THE MASK OF ANARCHY
By P. B. Shelley
Poesía Inglesa Siglos XIX-XX
Curso 2005-2006
Profesor: Vicente Forés
Alumno: Alfredo Carbonell
Rico
THE MASK OF ANARCHY by P. B.
Shelley
Written
on the Occasion of the Massacre at
[…]
1 As if their own indignant Earth
2 Which gave the Sons of England birth
3 Had felt their blood upon her brow,
4 And shuddering with a mother's throe
5 Had turned
every droop of blood
6 By which her face had been bedewed
7 To an accent unwithstood
—
8 As if her heart cried out aloud:
9 ‘Men of England, Heirs of Glory,
10 Heroes of unwritten story,
11 Nurslings of one mighty Mother,
12 Hopes of her and one another
13 ‘Rise
like Lions after slumber
14 In unvanquishable number,
15 Shake your chains to Earth like dew
16 Which in sleep had fallen on you —
17 Ye are many — they are few.
18 ‘What is Freedom? — ye can
tell
19 That which slavery is, too well —
20 For its very name has grown
21 To an echo of your own.
22 ‘’Tis to work and have such pay
23 As just keeps life from day to day
24 In your limbs, as in a cell
25 For the tyrants' use to dwell,
26 ‘So
that ye for them are made
27 Loom and plough and sword and spade,
28 With or without your own will bent
29 To their defence and nourishment;
30 ‘’Tis to see your children weak
31 With their mothers pine and peak
32 When the winter winds are bleak —
33 They are dying whilst I speak;
[…]
(139-171)
(1819)
from ‘The Gutenberg Project’
http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext03/shlyc10.txt
The poem that we are going to analyse is called ‘The
Mask of Anarchy’. The allusion to a political term makes us think that we are
going to read a poem that is going to deal with a political matter, either if
it is in favour or against this political ideology.
The clue that allows us to guess the political
position of the author is given both by the subtitle of the poem ‘Written on
the Occasion of the Massacre at
The poem is formally structured in eight stanzas with
four verses each. Each verse contains eight syllables each and a rhyme of the
AABB type. The only exception is the stanza number four, built up with five
verses and with the rhyme in a AABCB kind.
The language used by Shelley is very simple and clear,
due to a very simple and clear purpose as well. The author is referring to an
incident known by everybody. This means that it was an everyday although
unusual topic
The grammatical person used in the poem is also both
an interesting and a very important aspect. The poem is written in the second
person, for the author is directly addressing to someone that is supposed to be
a big audience. We can easily see this point in lines 9, 10, 17 with
expressions such as ‘Men of England, Heirs of Glory, Heroes of unwritten
story’, ‘Ye are many — they are few’ referring to the masculine inhabitants of
a specific country, because the incident that suggested the author the writing
of this poem was located in one of its cities. The verb tense used here, which
is the imperative form, as we see on lines 13 and 15, is also very important
because Shelley tells them to ‘Rise like
Lions after slumber’ or to ‘Shake your chains to Earth like dew’. These two
poetry tools are used on purpose by the author to create a particular effect on
the reader, which is the rebellion against a political situation. But we will
analyse this more deeply when we go down to the meaning of the poem.
There are also some key images in the poem. One of the
most powerful ones for me is the one built up in lines 13 and 15, ‘Rise like
Lions after slumber’, ‘Shake your chains to Earth like dew’. This image means
to me a total rebellion against something, to stand up with a great ferocity
and wrath to get the freedom that all of us should look for. There is another very
important one for me from line 22 to 33. It describes a very sad situation of a
part of the population that, unfortunately, still goes on now a day. This is
the situation of societies where there is a reduced group of people that holds
the power and the wealth meanwhile there is a majority of people that is
starving and oppressed by laws and by the ones that keep the order established
by the one who rule the country.
Now I am going to analyse what for me is the meaning
of the poem.
In the first two stanzas the author makes use of a
personification to compare the people’s indignation and horror in front of the
Massacre of Manchester with a kind of a ‘living country’, a land that was conscious of
itself and had its own live. Obviously, the fact that has made this being waken
up is the horror of the killing. All this action is perfectly expressed in
lines 1, 2 and 3. This living entity begins to make a speech to its population
through the metaphor expressed in line number 8, ‘As if her heart cried out
aloud’.
From now on, the rest of the poem (this means, the
other six stanzas) are going to be a speech to the inhabitants of the country
because this entity wants them to rebel against an unfair and awful situation
that they are suffering.
The third stanza is the beginning of the speech. And
as any speech, the first thing appearing is the addressee. As we see in line 9,
the hearers of this speech are the ‘Men of England’, for this is the country
where the massacre took place. After this, it gives them some adjectives. It
labels them as ‘Heirs of Glory, Heroes of unwritten story’ (lines 9,10). By this, the entity wants to show them their own
skills and virtues, the ones they should use for a rebellion.
The start of this rebellion is expressed in the fourth
stanza (lines 13 to 17). This is the stanza with an extra verse in respect to
the others. In my pinion, Shelley wanted to emphasize this beginning of the
revolt, for the most important moment in any movement is the start. No start,
no movement, obviously. As we see in lines 13 and 15, the rising is supposed to
have ferocity and violence and it has to be supported by everybody, for the
number matters. This strategy of fight is better expressed in line 17.
In the fifth stanza the poet makes a thought on the
concept of freedom (‘What is Freedom’). For me, the
author is referring to a virtual freedom, the one that the people holding the
power full their mouth with (‘ye can tell’) but when it comes to reality it is
just an illusion ( lines 20, 21), an abstract concept that is not applied to
everyday life at all.
In the last three stanzas Shelley makes a statement on
the social and economical situation of the working class of
The economic situation is clearly seen in lines 22 and
23 where the poet says that the pay is not worth the job they have to do. The
reference to the working class comes as a metaphor in line
Personally, I have really enjoyed both the reading and
the analysing of this poem, for it has a simple and clear vocabulary and
structure and a straightforward meaning. I also liked the historical references
that the poet makes to his time and I think that he really got the effect he
wanted to create.