"Hang There Like Fruit, My Soul": Tennyson's Feminine Imaginings (Alfred Tennyson)
Victorian Poetry 2007, Summer, 45, 2
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Publisher Description
Tennyson, we know, was buried with a copy of Cymbeline (as well as various wreaths, and roses from Emily), and in the days before his death on October 5, 1892, he repeatedly asked for the relevant volume, laying it "face down" on the page where Posthumous is reconciled with Imogen, and pressing down with his hand so "heavily" that the spine cracked: (1) Hallam reports his dying father as trying unsuccessfully to read this passage ("which he always called the tenderest lines in Shakespeare") before uttering the sentence "I have opened it," (2) and then speaking "his last words, a farewell blessing, to my mother and myself." (3) Hallam's account is understandably edited and stylized, but it was clearly an impressive scene. (4) Dr. Dabbs was more unrestrained in drawing out those elements of the poet's passing that lent themselves to a literary apotheosis. The Laureate dies with the majesty of his own King Arthur, and grips his Shakespeare as if it were his passport to the pantheon: