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Walt Whitman and Shakespeare

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Richard Clarence Harrison
Richard Clarence Harrison*
Affiliation:
Texas Technological College
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Extract

There are perhaps few persons now vitally concerned about American letters who would not concede that Walt Whitman is at least the most outstanding individualist—poet out of the beaten track—of our national literature. And yet a compilation of parallels and relationships of one kind and another which have been suggested as existing between Whitman's writings and the writings of others, would reach astounding proportions. Moreover, these suggestions, so far as I have been able to learn, have usually been reasonably pertinent. They have justified the intuition of Whitman's first brave sympathizer, Emerson, as recorded in the now famous letter of commendation of 1855, in which Emerson declared that Leaves of Grass “must have had a long foreground somewhere.” They have given an element of plausibility to the statement of John Burroughs, his best contemporary interpreter, that Whitman “had looked over the whole field of literature . . . . and absorbed the spirit of the great bards.” And they have tended, as Whitman has been more and more exploited, to confirm the poet's own words, however immodest they may seem: “Immense have been the preparations for me.”

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 44 , Issue 4 , December 1929 , pp. 1201 - 1238
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1929

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References

Note 1 in page 1201 Richard Clarence Harrison, the writer of this paper, died suddenly on May 5, 1927, at Lubbock, Texas, where he had been head of the English Department in the Texas Technological College since the establishment of that institution. For some time prior to his death Professor Harrison had been engaged upon a study of Whitman's origins with special reference to his relations to Shakespeare. The results of this inquiry he expected to offer as a dissertation in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the University of Texas. At the meeting of the Modern Language Association in Chicago in December, 1925, Professor Harrison presented before the Shakespeare Group a paper embodying a general statement of his findings up to that time. That paper with a few abridgments and revisions and the supplying of certain omitted references to Whitman's works constitutes the first part of the present article. As a basis for his general findings Professor Harrison had collected a large body of illustrations and historical material, which he had recorded on cards. The bulk of this material, so far as it involves specific quotations and echoes of Shakespeare, Professor Robert Adger Law has very kindly listed and embodied in a paper that constitutes the second half of this article. For the verification of passages from Whitman and his biographers the undersigned is responsible. A few references, I regret to say, I have been unable to run down.—Killis Campbell.

Note 2 in page 1202 Traubel, Horace L., With Walt Whitman in Camden, New York, 1908, I, 275.

Note 3 in page 1202 Ibid., II, 122.

Note 4 in page 1204 Ibid., I, 165-166.

Note 5 in page 1204 The Complete Writings of Walt Whitman, Camden Edition, New York, 1902, III, pp. 55-56. Hereafter referred to as Works.

Note 6 in page 1204 Carpenter, G. R., Walt Whitman, pp. 22-23.

Note 7 in page 1205 Works, IV, 26.

Note 8 in page 1205 Ibid., VII, 50.

Note 9 in page 1205 Traubel, op. cit., III, 265.

Note 10 in page 1206 Traubel, II, 245.—A copy of Richard II which answers quite to this description is among the treasures presented by Harned to the Library of Congress. It bears this note in Whitman's handwriting and is signed by him:

“Had it put [in] this shape to take in my pocket to Coney Island. My sea-shore jaunts—read it and spouted it there I have dwelt on this play a good deal—seems to me sometimes the most characteristic (polished, deepest laid in of Shakspere's productions had itnear me at times 1860 to 1889.”—K. C.

Note 11 in page 1206 Ibid., II, 246.

Note 12 in page 1207 If Mr. Holloway is right in his assumption that Whitman made a second trip South, then Whitman was away from New York longer than four months.

Note 13 in page 1207 Works, IV, 16-17.

Note 14 in page 1207 Ibid., IV, 24.

Note 15 in page 1207 Works, V, 9.

Note 16 in page 1209 Works, V, 209.

Note 17 in page 1210 Bliss Perry, Walt Whitman, p. 235.

Note 18 in page 1211 Works, VI, 126.

Note 19 in page 1211 Traubel, op. cit., I, 455.

Note 20 in page 1212 Works, VI, 185.

Note 21 in page 1212 Ibid., VI, 185.

Note 22 in page 1212 Ibid., VI. 189

Note 23 in page 1214 Of these characters the men are 39, the women, 6.

Note 24 in page 1214 Further reading will inevitably increase the figures given here.

Note 25 in page 1216 Compare Bliss Perry's statement on this same topic, in his Wall Whitman, p. 22.

Note 26 in page 1216 See also Visits to Walt Whitman, by J. Johnston and J. W. Wallace.

Note 27 in page 1219 Works, V, 90.

Note 28 in page 1219 Ibid., V, 51.

Note 29 in page 1219 Ibid., V, 220.

Note 30 in page 1219 Works, V, 245.

Note 31 in page 1220 Works, IX, 115.

Note 32 in page 1220 Ibid., VI, 137.

Note 33 in page 1220 Works, IX, 75.

Note 34 in page 1220 The arrangement of this material is based on what appears to have been Professor Harrison's own plans, following the plays of Shakespeare in alphabetical order. Dates in parenthesis refer to the years of first publication of the “echoes.”

The following abbreviations are used in these citations: “P. and P.,” for Uncollected Poetry and Prose of Whitman, ed. Holloway, N. Y., 1921; “Works,” for The Complete Writings of Whitman, Camden edition, N: Y., 1902; “Gath. Forc.,” for The Gathering of the Forces, ed. Rodgers and Black, N. Y., 1920; “Traubel,” for Traubel's With Walt Whitman in Camden, N. Y., 1908.—R. A. L.