Teaching with Audio
Vo i c e s o f Br i t i s h Li t e r a t u re
Volume 1
Literature is first and foremost an art of the ear: throughout most of history, literature was written to be read aloud, or recited, or sung. Volume 1 of Voices of British
Literature, the CD accompanying the first volume of The Longman Anthology of
British Literature, presents spoken and musical selections from the beginnings of
British literature to the close of the 18th Century, from the medieval period’s
Anglo-Saxon, Middle English, and Middle Scots poetry to the wittily pointed couplets of Alexander Pope and the rollicking songs of The Beggar’s Opera. These performances do much to bring out the nuances of meaning—and the sheer drama—
of the works we include in The Longman Anthology of British Literature.
The verbal music of British literature is given literal form in the musical settings we have included for works in each period. Our unaccompanied selections
make compelling listening as well. We have searched for the most beautiful and
gripping performances we could find for each work: Richard Burton reading John
Donne with an intense intimacy; Dylan Thomas relishing his role as Milton’s
Satan; the poet and translator Tim Murphy giving a rousing rendition of his brilliant alliterative translation of Beowulf. In this and several other instances, particularly for several selections from recently rediscovered women writers, we have
commissioned our own readings.
Like the Longman Anthology it accompanies, this CD opens up a range of cultural contexts for the writing and reading of literature. From the Middle Ages, for
example, we give popular songs together with Chaucer and Dunbar. From the
Early Modern period, along with poems by Wyatt and Shakespeare on betrayal and
loss, we include an anguished speech by Queen Elizabeth I on the death sentence
given to her cousin, Mary Queen of Scots—paired with a haunting motet by the
Catholic composer Thomas Tallis. For the Restoration and 18th Century, selections include Samuel Pepys’s eyewitness account of the great Fire of London and
a satiric response by Lady Mary Wortley Montagu to a misogynist poem by
Jonathan Swift.
Most of our selections can be found in the pages of the full Longman Anthology
of British Literature, 2/e (LABL), starting on the page given following each title in
the notes that follow. Many of these texts are also available in the anthology’s
Compact Edition (CE). Occasionally, we have taken the opportunity to extend the
617
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Voices of British Literature: Volume 1
anthology’s range with a compelling recording of a work not in the anthology itself. The texts for these selections are printed following the listing of works, so all
these texts can be studied in detail. These great performances can readily stand on
their own as well: they are a delight to hear.
—David Damrosch
Tr a c k L i s t i n g
The Middle Ages
Track
Time
1
2
3
4
(1:12)
(2:20)
(1:22)+
5
6
7
BEOWULF: The Dirge, in Anglo Saxon
BEOWULF: The Dirge, in English
SUMER IS ICUMEN IN
GEOFFREY CHAUCER: The Canterbury Tales:
Prologue, lines 1–29
GEOFFREY CHAUCER: The Canterbury Tales:
Prologue, lines 447–78
THERE IS NO ROSE
WILLIAM DUNBAR: In Secreit Place This Hyndir Nycht
(1:51)
(1:59)
(4:31)
(3:48)
The Early Modern Period
8 SIR THOMAS WYATT: They Flee from Me
9 QUEEN ELIZABETH I: from a speech on Mary, Queen of Scots
10 THOMAS TALLIS: from Lamentations of Jeremiah
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE: Sonnets
11
Sonnet 18: Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day
12
Sonnet 29: When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes
13
Sonnet 55: Not marble nor the gilded monuments
14
Sonnet 73: That time of year thou mayst in me behold
15
Sonnet 126: O thou, my lovely boy, who in thy power
16
Sonnet 130: My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun
17 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE: Opening monologue
from Twelfth Night
18 HEVENINGHAM/PURCELL: If music be the food of love
19 JOHN DONNE: The Sun Rising
20 JOHN DONNE: A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning
21 KATHERINE PHILIPS: To Mrs. Mary Awbrey at Parting
22 ANDREW MARVELL: To His Coy Mistress
23 WHEN THE KING ENJOYS HIS OWN AGAIN
24 JOHN MILTON: Paradise Lost, Book 1, lines 242–70
+ Music
(1:37)
(5:47)
(3:02)
(1:03)
(1:00)
(0:59)
(1:03)
(0:58)
(1:00)
(1:19)
(3:44)+
(1:39)
(2:04)
(2:58)
(2:22)
(2:49)+
(2:13)
Voices of British Literature: Volume 1
619
The Restoration and the 18th Century
25 SAMUEL PEPYS, from The Diary: The Fire of London
26 JONATHAN SWIFT: from The Lady’s Dressing Room
27 LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU: from The Reasons that
Induced Dr. S to Write a Poem called “The Lady’s Dressing Room”
28 ALEXANDER POPE: from An Essay on Criticism (lines 337–83)
29 APHRA BEHN: To the Fair Clarinda, Who Made Love to Me,
Imagined More than Woman
30 JOHN GAY: from The Beggar’s Opera: Air 6
31 JOHN GAY: from The Beggar’s Opera: Air 21
(3:50)
(3:38)
(3:05)
(3:18)
(1:36)
(2:10)
(2:19)
No t e s
Track
Page in Anthology
1
BEOWULF: The Dirge, in Anglo-Saxon (1:12).
Read by Tim Murphy.
2
BEOWULF: The Dirge, in English (2:20).
Read by Tim Murphy.
3
SUMER IS ICUMEN IN (“The Cuckoo Song”) (1:22). LABL 1:550 CE 341
Performed by Roxbury Union Congregational
Church Choir. A celebration of fertility and renewal
as summer approaches.
4
GEOFFREY CHAUCER: The Canterbury Tales:
The General Prologue, lines 1–29 (1:51).
Read by J. B. Bessinger, Jr. Springtime inspires a
varied—and talkative—group to go on pilgrimage.
LABL 1:302 CE 221
5
GEOFFREY CHAUCER: The Canterbury Tales:
The General Prologue, lines 447–78 (1:59).
Read by J. B. Bessinger, Jr.
LABL 1:312 CE 231
6
THERE IS NO ROSE (4:31).
See text below.
Performed by Oxford Camerata. “There is no rose of
such virtue, as is the rose that bare Jesu.” An ethereal mix
of English and Latin, this 15th century carol celebrates the
Virgin Mary.
7
WILLIAM DUNBAR: In Secreit Place This Hyndir LABL 1:592 CE 357
Nycht (3:48). Read by Patrick Deer (NYU). A lover’s
dialogue—humorous, tender, and starkly physical—by the great
Middle Scots poet.
LABL 1:91 CE 94
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Voices of British Literature: Volume 1
The Early Modern Period
8
SIR THOMAS WYATT: They Flee from Me (1:37). LABL 1:672 CE 383
Read by Edward DeSouza. A moving recollection of lost
love in a time of political disfavor.
9
QUEEN ELIZABETH I: from a speech on Mary,
LABL 1:1088
Queen of Scots (“On Mary’s Execution”) (5:47).
Read by Elizabeth Richmond-Garza (Univ. of Texas).
Queen Elizabeth’s response to Parliament’s death sentence on
her cousin displays her deep sorrow, her resolve to protect her
country and her own reputation, and her striving not to be
forced into irrevocable action in a treacherous situation.
10 THOMAS TALLIS: from Lamentations of
See text below.
Jeremiah (3:02). Performed by Oxford Camerata.
Both a devout Catholic and a loyal subject of his patron
Queen Elizabeth, the great composer Thomas Tallis
(c. 1510–1585) turned to the biblical Book of Lamentations
to express the anguish of Queen Mary’s fall from grace. Whereas
in Lamentations a destitute woman is a metaphor for a fallen
Jerusalem, in this powerful motet sequence, the fallen Jerusalem
stands in for the imprisoned Mary.
11
12
13
14
15
16
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE: Sonnets
Read by Alex Jennings. Six sonnets from the most famous
sonnet sequence in English, written to both a mysterious lady
and an endlessly attractive young man. Jennings’s performance
of these poems shows them as intimate dramas of passionate
debate and self-analysis.
Sonnet 18: Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day
LABL 1:1226 CE 553
(1:03)
Sonnet 29: When, in disgrace with fortune and
LABL 1:1227 CE 553
men’s eyes (1:00)
Sonnet 55: Not marble nor the gilded monuments LABL 1:1229 CE 554
(0:59)
Sonnet 73: That time of year thou mayst in me
LABL 1:1230 CE 554
behold (1:03)
Sonnet 126: O thou, my lovely boy, who in thy
LABL 1:1235 CE 556
power (1:00)
Sonnet 130: My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the
LABL 1:1236 CE 556
sun (0:59)
17 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE: Opening monologue LABL 1:1239
from Twelfth Night (1:19). Performed by Robert Hardy.
The languid Count Orsino wants to be done with music and
with love.
Voices of British Literature: Volume 1
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18 HEVENINGHAM/PURCELL: If music be the food See text below.
of love (3:44). Music by Henry Purcell (c. 1659–1695).
Performed by Howard Crook. In this gorgeous setting
by one of England’s greatest composers, Heveningham’s song
turns Orsino’s theme on its head, in a passionate celebration
of music and love.
19 JOHN DONNE: The Sun Rising (1:39).
LABL 1:1650 CE 665
Read by Richard Burton. A classic “aubade,” or dawn-song,
in which the speaker chides the sun for intruding on himself
and his beloved.
20 JOHN DONNE: A Valediction: Forbidding
LABL 1:1657 CE 668
Mourning (2:04). Read by Richard Burton. One of
Donne’s most moving poems, said to have been written for
his wife just before a voyage to France in 1611.
21 KATHERINE PHILIPS: To Mrs. Mary Awbrey
LABL 1:1743
at Parting (2:58). Read by Elizabeth Richmond-Garza.
The poet asserts that her intimacy with her friend will only
increase with distance and even death: “our twin souls in
one shall grow, / And teach the world new love.”
22 ANDREW MARVELL: To His Coy Mistress (2:22).
Read by Patrick Deer. One of the most famous of all
poems on the theme of “carpe diem”: seize the day.
LABL 1:1730 CE 687
23 WHEN THE KING ENJOYS HIS OWN AGAIN (2:49). See text below.
Words and music by Martin Parker. Performed by
John Potter. Composed in support of Charles I during
the first phase of the civil wars, this exuberant song long
outlasted its initial occasion. It was revived and revised at
the Restoration, when the return of Charles II partly fulfilled
its prediction. The tune remained popular throughout the
eighteenth century, as a setting for lyrics announcing good
news or hopeful prognostications.
24 JOHN MILTON: Paradise Lost, Book 1,
lines 242–70 (2:13). Read by Dylan Thomas.
Satan rouses his fallen angels in hell and defies God.
LABL 1:1843 CE 791
The Restoration and the 18th Century
25 SAMUEL PEPYS, from The Diary: The Fire of
LABL 1:2096 CE 934
London (3:50). Read by Ian Richardson. The sharpest
observer of Restoration life records London’s most devastating
natural disaster.
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Voices of British Literature: Volume 1
26 JONATHAN SWIFT: from The Lady’s Dressing
Room (3:38). Read by Patrick Deer. A love-smitten
shepherd tiptoes into his beloved Celia’s dressing room,
where he finds more than he has bargained for.
LABL 1:2445 CE 1075
27 LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU: from The
LABL 1:2583 CE 1078
Reasons that Induced Dr. S to Write a Poem called
“The Lady’s Dressing Room” (3:05). Read by Elizabeth
Richmond-Garza. Matching Swift witticism for witticism
and obscenity for obscenity, Montagu reveals the “true”
story behind Swift’s poem.
28 ALEXANDER POPE: from An Essay on Criticism
LABL 1:2483 CE 1153
lines 337–83 (3:18). Read by Max Adrian. “The sound
must seem an echo to the sense,” Pope asserts at the start of
this selection. Easier said than explained or done. But Pope
proceeds to explain and do, simultaneously and dazzlingly.
29 APHRA BEHN: To the Fair Clarinda, Who Made LABL 1:2223 CE 1015
Love to Me, Imagined More than Woman (1:36).
Read by Stella Gonet. Behn declares that her beloved
friend combines the virtues—and the attractions—of both sexes.
30 JOHN GAY: from The Beggar’s Opera: Air 6 (2:10). LABL 1:2594
Lyrics by John Gay. Performed by Bronwen Mills and
Charles Daniels. “Virgins are like the fair flower in its
luster.” In most of his airs, Gay evokes a mix of feelings in
both singer and auditor. Here Polly assures her parents of her
cunning and competence, but gives voice also to her vulnerability.
31 JOHN GAY: from The Beggar’s Opera: Air 21 (2:19). LABL 1:2604
Lyrics by John Gay. Performed by Adrian Thompson.
“When the heart of a man is oppressed with care.” Besotted
with his own prowess and promiscuity, Macheath nonetheless
sings a song of swooning, of surrender. It will shortly prove
prophetic; before the evening is out, several of the women
he savors will help put him in jail.
Texts for Selections Not in The Longman Anthology
Track 6: There Is No Rose
There is no rose of such virtue,
as is the rose that bare Jesu.
There is no rose of such virtue,
as is the rose that bare Jesu.
Alleluia.
Voices of British Literature: Volume 1
623
There is no rose of such virtue,
as is the rose that bare Jesu.
For in this rose contained there,
was heaven and earth in little space.
Resmiranda.
There is no rose of such virtue,
as is the rose that bare Jesu.
For by that rose we may well see,
that he is God in persons three.
Pariforma.
There is no rose of such virtue,
as is the rose that bare Jesu.
The angels sungen the shepherds to:
Gloria in excelsis Deo.
Gaudeamus.
There is no rose of such virtue,
as is the rose that bare Jesu.
Leave all this worldly mirth,
and follow we this joyful birth.
Transeamus.
There is no rose of such virtue,
as is the rose that bare Jesu.
Track 10: Thomas Tallis: Lamentations of Jeremiah (Latin, with translation):
Quomodo sedet sola civitas
plena populo;
facta est quasi vidua domina gentium:
princeps provinciarum
facta est sub tributo.
....
Ierusalem, Ierusalem, convertere
ad Dominum Deum tuum
How desolate lies the city
once thronged with people;
the queen of nations has become as a widow:
once a ruler of provinces,
she is now subject to others.
Jerusalem, Jerusalem, turn back again
to the Lord your God.
Track 18: Henry Heveningham: If music be the food of love
If music be the food of love,
Sing on, till I am fill’d with joy;
For then my listening soul you move,
To pleasures that can never cloy;
Your eyes, your mien, your tongue declare
That you are music everywhere.
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Voices of British Literature: Volume 1
Pleasures invade both eye and ear,
So fierce the transports are, they wound;
And all my senses feasted are,
Though yet the treat is only sound;
Sure I must perish by your charms,
Unless you save me in your arms.
Track 23: When the King Enjoys His Own Again
What Booker can prognosticate,
or speak of our Kingdom’s present state?
I think myself to be as wise,
as he that looks most in the Skies.
My skill goes beyond the depth of the Pond,
or Rivers in the greatest Rain.
By which I can tell, that all things will be well,
when the King comes home in peace again.
There is no Astrologer then say I,
can search more deep in this than I,
to give you a reason from the stars,
What causeth Peace or Civil Wars.
The Man in the Moon may wear out his shoon,
in running after Charles his Wain.
But oh to no end, for the times they will mend,
when the King comes home in peace again.
Though for a time you may see White-hall,
with Cob-webs hanging over all,
instead of Silk and Silver brave,
as formerly it us’d to have.
And in every Room, the sweet Perfume,
delightful for that Princely Train,
the which you shall see, when the time it shall be,
that the King comes Home in Peace again.
Till then upon Ararat’s-hill
my Hope shall cast her Anchor still,
Until I see some Peaceful Dove
bring Home that Branch which I do Love,
Still will I wait till the Waters abate,
Which most disturb my troubled brain
For I’ll never rejoice, till I hear that Voice,
That the King’s come Home in Peace again.
Teaching with Audio
Vo i c e s o f Br i t i s h Li t e r a t u re
Volume 2
Literature is first and foremost an art of the ear. Throughout history, literature was
usually written to be read aloud, or recited, or sung, and in the twentieth century
as well writers continued to be intensely aware of the aural dimensions of their writing. Volume 2 of Voices of British Literature, the CD accompanying the second volume of The Longman Anthology of British Literature, presents spoken and musical selections of British literature from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, from
Barbauld, Byron, and Jane Austen in the Romantic era to modernists like Yeats and
Virginia Woolf, ending with major contemporary figures reading their own works.
These performances do much to bring out the nuances of meaning—and the sheer
drama—of the works we include in The Longman Anthology of British Literature.
The verbal music of British literature is given literal form in the musical settings we have included for works in each period. Our unaccompanied selections
make compelling listening as well. We have searched for the most beautiful and
gripping performances we could find for each work: Jean Redpath singing tender
and erotic songs of Robert Burns; Claire Bloom reading Jane Austen with cool
irony; James Mason giving a chilling rendition of Robert Browning’s “My Last
Duchess.” In several instances, to provide selections from recently rediscovered
women writers, we have commissioned our own readings. When possible, we have
included writers performing their own works, from Tennyson reading “The
Charge of the Light Brigade” on a historical Edison wax cylinder, to Yeats, Joyce,
and Eliot in the modernist period and Eavan Boland today.
Like the Longman Anthology it accompanies, this CD opens up a range of cultural
contexts for the writing and reading of literature. From the era of the Romantics
and their contemporaries, for example, we include songs by Robert Burns along
with the poetry of Wordsworth, Keats, and John Clare; from the Victorian period
we have a song by Gilbert & Sullivan satirizing Oscar Wilde’s aestheticism, together
with a scene from Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest; from the 20th Century,
we include BBC broadcasts by Winston Churchill in the darkest moments of World
War Two, together with postwar poems of violence, loss, and recovery.
Most of our selections can be found in the pages of the full Longman Anthology
of British Literature, 2/e (LABL), starting on the page given following each title
below. Many of these texts are also available in the anthology’s Compact Edition
625
626
Voices of British Literature: Volume 2
(CE). Occasionally, we have taken the opportunity to extend the anthology’s range
with a compelling recording of a work not in the anthology itself. The texts for
these selections are printed in these notes following the listing of works, so all
these texts can be studied in detail. These great performances can readily stand on
their own as well: they are a delight to hear.
—David Damrosch
Tr a c k L i s t i n g
The Romantics and Their Contemporaries
Track
Time
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
(2:21)
(1:50)+
(1:55)+
(1:29)
ANNA LETITIA BARBAULD: The Mouse’s Petition to Dr. Priestly
ROBERT BURNS: A Red, Red Rose
ROBERT BURNS: The Fornicator
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH: Strange Fits of Passion Have I Known
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH: Composed Upon Westminster Bridge,
Sept. 3, 1802
6. GEORGE GORDON, LORD BYRON: from Don Juan
7. PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY: Ozymandias
8. FELICIA HEMANS: The Wife of Asdrubal
9. JOHN CLARE: I Am
10. JOHN KEATS: When I Have Fears
11. JOHN KEATS: This Living Hand
12. JANE AUSTEN: from Pride and Prejudice
(1:03)
(3:59)
(1:09)
(4:44)
(1:45)
(1:05)
(0:38)
(3:45)
The Victorian Age
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING: from Aurora Leigh
ROBERT BROWNING: My Last Duchess
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON: from The Charge of the Light Brigade
ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON: from In Memoriam
CHARLES DICKENS: from A Christmas Carol
OSCAR WILDE: from The Importance of Being Earnest
W. S. GILBERT/A. SULLIVAN: If You’re Anxious For to Shine
(3:46)
(3:37)
(1:20)
(1:36)
(3:35)
(2:50)
(2:36)+
The Twentieth Century
20.
21.
22.
23.
24.
25.
BERNARD SHAW: from Pygmalion
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS: The Lake Isle of Innisfree
JAMES JOYCE: from Finnegans Wake
T.S. ELIOT: from Wasteland
VIRGINIA WOOLF: from Mrs Dalloway
SIR WINSTON CHURCHILL: Speech to the House of Commons,
May 13, 1940
+ Music
(2:07)
(1:10)
(3:22)
(3:31)
(4:16)
(0:44)
Voices of British Literature: Volume 2
26. SIR WINSTON CHURCHILL: Speech to the House of Commons,
November 10, 1942
27. SYLVIA PLATH: Lady Lazarus
28. DYLAN THOMAS: Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night
29. TED HUGHES: Second Glance at a Jaguar
30. EAVAN BOLAND: The Pomegranate
627
(3:28)
(3:29)
(1:41)
(1:54)
(2:57)
No t e s
The Romantics and Their Contemporaries
Track
Page in Anthology
1
ANNA LETITIA BARBAULD: The Mouse’s
Petition to Dr. Priestly (2:21). Read by Elizabeth
Richmond-Garza (Univ. of Texas). Barbauld’s poem
wittily used a mouse’s perspective to plead for liberty and
the rights of all sentient beings.
LABL 2:31 CE 1339
2
ROBERT BURNS: A Red, Red Rose (1:50).
LABL 2:330 CE 1517
Performed by Jean Redpath. Set to the Scottish folk tune
“Major Graham.” Burns wrote this love song in the style of
the melody, which he called “simple and wild.”
3
ROBERT BURNS: The Fornicator (1:55).
LABL 2:331 CE 1519
Performed by Jean Redpath. Set to the Scottish folk
tune “Clout the Cauldron.” Burns wrote this lusty song in
celebration of fathering a child out of wedlock with one of
his father’s servants.
4
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH: Strange Fits of
LABL 2:363 CE 1539
Passion Have I Known (1:29). Read by Sir Cedric
Hardwick. One of Wordsworth’s Lyrical Ballads, this poem
illustrates Wordsworth’s efforts to embody profound emotion
in the rhythms and the events of everyday life.
5
WILLIAM WORDSWORTH: Composed Upon
LABL 2:386 CE 1561
Westminster Bridge, Sept. 3, 1802 (1:03). Read by
Sir Cedric Hardwick. One of Wordsworth’s greatest sonnets,
this poem triangulates between nature, the city, and the poet’s
observing mind.
6
GEORGE GORDON, LORD BYRON: from Don
LABL 2:693 CE 1685
Juan (3:59). Read by Tyrone Power. In this excerpt
from Canto 1 (stanzas 104–5, 109–12, and 115–17),
young Juan and his (unfortunately married) first love struggle
in the throes of illicit yet strangely innocent passion.
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Voices of British Literature: Volume 2
7
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY: Ozymandias (1:09).
Read by Michael Sheen. Shelley’s famous sonnet
meditates on antiquity, on art, and on the frailty of power.
LABL 2:760 CE 1710
8
FELICIA HEMANS: The Wife of Asdrubal (4:44). LABL 2:813 CE 1736
Read by Elizabeth Richmond-Garza. A dramatic
recreation of an ancient scene at Carthage in North Africa.
As the Romans conquer the city, the governor’s wife scorns
her husband’s accommodation to the invaders, to fatal effect.
9
JOHN CLARE: I Am (1:45). Read by Michael Sheen. LABL 2:849 CE 1749
Early promoted as a model “peasant poet,” Clare lost his
patrons as his social criticism sharpened. He was eventually
confined to an insane asylum, where he wrote this troubled,
self-affirming poem.
10 JOHN KEATS: Sonnet: When I Have Fears (1:05). LABL 2:865 CE 1752
Read by Samuel West. Already suffering from the
tuberculosis that would kill him three years later, in 1818
Keats wrote this poem about his hopes and fears as a great
poet with little time left for poetry.
11 JOHN KEATS: This Living Hand (0:38). Read by
LABL 2:899 CE 1771
Samuel West. A late fragment. “Hand” can mean either
the physical hand or a person’s handwriting.
12 JANE AUSTEN: from Pride and Prejudice (3:45).
Read by Claire Bloom. This reading from Austen’s
opening chapter captures her dry wit and her acute social
and psychological insight.
LABL 2:982
The Victorian Age
13 ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING:
from Aurora Leigh (3:46). Read by Diana Quick.
In this extract from Book 2 of Browning’s verse novel
(excerpted from lines 343–508), the aspiring poet Aurora
rejects the restrictive security of the life offered her by her
suitor Romney.
LABL 2:1124 CE 1876
14 ROBERT BROWNING: My Last Duchess (3:37).
LABL 2:1311 CE 1961
Read by James Mason. This famous “dramatic monologue”
was based on the life of the 16th-century Italian duke
Alfonso II, who remarried a few years after the sudden death—
possibly by poison—of his young bride, Lucrezia de Medici.
15 ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON: from The Charge
LABL 2:1195
of the Light Brigade (1:20). Read by Lord Tennyson.
In 1889, at the age of 80, Tennyson recorded his poem
Voices of British Literature: Volume 2
629
about military folly and bravery during the Crimean War.
Tennyson’s incantatory reading comes through powerfully,
despite the poor sound quality of this pioneering recording
on one of Thomas Edison’s newly invented wax cylinders.
16 ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON: from In Memoriam
(1:36). Read by Dame Sibyl Thorndike. A poem
from Tennyson’s great sequence in memory of his
beloved friend Henry Hallam, who had suddenly died in
Vienna while still in his twenties. Here the poet envisions
Hallam’s body being transported across a deathly calm
ocean to be buried in England.
LABL 2:1172
17 CHARLES DICKENS: from A Christmas Carol (3:35). LABL 2:1391
Read by Anton Lesser. Fantasy and sharp social realism
mingle in this scene, in which the Ghost of Christmas
Present forces Scrooge to contemplate two wretched children
named Ignorance and Want.
18 OSCAR WILDE: from The Importance of Being
LABL 2:1907 CE 2108
Earnest (2:50). Performed by Lynn Redgrave,
Alec McCowen, and Jack May. In this scene from Act 2,
the hero, Algernon Moncrieff, a free-living aesthete, is visiting
a country house under the assumed name of Ernest. Here
he suddenly declares his love for the daughter of the house,
Cecily, whom he has just met, only to find that she had
already recorded their entire future romance.
19 W. S. GILBERT/A. SULLIVAN: If You’re Anxious LABL 2:1943 CE 2144
for to Shine (2:36). Music by Sir Arthur Sullivan, from
the operetta Patience. Performed by Orva Hoskinson
(circa 1975). In this satire of Oscar Wilde and his friends,
a canny young aesthete named Bunthorne explains how he
poses as an aesthete simply in order to attract women.
The Twentieth Century
20 BERNARD SHAW: from Pygmalion (2:07).
LABL 2:2110
Performed by Michael Redgrave, Lynn Redgrave,
and Michael Horndern. The opinionated Professor Henry
Higgins gives the bewildered flower-seller Eliza Doolittle a
crash course in elocution.
21 WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS: The Lake Isle of
LABL 2:2246 CE 2325
Innisfree (1:10). Read by W. B. Yeats. Living in London
in 1890, where he was trying to establish himself as a poet,
Yeats wrote this warm evocation of the West Irish landscape
of his mother’s family origins.
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Voices of British Literature: Volume 2
22 JAMES JOYCE: from Finnegans Wake (3:22).
See text below.
Read by James Joyce. In these concluding paragraphs from
the chapter called “Anna Livia Plurabelle,” two old Irish
washerwomen meet by the banks of the River Liffey in the
growing dusk and talk about Anna Livia and her ubiquitous
husband HCE. Joyce’s poetic prose imitates the flow of the
river, which in turn becomes an image of the recirculating
flow of stories upon stories.
23 T. S. ELIOT: from The Wasteland (3:31).
LABL 2:2360 CE 2429
Read by T. S. Eliot. In this excerpt from Part 2 of the
poem, a non-conversation between husband and wife gives
way to two women talking in a pub about the tangled sexual
and emotional aftermath of the Great War.
24 VIRGINIA WOOLF: from Mrs Dalloway (4:16).
LABL 2:2387
Read by Elizabeth Richmond-Garza. The novel’s opening
pages: both a prose poem to London and an overture to the
book’s many themes.
25 SIR WINSTON CHURCHILL: Speech to the House LABL 2:2701 CE 2523
of Commons, May 13, 1940 (0:44). In this excerpt
recorded by the BBC, the new Prime Minister takes up the
struggle against the Nazi onslaught.
26 SIR WINSTON CHURCHILL: Speech to the
See text below.
House of Commons, November 10, 1942 (3:28).
As the Allied forces begin to make headway against the
German army, Churchill asserts a lasting commitment to
winning the war and to preserving both civilization overall
and the British Empire in particular. His apt quotation of
Byron at the speech’s end gave the United Nations its name.
27 SYLVIA PLATH: Lady Lazarus (3:29).
LABL 2:2812
Read by Sylvia Plath. With its deliberately shocking imagery
drawn from Nazi anti-Semitism, Plath’s poem reads the
century’s history into the speaker’s inner turmoil.
28 DYLAN THOMAS: Do Not Go Gentle Into
That Good Night (1:41). Read by Dylan Thomas.
The poet’s sonorous, Welsh-accented voice bring out the
verbal music of his famous 1951 poem about resilience in
the face of old age and death.
LABL 2:2762 CE 2554
29 TED HUGHES: Second Glance at a Jaguar (1:54).
Read by Ted Hughes. An exploration of the violence,
inscrutability, and inner perfection of animal creation.
See text below.
30 EAVAN BOLAND: The Pomegranate (2:57).
Read by Eavan Boland.
LABL 2:2938
Voices of British Literature: Volume 2
631
Texts for Selections not in The Longman Anthology
Track 22: James Joyce, Finnegans Wake
Ah, but she was the queer old skeowsha anyhow, Anna Livia, trinkettoes! And sure
he was the quare old buntz too, Dear Dirty Dumpling, foostherfather of fingalls
and dotthergills. Gammer and gaffer we’re all their gangsters. Hadn’t he seven
dams to wive him? And every dam had her seven crutches. And every crutch had
its seven hues. And each hue had a differing cry. Sudds for me and supper for you
and the doctor’s bill for Joe John. Befor! Bifor! He married his markets, cheap by
foul, I know, like any Etrurian Catholic Heathen, in their pinky limony creamy
birnies and their turkiss indienne mauves. But at milkidmass who was the spouse?
Then all that was was fair. Tys Elvenland! Teems of times and happy returns. The
seim anew. Ordovico or viricordo, Anna was, Livia is, Plurabelle’s to be. Northmen’s thing made southfolk’s place but howmulty plurators made eachone in person? Latin me that, my trinity scholard, out of eure sanscreed into oure eryan!
Hircus Civis Eblanenis! He had buckgoat paps on him, soft ones for orphans. Ho,
Lord! Twins of his bosom. Lord save us! And ho! Hey? What all men. Hot? His tittering daughters of. Whawk?
Can’t hear with the waters of. The chittering waters of. Flittering bats, fieldmice bawk talk. Ho! Are you not gone ahome? What Thom Malone? Can’t hear
with bawk of bats, all thim liffeying waters of. Ho, talk save us? My foos won’t moos.
I feel as old as yonder elm. A tale told of Shaun or Shem? All Livia’s daughtersons.
Dark hawks hear us. Night! Night! My ho head halls. I feel as heavy as yonder stone.
Tell me of John or Shaun? Who were Shem and Shaun the living sons or daughters
of? Night now! Tell me, tell me, tell me, elm! Night night! Telmetale of stem or
stone. Beside the rivering waters of, hitherandthithering waters of. Night!
Track 26: Winston Churchill, Speech to the House of Commons,
November 10, 1942
We have not entered upon this war for profit or expansion but only for honor and
to do our duty in defending the right.
Let me, however, make this clear, in case there should be any mistake about it
in any quarter: we mean to hold our own. I have not become the King’s First
Minister in order to preside over the liquidation of the British Empire. For that
task, if ever it were prescribed, someone else would have to be found, and under a
democracy I suppose the nation would have to be consulted.
I am proud to be a member of that vast commonwealth and society of nations
and communities gathered under and around the ancient British monarchy, without which the good cause might well have perished from the face of the earth.
Here we are and here we stand, a veritable rock of salvation in this drifting
world. And all undertakings, in the east and in the west, are parts of a single strategic and political conception which we had labored long to bring to fruition and
about which we are now justified in entertaining good and reasonable confidence.
Thus taken together they wear the aspects of a grand design, vast in its scope, honorable in its motive, noble in its aim. And should the British and American affairs
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Voices of British Literature: Volume 2
continue to prosper in the Mediterranean, the whole event will be a new bond between the English-speaking people and a new hope for the whole world.
There are some lines of Byron which seem to me to fit the event, the hour, and
theme:
Millions of tongues record thee, and anew
Their children’s lips shall echo them and say,
Here where the sword united nations drew
Our countrymen were warring on that day.
And this is much and all which will not pass away.
Track 29: Ted Hughes, Second Glance at a Jaguar
Skinful of bowls, he bowls them,
The hip going in and out of joint, dropping the spine
With the urgency of his hurry
Like a cat going along under thrown stones, under cover,
Glancing sideways, running
Under his spine. A terrible, stump-legged waddle
Like a thick Aztec disemboweller,
Club-swinging, trying to grind some square
Socket between his hind legs round,
Carrying his head like a brazier of spilling embers,
And the black bit of his mouth, he takes it
Between his back teeth, he has to wear his skin out,
He swipes a lap at the water-trough as he turns,
Swivelling the ball of his heel on the polished spot,
Showing his belly like a butterfly
At every stride he has to turn a corner
In himself and correct it. His head
Is like the worn down stump of another whole jaguar,
His body is just the engine shoving it forward,
Lifting the air up and shoving on under,
The weight of his fangs hanging the mouth open,
Bottom jaw combing the ground. A gorged look,
Gangster, club-tail lumped along behind gracelessly,
He’s wearing himself to heavy ovals,
Muttering some mantrah, some drum-song of murder
To keep his rage brightening, making his skin
Intolerable, spurred by the rosettes, the cain-brands,
Wearing the spots off from the inside,
Rounding some revenge. Going like a prayer-wheel,
The head dragging forward, the body keeping up,
The hind legs lagging. He coils, he flourishes
The blackjack tail as if looking for a target,
Hurrying through the underworld, soundless.
About the Editors
Christopher Baswell is Professor of English at the University of California, Los
Angeles. His interests include classical literature and culture, medieval literature
and culture, and contemporary poetry. He is author of Virgil in Medieval England:
Figuring the “Aeneid” from the Twelfth Century to Chaucer which won the 1998 Beatrice
White Prize of the English Association. He has held fellowships from the NEH, the
National Humanities Center, and the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton.
Clare Carroll is Chair of the Comparative Literature Department and Director of
Irish Studies at Queens College, CUNY. Her research is in Renaissance Studies,
with particular interests in early modern colonialism, epic poetry, historiography,
and translation. She is the author of The Orlando Furioso, A Stoic Comedy, and editor of Richard Beacon’s humanist dialogue on the colonization of Ireland, Solon
His Follie. Her most recent book is Circe’s Cup: Cultural Transformations in Early
Modern Ireland. She has received Fulbright Fellowships for her research and the
Queens College President’s Award for Excellence in Teaching.
David Damrosch is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia
University and President of the American Comparative Literature Association for
2002/03. A specialist in ancient, medieval and modern literature and criticism, he
is the author of The Narrative Covenant, We Scholars: Changing the Culture of the
University, Meetings of the Mind, and What Is World Literature? (2003).
Kevin J. H. Dettmar is Professor and Chair of English at Southern Illinois
University Carbondale, and President of the Modernist Studies Association. He is
the author of The Illicit Joyce of Postmodernism, and editor or co-editor of Rereading
the New, Marketing Modernisms, and Reading Rock & Roll.
Heather Henderson is a freelance writer and former Associate Professor of English
Literature at Mount Holyoke College. A specialist in Victorian literature, she is the
recipient of a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities. She is
the author of The Victorian Self: Autobiography and Biblical Narrative. Her current interests include homeschooling, travel literature, and autobiography.
Constance Jordan is Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Humanities and Dean of
Arts and Humanities at Claremont Graduate University. She is the author of
Renaissance Feminism: Literary Texts and Political Models, and Shakespeare’s Monarchies:
Ruler and Subject in the Romances. Her current interests include the literature of contact in the Atlantic World, 1500–1680.
633
634
About the Editors
Peter J. Manning is Professor and Chair of English at Stony Brook University. He
is the author of Byron and His Fictions and of Reading Romantics, and of numerous
essays on the British Romantic poets and prose writers. With Susan J. Wolfson, he
has co-edited Selected Poems of Byron, and of Beddoes, Hood, and Praed. He has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the
John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, and the Distinguished Scholar
Award of the Keats-Shelley Association.
Anne Howland Schotter is Professor of English and Chair of Humanities at
Wagner College. A specialist in medieval literature, she has written articles on
Middle English poetry, Dante, and medieval Latin poetry, and co-edited
Ineffability: Naming the Unnamable from Dante to Beckett. She has received fellowships from the Woodrow Wilson and Mellon Foundations.
William Sharpe is Professor and Chair of English Literature at Barnard College.
A specialist in Victorian poetry and the literature of the city, he is the author of
Unreal Cities: Urban Figuration in Wordsworth, Baudelaire, Whitman, Eliot, and
Williams. He is also co-editor of The Passing of Arthur and Visions of the Modern City.
He is the recipient of Guggenheim, National Endowment of the Humanities,
Fulbright, and Mellon fellowships, and is currently at work on a book on images
of the nocturnal city.
Stuart Sherman is Associate Professor of English at Fordham University. He received the Gottschalk Prize from the American Society for Eighteenth-Century
Studies for his book Telling Time: Clocks, Diaries, and English Diurnal Form,
1660–1775, and is currently at work on a study called News and Plays: Evanescences
of Page and Stage, 1620–1779. He has received the Quantrell Award for Undergraduate Teaching, as well as fellowships from the American Council of Learned
Societies and the Chicago Humanities Institute.
Jennifer Wicke is Professor of English at the University of Virginia, having previously been a professor of English and Comparative Literature at Yale University
and at New York University. Her teaching and research areas include nineteenth
and twentieth century British and American literature, comparative and international modernisms, literary and cultural theory, and studies of mass culture, aesthetic value, and global culture. She is the author of Advertising Fictions: Literature,
Advertisement, and Social Reading, and the forthcoming Born to Shop: Modernity,
Modernism, and the Work of Consumption; she co-edited Feminism and Postmodernism
with Margaret Ferguson; she has written widely on Joyce, feminist theory, celebrity,
and the academy.
Susan J. Wolfson is Professor of English at Princeton University and series editor
for Longman Cultural Editions. A specialist in Romantic-era literature and criticism, she is the author of The Questioning Presence: Wordsworth, Keats, and the
Interrogative Mode in Romantic Poetry and Formal Charges: The Shaping of Poetry in
British Romanticism. She is the editor of Felicia Hemans: Selected Poems, Letters,
Reception Materials, and The Cambridge Companion to John Keats. With Peter J.
About the Editors
635
Manning, she has coedited Selected Poems of Byron, and Selected Poems of Thomas
Hood, W. M Praed and Thomas Lovell Beddoes. She has received fellowships from the
American Council of Learned Societies, the National Endowment for the
Humanities and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, and was the
2001 recipient of the Distinguished Scholar Award of the Keats-Shelley
Association of America.
Index of Authors*
Arnold, Matthew, 430
Astell, Mary, 210
Auden, W. H., 596
Bacon, Francis, 167
Baillie, Joanna, 289
Barbauld, Anna Letitia, 275
Barnfield, Richard, 132
Beckett, Samuel, 594
Behn, Aphra, 199
Beowulf, 1
Blake, William, 280
Boswell, James, 262
Browne, Sir Thomas, 169
Browning, Elizabeth Barrett, 363
Browning, Robert, 393
Burton, Robert, 170
Campion, Thomas, 151
Canterbury Tales, The, 45
Carleton, Mary, 187
Carlyle, Thomas, 355
Carroll, Lewis, 456
Cavendish, Margaret, Duchess of
Newcastle, 191
Chaucer, Geoffrey, 39
Churchill, Caryl, 605
Clare, John, 334
Cloud of Unknowing, The, 73
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 304
Conrad, Joseph, 515
Dafydd ap Gwilym, 89
Darwin, Charles, 378
de Pizan, Christine, 99
Defoe, Daniel, 211
Dekker, Thomas, 147
Dickens, Charles, 399
Donne, John, 155
Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan, 408
Drayton, Michael, 152
Dream of the Rood, The, 11
Dryden, John, 193
Dunbar, William, 92
Early Irish Verse, 8
Eliot, T. S., 550
Elizabeth I, 124
FitzGerald, Edward, 375
Gascoigne, George, 107
Gaskell, Elizabeth, 404
Gay, John, 233
Goldsmith, Oliver, 266
Gordon, George, Lord Byron, 314
Gray, Thomas, 249
Greene, Graham, 582
Gunn, Thom, 602
Hardy, Thomas, 406, 531
Hemans, Felicia, 330
Henryson, Robert, 94
Herbert, George, 162
Herbert, Mary, Countess of Pembroke, 122
Herrick, Robert, 161
Hobbes, Thomas, 169
Hogarth, William, 239
Hopkins, Gerard Manley, 453
Howard, Henry, Earl of Surrey, 102
Hughes, Ted, 601
Johnson, Samuel, 251
Jonson, Ben, 152
Joyce, James, 546
Judith, 9
Julian of Norwich, 70
Keats, John, 336
Kempe, Margery, 81
King James Bible, The, 168
Kipling, Rudyard, 470
Langland, William, 61
Lanyer, Aemilia, 126
Larkin, Philip, 599
Late Medieval Allegory, 95
Lawrence, D. H., 577
Literary Ballads, 289
Lovelace, Richard, 164
* For authors who appear in perspectives sections, see the perspectives entry; for discussions of
Companion and Contexts authors, see the principal author listing with which they appear
637
638
Index of Authors
Lydgate, John, 97
Malory, Sir Thomas, 34
Mankind, 97
Marie de France, 26
Marlowe, Christopher, 133
Marvell, Andrew, 164
Medieval Cycle Drama, 74
Middle English Lyrics, 83
Middleton, Thomas, 147
Mill, John Stuart, 359
Milton, John, 172
Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley, 231
More, Sir Thomas, 103
Morris, William, 444
Mystical Writings, 69
Naipaul, V. S., 603
Nesbit, Edith, 411
Nightingale, Florence, 418
Pater , Walter 450
Pepys, Samuel, 182
Perspectives: Aesthetes and Decadents, 502
Perspectives: Arthurian Myth in the
History of Britain, 23
Perspectives: Emblem, Style, Metaphor, 163
Perspectives: England in the New World,
145
Perspectives: Ethnic and Religious
Encounters, 12
Perspectives: Government and SelfGovernment, 106
Perspectives: Imagining Childhood, 458
Perspectives: Mind and God, 241
Perspectives: Popular Prose and the
Problems of Authorship, 344
Perspectives: Reading Papers, 213
Perspectives: Regendering Modernism, 562
Perspectives: Religion and Science, 385
Perspectives: Spiritual Self-Reckonings, 179
Perspectives: The Abolition of Slavery and
the Slave Trade, 282
Perspectives: The Civil War, or the War of
Three Kingdoms, 171
Perspectives: The Great War: Confronting
the Modern, 535
Perspectives: The Industrial Landscape, 357
Perspectives: The Rights of Man and the
Revolution Controversy, 278
Perspectives: The Royal Society and the
New Science, 188
Perspectives: The Sublime, the Beautiful,
and the Picturesque, 297
Perspectives: The Wollstonecraft
Controversy and the Rights of
Women, 287
Perspectives: Tracts on Women and
Gender, 149
Perspectives: Travel and Empire, 475
Perspectives: Victorian Ladies and
Gentlemen, 420
Perspectives: Whose Language?, 607
Perspectives: World War II and the End of
Empire, 582
Philips, Katherine, 166
Piozzi, Hester Salusbury Thrale, 265
Plath, Sylvia, 601
Pope, Alexander, 221
Raleigh, Sir Walter, 128
Religious Lyrics, 85
Riddles, 20
Robinson, Mary, 284
Rolle, Richard, 72
Rossetti, Christina, 441
Rossetti, Dante Gabriel, 439
Ruskin, John, 413
Second Play of the Shepherds, The, 75
Secular Masque, The, 198
Shakespeare, William, 137
Shaw, Bernard, 527
Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 320
Sheridan, Richard Brinsley, 268,
Sidney, Sir Philip, 117
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, 29
Skelton, John, 101
Smith, Charlotte Turner, 276
Smith, Stevie, 598
Spenser, Edmund, 108
Stevenson, Robert Louis, 490
Swift, Jonathan, 218
Swinburne, Algernon Charles, 447
Táin bó Cuailnge, The, 3
Tale of Taliesin, The, 87
Taliesin, 16
Tennyson, Alfred, Lord, 367
Thomas, Dylan, 591
Thomson, James, 246
Vaughan, Henry, 164
Vernacular Religion and Repression, 78
Wanderer, The, 17
Index of Authors
Waugh, Evelyn, 585
Whitney, Isabella, 122
Wife’s Lament, The, 18
Wilde, Oscar, 492
Wilmot, John, Second Earl of Rochester,
204
Wodehouse, P. G., 582
Wollstonecraft, Mary, 286
Woolf, Virginia, 553
Wordsworth, Dorothy, 295
Wordsworth, William, 290
Wroth, Lady Mary, 159, 168
Wulf and Eadwacer, 18
Wyatt, Sir Thomas, 101
Wycherley, William, 206
Yeats, William Butler, 541
York Play of the Crucifixion, The, 77
639