflects the hollowness of men in the character of Sir Plume who is coward, foolish and senseless, lacking courage. Women are on the whole irresolute and they have made toyshops of their hearts. They have even illicit relations with the beaus. Women are meant only for the entertainment of men, who play toy with them.

Pope also satirizes of the husbands and wives of the day. Husbands always suspect their wives. They think that their wives have been merry making with their lovers.

Wives are also not virtuous at all. They love their lap-dogs more than their husbands. And the death of husbands is not more shocking than the death of a lap dog or the breakage of a china vessel.



So through the medium of satire, Pope paints a picture of 18th century English society. His satire is didactic and impersonal. It is not inflicted against any person or individual, rather against the society and that, too, owing to some moral faults. He is dissatisfied with the society around which he wants to reform. The society he pictured is the aristocratic group of 18th century fashionable English society. But thee are several allied subjects, too, on which he inflicts his satire. For example, he satirized the judged who make hasty decisions.

The hungry judges soon the sentence sign,
And wretches hang that jurymen may dine

He also satirized those friends whose friendship is but lust, those politicians who do not have a deeper insight and cannot see beyond the shows and take steps just for their own interests and ends etc.

To sum up, the poem is a reflection of this artificial and hollow life, painted with a humorous and delicate satire. Pope’s satire is intellectual and full of wit and epigram. Is picture of Addison as Atticus though unjust and prompted by malice, is a brilliant piece of satire.

“As an intellectual observer and describer of personal weakness, Pope stands by himself in English verse.”

 

The eighteenth century is and age of psychological insight. Every writer as well as his work is being analyzed in psychological terms. Modern psychology has proved that it is the sex psychology which determined the superiority of a sex. Sex is the nucleus of human life and its all activities. It is not the product of conventions, rather, it is just a natural instinct, which is reduced to some discipline by accepted social convention, morals, laws, etc. Sex is at the root of all moral and physical health. So it may be disciplined, but if it is curbed and suppressed, it leads to drastic consequences.

In fact, frustrations, depreciation, persecution, disparities coupled with economic problems result in dejection and in order to bring about catharsis, one may get depressed or find any easy escape and become immoral in the eyes of the world.

The lock in “The Rape of the Lock” is a symbol of the female organ and the rape of the lock symbolizes the rape of Belinda by the hands of Lord Peter. In fact, the poem projects a synthesis between sex and religion. The boys and the girls were allured to have relations and were in favour of free sex but religion did not allow it. Besides, they were also afraid of their social disreputation. So they had to suppress their natural instinct sometimes. Resultantly, they established relations with others secretly. Belinda’s grief was not the loss of chastity but her social disreputation. That’s why she repented would that Baron had cut “hairs less in sight, or any hairs but these”. So the sex philosophy in that age was that sex, being a natural instinct, should not be suppressed, but the fear of religion and social disreputation did not allow the boys and the girls have free sexual relations and such relations were dubbed as immoral. That’s what happened with Belinda and her shock was social disreputation and not the loss of chastity.

We notice that throughout the poem, there is a competitive spirit between the female and the male sexes. The game of Ombre is the game of sex in which both the sexes try to dominate each other. The victory of Belinda yielding to lords and the lords playing toy with them. Pope has also indicated their secret relations with the beaus. In this way, if we read the poem, we will find sex symbols scattered here and there and a lot of sex implications. He talks about “soft bosoms”, “winning lips”, “mid-night masquerades”, “melting maids”, “the charge of petticoat”, etc. These are all sex implications and the modern psychology has interpreted them in terms of the sexual behaviour and sexual relations of the women of that age. Even the lock reaching the sky and turning into a comet has a sex implication i.e. Belinda’s reputation is lost for ever and the event of her rape is now known to everyone which implies that she was a woman of yielding and submissive nature who easily fell a prey to the charm of beaus but she frequently changed her favours from one to another and kept “Shifting and the moving toyshop of her heart”. She was not satisfied with one man and was always in search of the better. Thus the poem appears before us as a sex symbol.

In order to understand Wordsworth's view on imagination, we have to go to his poems, and to his letter. In ‘The Preface’, the word occur first when Wordsworth tells us that his purpose has been to select incidents and situations from humble and common life and make them look uncommon and unusual by throwing over them a coloring of imagination. This clarifies that imagination is a transforming and transfiguring power which presents the usual in an unusual light. The poet does not merely present “image of men and nature” but he also shapes, modifies and transfigures that image by the power of his imagination. Thus imagination is creative; it is a shaping or ‘plastic’ power. The poet is half the creator; he is not a mere mechanical reproducer of outward reality, but a specially gifted individual, who, like God, is a creator or maker as he adds something to nature and reality. It is the imagination of the poet which imparts to nature, the ‘glory and freshness of a dream’, the light that never was on land and sea.

In making the poet’s imagination a creative power, Wordsworth goes counter to the ‘associationist’ theories of David Hartley who had considerable influences on the poet. Hartley and other associationist psychologist thought that the human mind receives impressions from the external words, which are therein associated together to form images. In this way, the mind merely reflects the external world. But according to Wordsworth the mind does not merely reflect passively, it actively creates. At least, it is half the creator. Imagination is the active, creative faculty of the mind. As Florence Marsh points out, for Wordsworth imagination is a mental power which alters the external world creatively.

“It is a word of higher import, denoting operations of the human mind upon those objects and processes of creation or composition, governed by certain fixed laws."

It is through imagination that the poet realizes his kinship with the eternal. Imagination works upon the raw material of sense impressions to illustrate the working of external truths. It makes the poet perceive the essential unity of “man, God and Nature” while “the meddling intellect” of the scientist multiplies diversities.

Again, he tells that the poet is a man who thinks long and deeply, and so he can treat things which are absent as if they were present. In other words, the poet contemplates in tranquility the emotions which he had experienced in the past and through imagination can visualize the objects which gave rise to those emotions initially. Imagination is the mind’s eye through which the poet sees into the ‘heart of things’ as well as into the past, the remote, and the unknown. It is imagination which enables the poet to render emotional experience, which he has not personally experienced, as if, they were personally felt emotions.

The power of imagination enables the poet to universalize the particular and the personal, and arrives at universal truths. Henry Crabbe Robinson describes the process in the following words:

“The poet first conceives the essential nature of his object, and then strips it of all casualties and accidental individual dress, and in this he is a philosopher; … he re-clothes his idea in an individual dress which expresses the essential quality and has also the spirit and life of a sensual object. And this transmutes the philosophic into a poetic exhibition.”

Stressing the importance which Wordsworth attached to the role of imagination in the process of poetic creation, C M. Bowra writes:

“For him, the imagination was the most important gift that a poet can have, and his arrangement of his own poems shows what he meant by it.”

The section which he calls, ‘Poems of the Imagination’, contains poems in which he united creative power and a special visionary insight. He agreed with Coleridge that this activity resembles that of God. It is the divine capacity of the child who fashions his own little world:

For feeling has to him imparted power
That through the growing faculties of sense
Doth like an agent of the one great Mind
Create, creator and receiver both,
Working but in alliance with the works
Which it beholds.

The poet keeps this faculty in his maturity, and through it he is what he is. But Wordsworth was full aware that mere creation is not enough, that it must be accompanied by a special insight. So he explains that the imagination,

Is but another name for absolute power
And clearest insight, amplitude of mind,
And Reason in her most exalted mood.

“Wordsworth did to go so far as the other Romantics in relegating reason to an inferior position. He preferred to give a new dignity to the word and to insist that inspired insight is itself rational.”

It should be noticed that here Wordsworth calls imagination, “reason in her most exalted mood”. It is a higher reason than mere reason. It is that faculty which transforms sense perceptions and makes the poet conscious of human immortality. It makes him have visions of the divine.

Wordsworth deals with imagination at much greater length in his Preface to the 1815 edition of the Lyrical Ballads. There he draws a distinction between Fancy and Imagination. Wordsworth’s distinction between Fancy and Imagination is not so subtle and penetrating as that of Coleridge. According to Wordsworth, both Imagination and Fancy, “evoke and combine, aggregate and associate”. But the material which they evoke and combine is different, and their purpose in evoking and combining is different. They differ not in their natures but in their purpose, and in the material on which they work. The material on which Fancy works is not so susceptible to change or so pliant as the material on which imagination works. Fancy makes things exact and definite, while Imagination leaves everything vague and indefinite

Rene Wellek’s comment in this respect is illuminating and interesting:

“Both Wordsworth and Coleridge make the distinction between Fancy, a faculty which, handles, ‘fixities and definites, and Imagination, a faculty which deals with the ‘plastic, the pliant and the indefinite’. The only important difference between Wordsworth and Coleridge is that Wordsworth does not clearly see Coleridge’s distinction between imagination as a ‘holistic’ and fancy as an ‘associative’ power and does not draw the sharp distinction between transcendentalism and associationism which Coleridge wanted to establish.”

Tragic irony was used initially in ancient Greek tragedy and later almost in all tragedies. Irony consists essentially in the contrast of the two aspects of the same remark or situation. A remark made by a character in a play may have one meaning for him and another meaning for other character and the audience or one meaning for the speaker and the other characters and another meaning for the audience. Similarly, a situation may have a double significance in the sense that a disaster may be foreseen by the audience while the characters may be ignorant of it. Irony heightens the tragic effect. Sophocles has used irony with striking effect in his plays.

“Oedipus Rex” is replete with tragic irony and is found in most of the speeches and situations. There are many occasions on which the audience is aware of the facts while the speaker is ignorant of those facts and some other characters, on the other hand, present a contrast which lends an increased emphasis to a tragic fact or to the ultimate tragic outcome. The proclamation of Oedipus that he will make a determined effort to trace the murderer of Laius and the curse that Oedipus utters upon the killer and upon those sheltering the criminal, possess a tragic irony in view of the audience’s knowledge that Oedipus himself will ultimately prove to be Laius’ murderer. Oedipus proclaims that no house in Thebes is to provide shelter to the guilty man and that the gods will curse those who disobey his command. Thus, without knowing the real meaning of his words, Oedipus announces the sentences of banishment against the murderer and heightens the tragic effect of the discovery which comes towards the end of the play. Oedipus does not know that he himself is to become the victim of the punishment which he is proclaiming but the audience knows it. In this contrast between Oedipus’ ignorance and our knowledge of the true fact lies the tragic irony.

The scene between Oedipus and Teiresias is fraught with tragic irony throughout. Teiresias is the prophet who knows everything while Oedipus does not know himself as such. Teiresias would not like to disclose the secret but Oedipus quickly loses his temper thus provoking the prophet to say what he never wanted to say. Teiresias tells Oedipus that he himself is the guilty man he is seeking and that he is living in a sinful union with the one he loves. The impact of these words is totally lost upon Oedipus. The charges of Teiresias enrage him and he insults the prophet by calling him a sightless sot showing his own inner blindness. An irony lies in the fact that Teiresias, physically blind, knows the truth while Oedipus, having normal eyesight, is totally blind to that truth. There is irony also in the contrast between what Oedipus truly is and what he thinks himself to be. To Teiresias he boasts of his intelligence citing his past victory over the Sphinx. The terrible predictions that Teiresias makes regarding the fate in store for Oedipus also possess irony in the sense that, while we know their tragic imports, Oedipus treats them as the ravings of a madman. These predictions become more awful when we realize that they will prove to be true and valid. Teiresias warns Oedipus that the killer of Laius will ultimately find himself blind, an exile, a beggar, a brother and a father at a same time to the children he loves, a son and a husband to the woman who bore him, a father-killer and father-supplenter. Even the Chorus, ignorant of the facts, refuses to believe what Teiresias has said about Oedipus. Thus both Oedipus and the Chorus are unaware of the truth while Teiresias and the audience is fully aware of it.

Tragic irony is also found in the scene with Creon. Creon begs Oedipus not to think him a traitor and not to pass the sentence of death or exile against him. But Oedipus blinded by his authority and his anger shows himself relentless. This situation is ironical of the final scene where the roles are reversed. There Oedipus begs Creon to look after his daughters, and entreats him to pass the order of banishment against him. Creon, being a moderate man, does not show himself unrelenting in that scene. The pathos of the final scene is intensified.

Then there is the scene with Jocasta. Oedipus and Jocasta are ignorant of the true facts. The audience, aware of the facts, experiences a deep sorrow at the fate which is going to overtake these characters. Jocasta is sceptical of oracles. She thinks no man possesses the secret of divination and as a proof she tells what she and her husband did to the child, who, according to the oracle, was to kill his father. There is palpable irony in Jocasta’s unbelief in oracles and her citing as proof the very case which is to prove the truth of one oracle received by her and the late Laius. This irony deepens Jocasta's tragedy.

There is irony also in the account of his life which Oedipus gives to Jocasta. Oedipus thinks himself to be the son of Polybus and Merope: he fled from Corinth after the oracle had told him of the crimes he would commit: he has all along been under the impression that he has avoided committing the crimes foretold by the oracles. But all the time Oedipus has been unknowingly performing certain actions leading to the fulfillment of those very prophecies which he had been striving to belie, just as King Laius had earlier taken desperate but futile measures to prevent the fulfillment of the prophecy which has been communicated to him by the oracle.
When the Corinthian messenger brings the news of Polybus’ death, Jocasta gets another chance to mock at the oracles without realizing that her mockery will turn against herself.

Where are you now, divine prognostication?

Jocasta tells Oedipus that this news proves the hollowness of oracles because Polybus whom Oedipus believed to be his father has died a natural death. There is irony also in the simple remark of the messenger that Jocasta is the “true consort” of a man like Oedipus. Neither the messenger nor Jocasta knows the awful meaning of these words. Jocasta makes an exultant speech on the desirability of living at random and on mother marrying as merely a figment of the imagination. Jocasta makes this speech only a few moments before the truth dawns upon her. The Corinthian, who wanted to free Oedipus of his fear of marrying his mother, ends by revealing, unknowingly, the fact that Jocasta's husband, Oedipus, is really her son, although this revelation is at this stage confined to Jocasta. The tragic irony of this situation and in what is said by the Corinthian and Jocasta in this scene is evident.

The song of the Chorus, after Jocasta has left in a fit of grief and sorrow, is full of tragic irony. The Chorus thereby pays a tribute to what it thinks to be the divine parentage of Oedipus. There is a big contrast between this supposition of the Chorus and the actual reality. The arrival of the Theban shepherd is the point at which the climax of the tragedy is reached.

After the discovery there is hardly any room for tragic irony. The concluding part consists of a long account of the self-murder and the self-blinding, a dialogue between Oedipus and the Chorus, and a scene between Oedipus and Creon including the brief lament by Oedipus on the wretched condition of his daughters. The concluding portion of the play is deeply moving and poignant, but contains little or no tragic irony.

Oedipus Rex bristles with tragic irony. It opposes Oedipus against those who know i.e. Teiresias. Where characters themselves are not omniscient, the audience is. The audience knows the gist of the story and can be surprised only in the means by which the necessary ends are achieved. They know that Oedipus is, in all sincerity, telling a falsehood when he says:

I shall speak, as a stranger to the whole question and stranger to the action.

The falsehood is, however, qualified in the term stranger: the stranger who met and killed King Laius, who met and married Queen Jocasta, the stranger who was no true stranger at all. At the outset, he says:

Here he is, indeed, speaking the truth, but more truth, than he knows, because he is using sickness only in a symbolic sense while actually it is true of him in a literal tense.

In addition to this irony of detail, there is a larger irony in the inversion of the whole action. The homeless wanderer by delivering the city of Thebes from the sphinx and marrying Jocasta became a King in fact, but this revelation turned him once more into a homeless wanderer, who had once gone bright eyed with his strong traveller’s staff, now uses the staff to feel the way before him.

The reversed pattern is seen again in the fact that the cruel oracles have their darkest moment just before they come clear. Jocasta’s words mocking the prophecy of the gods are echoed and amplified in Oedipus’ typical tyrant-speech of unbelief. The role of the helpers is another example. Sophocles provides at least one helper, or rescuer, for every act. The appeal in the prologue is to Oedipus, himself a rescuer in the past. Oedipus appeals to Creon who comes from and represents Apollo and Delphi. It is as a rescuer that Teiresias is called. Jocasta intervenes to help. So does the Corinthian messenger, and the last helper, the Theban shepherd, is the true and original rescuer. Those who do not know the reality are eager to help; those who know are reluctant. But all helper alike push Oedipus over the edge into disaster.

Love for Nature is one of the prerequisites of all the Romantics and Shelley is no exception. Love for Nature is one of the key-notes of his poetry. His poetry abounds in Nature imagery. ‘On Love’ reflects colourful Nature imagery and glorification of Nature. He shows fruition and fulfillment in his poems. Other poems e.g. ‘A Dream of the Unknown’, ‘Ode to the Westwind’, ‘The Cloud’, ‘To Skylark’, ‘To the Moon’, etc. are remarkable poems of Nature in which we find a profusion of Nature.

Like Wordsworth, Shelley believes that Nature exercises a healing influence on man’s personality. He finds solace and comfort in Nature and feels its soothing influence on his heart.

Shelley, in his poetry, appears as a pantheist too. In fact, his attitude towards Nature is analogous to that of Wordsworth, whao, greatly influenced Shelly. However, as against Wordsworth, who linked the spirit in Nature with God, Shelley, on the other hand, linked it and identified it with love, for he was an atheist and a skeptic. He believes that this spirit ‘wields the world with never wearied love’.

“Adonais” reflects the most striking examples of Shelley’s pantheism. At an occasion, he thinks that Keats ‘is made one with Nature’ for the power, moving in Nature. Nature’s spirit is eternal. ‘The one remains, many change and pass’. He agrees that there is some intelligence controlling Nature. In fact, he fuses the platonic philosophy of love with pantheism. He finds Nature alive, capable of feeling and thinking like a human organism. Wordsworth equates it with God, Shelley with love.

Shelley loved the indefinite and the changeful in Nature. He presents the changing and indefinite moods of Nature e.g. clouds, wind, lightening etc. ‘Ode to the Westwind’ reflects this particular trend of Shelley, wherein, he shows the West Wind driving the dead leaves, scattering the living seeds, awakening the Mediterranean and making the sea-plants feel its force. His poetry lacks pictorial definiteness and, often, his Nature description is clothed in mist. As compared with Coleridge, Wordsworth etc. he is the least pictorial. It is partly due to the abstract imagery and partly, owing to swift succession of similes which blur the picture. Yet, sometimes, his image is definitely concrete. The picture of the blue Mediterranean, lulled to sleep by his crystalline streams and awakened by Westwind is virtually remarkable and substantial.

Despite his pantheistic attitude, Shelley conceives every object of Nature as possessing a distinct individuality of its own, too, though he believes that the spirit of love unites the whole universe, including Nature, yet he treats all the natural objects as distinguishable entities. The sun, the moon, the stars, the rainbow – all have been treated as separate beings. This capacity of individualizing the separate forces for Nature is termed as Shelley’s myth making power which is best illustrated in “Ode to the Westwind”. He gives the West Wind, the ocean an independent life and personalities. He presents the Mediterranean sleeping and then being awakened by the West Wind, just like a human body.

The ancient Greek gave human attributes to the natural objects whom they personified. Shelley, too, personifies them, but he retains their true characteristics. He personifies the West wind ad the Mediterranean, but both remains wind and ocean. They have not been endowed with human qualities. He has almost scientific attitude towards the objects of Nature. Whatever he says is scientifically true. The Westwind virtually drives the dead leaves and scatters the seeds to be grown in this wind; the sea plants undoubtedly feel the destructive effects of the strong Westwind. Likewise, clouds do bring rain, dew-drops, snow, lightening, thunder etc. He observes the natural phenomenon with a scientific eye, though the description remains highly imaginative.

Time and again, Shelley’s Nature description has a touch of optimism having all the sufferings, tortures, miseries of the world. In “Ode to the Westwind”, he hopes for the best and is confident that “If Winter comes, can spring be far behind?” His nature treatment is multidimensional; scientific, philosophic, intellectual, mythical and of course human. He is a marvelous poet of Nature.