Drama’s Vitallest Expression
is the Common Day
That arise and set about Us—
Other Tragedy
Perish in the Recitation—
This—the best enact
When the Audience is scattered
And the Boxes shut—
“Hamlet” to Himself were Hamlet—
Had not Shakespeare wrote—
Though the “Romeo” left no Record
Of his Juliet,
It were infinite enacted
In the Human Heart—
Only Theatre recorded
Owner cannot shut—
For me, Stanzas 1-2 translate as a single enjambed eight-line stanza (octave or octastich):
“Life’s most Dependable Event
Is the Common Day.
Defined by sunrise and sunset,
Everything else vanishes,
Like actors on a stage.
The Common Day enacts its best scenes
When we aren’t watching,
Our box seats empty.”
Stanza 3:
ED may have known or not known that Shakespeare based his stage play, ‘Hamlet’, on Saxo Grammaticus’s (c. 1150 – c. 1220) ‘Gesta Danorum’, Books 3 and 4, where a legendary Scandinavian prince, Amleth, feigned madness and murdered his uncle. As with most legendary heroes, there may have been one or more real human “legend-seeds”. ED’s point is that that each actual human “legend-seed” was someone who, during their lives, knew he/she existed, even though we have no physical evidence of their existence. To quote René Descartes, “Cogito, ergo sum”, “I think, therefore I am”.
Stanza 4:
“If that legend-seed’s exact life story
Were recorded in his/her Heart,
Only a theatrical script could tell the tale.
The seed itself could not shut down its own legend.”
……………………..
Neither EDLex nor OED recognizes “vitallest” as an English word, but EDLex does define “vitalless”: “Dead; lifeless; limp; impotent; powerless; very weak; unable to provide energy; not able to recover; [fig.] ineffective; not motivating.” Nevertheless, ED’s invented comparative communicates the opposite of “lifeless” to me. She used the word “vitallest” only once in all her 1789 known poems.
……………………………….
We have an actual letter from Wadsworth to ED, expressing concern over her health, so their “relationship” was not “purported”. What is purported is the exact nature of that relationship. We have circumstantial evidence in poem after poem that “Master” was, in ED’s mind, a romantic interest, sexual or not, that lasted several years. What ED was in Wadsworth’s mind was probably a completely different story, which fits perfectly as an example of ED’s point in this poem, don’t you think?
We also have lots of circumstantial evidence that Wadsworth was “Master”, and, more importantly, in all her poems and letters or elsewhere, we have no actual evidence to prove that Wadsworth was not “Master”. That cannot be said for any other candidate.
I know, absence of actual proof is not proof of the contrary, but if it quacks like a duck ….