Mary Robinson, Sappho and Phaon (1796)

1. Mary Robinson, Sappho and Phaon (1796)

2. Biography: basic facts Mary Darby Robinson, celebrated actress, writer, autobiographer, and the first lover of the Prince of Wales and future King of England, George IV. Mary Darby was born on November 27, 1758, in Bristol, the daughter of Mary Seys, a respectable Welsh woman, and John Darby, an adventurous and financially successful American merchant-seaman. When Mary was eleven, John Darby left hisfamily to sail to Labrador to set up a whale-fishing industry, taking along a mistress; the industry failed and he never returned to his family. On April 12, 1773, at the age of 15, Mary Darby married Thomas Robinson, an articled law-clerk. Her first daughter, Maria Elizabeth, was born on November 18, 1774; a second daughter, Sophia, who lived only six weeks, was born in the summer of 1778. A year after Maria's birth, in 1775, Thomas Robinson was confined to the Kings Bench Prison for debtors; his wife and daughter stayed there with him for nine months, during which time Mary Robinson began publishing poetry to earn money. In 1776 she returned to the career she had abandoned at the time of her marriage, that of actress. She made her debut as Juliet on December 10, 1776, at the Drury Lane Theatre and was an immediate success. She quickly became one of the leading actresses of the day, excelling in female ingenue roles in both tragedy and comedy—her most famous performances were as Cordelia, Juliet, Perdita, and Amanda in Sheridan's adaptation of Vanbrugh's The Relapse. On December 3, 1779, she gave a command performance as Perdita in The Winter's Tale for the Royal Family; six months later, she and the eighteen-year-old Prince of Wales became lovers and she separated from her husband. By August 1781, the affair was over and in October Mary Robinson went to Paris where she was feted as "la Belle Anglaise." In December she returned to London, resumed her acting career, and by May, 1782, had begun an affair with Colonel Banastre Tarleton, a particularly ruthless leader of the British troops in the War against the Colonies; known as the "Swamp Devil," Tarleton was the officer who a year before had forced Thomas Jefferson to flee from Montecello. In June, 1783, travelling overnight to Dover while pregnant in order to pay off Tarleton's creditors and thus prevent him from having to leave England, Mary Robinson had a miscarriage which left her partially paralyzed in her hands and legs. She and Tarleton remained lovers for sixteen years, until he left her at his mother's insistance in 1798. She supported them both with her 500 pound annuity from the Prince and the income from her substantial publication of poetry, novels, plays, and political tracts. She died on December 26, 1800, in her daughter's arms, after completing the first half of her Memoir.

3. Thomas Gainsborourgh Commissioned by the Prince Regent, holding his miniature. Cold, calculating, coquettish, parallel with the dog, rather cynical. As Perdita, acting a role, pure and bucolic, but with the standard associations of actress and courtesan (public woman).

4. Thomas Gainsborourgh

5. Sir Joshua Reynolds More sympathetic portrait of an unprotected woman exposed to the elements.

6. Sir Joshua Reynolds In clothes of Rubens’s wife – some respectability Again, the half-closed, calculating eyes

7. George Romney Depicts her as a widow, abandoned and melancholy, an object of commiseration.

8. John Hoppner (attr.)

9. Angelika Kauffmann, ʽThe British Sappho’ Pure white clothes, classical attire, eyes with intelligence coolly observing the onlooker.

10. LettertotheWomen of England (1798) 1 Had fortune enabled me, I would build an UNIVERSITY FOR WOMEN; where they should be politely, and at the same time classically educated [...]In half a century there would be a sufficient number of learned women to fill all the departments of the university, and those who excelled in an eminent degree should receive honorary medals, which they should wear as an ORDER of LITERARY MERIT. O! my unenlightened country-women! read, and profit, by the admonition of Reason. Shake off the trifling, glittering shackles, which debase you. Resist those fascinating spells which, like the petrifying torpedo, fasten on your mental faculties. Be less the slaves of vanity, and more the converts of Reflection. Nature has endowed you with personal attractions: she has also given you the mind capable of expansion. Seek not the visionary triumph of universal conquest; know yourselves equal to greater, nobler, acquirements: and by prudence, temperance, firmness, and reflection, subdue that prejudice which has, for ages past, been your inveterate enemy. Let your daughters be liberally, classically, philosophically, and usefully educated; let them speak and write their opinions freely; let them read and think like rational creatures; adapt their studies to their strength of intellect; expand their minds, and purify their hearts, by teaching them to feel their mental equality with their imperious rulers. By such laudable exertions, you will excite the noblest emulation; you will explode the superstitious tenets of bigotry and fanaticism; confirm the intuitive immortality of the soul, and givethem that genuine glow of conscious virtue which will grace them to posterity.

11. LettertotheWomen of England 2 There are men who affect, to think lightly of the literary productions of women: and yet no works of the present day are so universally read as theirs. The best novels that have been written, since those of Smollet, Richardson, and Fielding, have been produced by women: and their pages have not only been embellished with the interesting events of domestic life, portrayed with all the elegance of phraseology, and all the refinement of sentiment, but with forcible and eloquent, political, theological, and philosophical reasoning. To the genius and labours of some enlightened British women posterity will also be indebted for the purest and best translations from the French and German languages. I need not mention Mrs. Dobson, Mrs. Inchbald, Miss Plumptree, &c. &c. Of the more profound researches in the dead languages, we have many female classicks of the first celebrity: Mrs. Carter, Mrs. Thomas, (late Miss Parkhurst;) Mrs. Francis, the Hon. Mrs. Damer, &c. &c. Of the Drama, the wreath of fame has crowned the brows of Mrs. Cowley, Mrs. Inchbald, Miss Lee, Miss Hannah More, and others of less celebrity. Of Biography, Mrs. Dobson, Mrs. Thickness, Mrs. Piozzi, Mrs. Montagu, Miss Helen Williams, have given specimens highly honourable to their talents. Poetry has unquestionably risen high in British literature from the productions of female pens; for many English women have produced such original and beautiful compositions, that the first critics and scholars of the age have wondered, while they applauded.

12. The legitimatesonnet (Preface) ʽI have ventured to compose the following collection; not presuming to offer themas imitations of PETRARCH, but as specimens of that species of sonnet writing, so seldom attempted in the English language; though adopted by that sublime Bard, whose Muse produced the grand epic of Paradise Lost…’ ʽI confess myself such an enthusiastic votary of the Muse, that any innovation which seems to threaten even the least of her established rights, makes me tremble, lest that chaos of dissipated pursuits which has too long been growing like an overwhelming shadow, and menacing the lustre of intellectual light, should, aided by the idleness of some, and the profligacy of others, at last obscure the finer mental powers, and reduce the dignity of talents to the lowest degradation.As poetry has the power to raise, so has it also the magic to refine. The ancients considered theart of such importance, that before they led forth their heroes to the most glorious enterprizes, they animated them by the recital of grand and harmonious compositions.’ ʽThat poetry ought to be cherished as a national ornament, cannot be more strongly exemplified than in the simple fact, that, in those centuries when the poets' laurels have been most generously fostered in Britain, the minds and manners of the natives have been most polished and enlightened.’

13. The legitimatesonnet (Preface) ʽPetrarch was crowned with laurels, the noblest diadem, in the Capitol of Rome: his admirers were liberal; his cotemporaries were just; and his name will stand upon record, with the united and honourable testimony of his own talents, and the generosity of his country. It is at once a melancholy truth, and a national disgrace, that this Island, so profusely favoured bynature, should be marked, of all enlightened countries, as the most neglectful of literary merit! and I will venture to believe, that there are both POETS and PHILOSOPHERS, now living in Britain, who, had they been born in any other clime, would have been honoured with the proudest distinctions, and immortalized to the latest posterity. I cannot conclude these opinions without paying tribute to the talents of my illustrious countrywomen; who, unpatronized by courts, and protected by the powerful, persevere in the paths of literature, and ennoble themselves by the unperishable lustre of MENTAL PRE-EMINENCE!’

14. ʽAccount of Sappho’ • ʽThe scarce specimens now extant, from the pen of the Grecian Muse, have by the most competent judges been esteemed as the standard for the pathetic, the glowing, and the amatory.’ • ʽAddison was of opinion, that the writings of Sappho were replete with such fascinating beauties, and adorned with such a vivid glow of sensibility, that, probably, had they been preserved entire, it would have been dangerous to have perused them. They possessed none of the artificial decorations of a feigned passion; they were the genuine effusions of a supremely enlightened soul, labouring to subdue a fatal enchantment; and vainly opposing the conscious pride of illustrious fame, against the warm susceptibility of a generous bosom.’ • ʽIf her writings were, in some instances, too glowing for the fastidious refinement of modern times; let it be her excuse, and the honour of her country, that the liberal education of the Greeks was such, as inspired them with an unprejudiced enthusiasm for the works of genius: and that when they paid adoration to Sappho, they idolized the MUSE, and not the WOMAN.’ [ʽIf men would be completely happy by obtaining the confidence of women, let them unite in confessing that mental equality, which evinces itself by indubitable proofs that the soul has no sex.’ - Letter]

15. The English Sappho • The Monthly Review in 1791 hailed Robinson as the “English Sappho,” it was primarily commendatory, but also a reminder of Robinson’s own history as the rejected lover of the Prince of Wales. • AphraBehn: In his 1691 “The Poetess, A Satyr,” Robert Gould mocked Behn’s poor health, implying venereal disease and calling her “Sapho, famous for Her Gout and Guilt.” He adds, “For Punk and Poetess agree so Pat, / You cannot well be This, and not be That” (16–7). Similarly, William Wycherley portrayed Behn as a promiscuous and syphilitic Sappho in his poem “To the Sappho of the Age, Suppos’d to Ly- In of a Love- Distemper or a Play” (191–2). • Lady Mary Wortley Montagu: also called “Sappho.” In his versification of Donne’s “Satire II,” Pope, : “As who knows Sapho, smiles at other whores”

16. Petrarchproblem • Robinson used Laura as an alter-egoinsome of herearlypoetry. • ʽthe supposed platonic, Petrarch and Laura(ʽTotheReader’) • Tradition tells us that the Laura of Petrarch, whose name was immortalized by the Genius of her lover during twenty years of unabating fondness, could neither read nor write! Petrarch was a poet and a scholar; I will not so far stigmatize his memory, as to attribute his excessive idolatry to the intellectual obscurity of hisidol. Yet from the conduct of some learned modern philosophers, (in every thing but love), the spirit of cynical observation might trace something like jealousy and envy, or a dread of rivalry in mental acquirements. (Letter) [alwaysaboutPetrarch, his Laura, and hislaurel]

17. Roles and Voices • Mary Robinson’s powerful voice to be heard through a Petrarchan reading of Sappho’s story.

18. SONNET INTRODUCTORY. FAVOUR'D by Heav'n are those, ordain'd to taste The bliss supreme that kindles fancy's fire; Whose magic fingers sweep the muses' lyre, In varying cadence, eloquently chaste! Well may the mind, with tuneful numbers grac'd, To Fame's immortal attributes aspire, Above the treach'rous spells of low desire, That wound the sense, by vulgar joys debas'd. For thou, blest POESY!with godlike pow'rs To calm the miseries of man wertgiv'n; When passion rends, and hopeless love devours, By mem'ry goaded, and by frenzy driv'n, 'Tisthine to guide him 'midst Elysian bow'rs, And shew his fainting soul,—a glimpse of Heav'n.

19. SONNET INTRODUCTORY. (Notes) • Emphasizes the act performance of poetic composition, the fixing into form the “bliss supreme that kindles fancy’s fire” that requires mastery of the instrument (lyre) - restraint and regulation through meter. • Pristine formal perfection (performs the ideal) octave (chaste composition, volta, sestet (frenzied passion), only 4 rhymes (said to be very difficult in English). • The powers associated with the composition and reception of poetry are the ones Sappho has lost. Through her ability to describe that, Robinson gains mastery and independence. • First line might recall Sappho more directly. • Memoirs: “every event of my life has more or less been marked by the progressive evils of a too acute sensibility” – the sequence is about the destructive force of passion, but from an outside perspective

20. A Fragmentof SAPPHO. AmbrosePhilips’stranslation(1748) BLESS'D as the immortal gods is he,The youth who fondly sits by thee,And hears and sees thee all the whileSoftly speak and sweetlysmile. ⁠ 'Twas this depriv'd my soul of rest,And rais'dsuch tumults in my breast;For while I gaz'd, in transport toss'd,My breath was gone, my voice was lost. ⁠ My bosomglow'd; the subtle flameRan quick through all my vital frame;O'er my dim eyes a darkness hung,My ears with hollow murmurs rung. ⁠ In dewy damps my limbs were chill'd,My blood with gentle horrors thrill'd;My feeble pulse forgot to play,I fainted, sunk, and dy'd away. ⁠

21. Fragment 31 tr. ByDiane J. Rayor and André Lardinois 2014 To me it seems that man has the fortune of gods, whoever sits beside you and close, who listens to you sweetly speaking and laughing temptingly. My heart flutters in my breast whenever I quickly glance at you – I can say nothing, my tongue is broken. A delicate fire runs under my skin, my eyes see nothing, my ears roar, cold sweat rushes down me, trembling seizes me, I am greener than grass. To myself I seem needing but little to die. Yet all must be endured, since . . .

22. SONNET XXXII. BLESTastheGods! Sicilian Maid is he, The youthwhosesoulthyyieldinggracescharm; Whobound, O! thraldomsweet! bybeauty'sarm, Inidledalliancefondlysportswiththee! BlestastheGods! thativ'rythronetosee, Throbbingwithtransports, tender, timid, warm! Whileroundthyfragrantlipslightzephyrsswarm, Asop'ningbudsattractthewand'ring Bee! Yet, short is youthfulpassion'sfervidhour; Soon, shallanotherclaspthebeauteous boy; Soon, shall a rivalprove, inthatgaybow'r, The pleasingtorture of excessivejoy! The Bee fliessicken'dfromthesweetestflow'r; The lightning'sshaft, butdazzlestodestroy!

23. SONNET XXXII. (Notes) • One of the very few places where Robinson turns directly to Sappho’s poetry. • Adaptation of Sappho’s poem to her heteroerotic plot [Addison: : “Whatever might have been the Occasion of this Ode, the English Reader will enter into the Beauties of it, if he supposes it to have been written in the Person of a Lover sitting by his Mistress.”] • Praises the Sicilian maid for her conquest, only to point out with mocking instruction that it is Phaon who really is in control of the situation. • Essence of original poem in octave, warning for the future in the sestet.

24. SONNET XLIII. Whilefromthedizzyprecipice I gaze, The worldrecedingfrommypensiveeyes, Higho'ermyheadthetyranteagleflies, Cloth'dinthesinkingsun'stranscendentblaze! The meek-ey'dmoon, 'midstclouds of amberplays Aso'erthepurplingplains of lightshehies, Till thelaststream of livinglustredies, And thecoolconcaveownshertemper'drays! Soshallthisglowing, palpitatingsoul, WelcomereturningReason'splacidbeam, Whileo'ermybreastthewavesLethean roll, TocalmrebelliousFancy'sfev'rishdream; ThenshallmyLyredisdainlove'sdreadcontrol, And loftierpassions, prompt theloftiertheme!

25. SONNET XLIII. (Notes) • Experiencing passion and observing it coolly, from a distance. • Placid reason v. rebellious fancy. • Passion and control inseparable. • But ʽglowing and palpitating’ soul still sounds very physical

26. SONNET XLIV. CONCLUSIVE. HERE droops the muse! while from her glowing mind, Celestial Sympathy, with humid eye, Bids the light Sylph capricious Fancy fly, Time's restless wings with transient flowr's to bind! For now, with folded arms and head inclin'd, Reflection pours the deep and frequent sigh, O'er the dark scroll of human destiny, Where gaudy buds and wounding thorns are twin'd. O! Sky-born VIRTUE! sacred is thy name! And though mysterious Fate, with frown severe, Oft decorates thy brows with wreaths of Fame, Bespangled o'er with sorrow's chilling tear! Yet shalt thou more than mortal raptures claim, The brightest planet of th' ETERNAL SPHERE!

27. SONNET XLIV. CONCLUSIVE. (Notes) • Strong distancing gesture. • Reflection replaces fancy. • More than mortal raptures

28. Recommended Literature Pascoe, Judith. Ed. Mary Robinson: Selected Poems. Toronto: Broadview Press Ltd., 2000. Robinson, Daniel. The Poetry of Mary Robinson: Form and Fame. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. Janowitz, Anne. Women Romantic Poets: Anna Barbauld and Mary Robinson. Tavistock: Northcote House in association with The British Council, 2004. Perry. Gill. ˝'The British Sappho': Borrowed Identities and the Representation of Women Artists in Late Eighteenth-Century British Art”. Oxford Art Journal 18.1 (1995) 44-57. Zuccato, Edoardo. Petrarch in Romantic England. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008. Mellor, Anne K. ʽMaking an exhibition of her self: Mary “Perdita” Robinson and nineteenth‐century scripts of female sexuality’. Nineteenth Century Contexts, 22.3 (2000) 271-304.