On Sitting Down to Read King Lear Once Again

• Structure

  • John Keats immortalized many of his experiences in poems; when he saw the Elgin marbles, he wrote sonnets commemorating the moment, and his explorations of favourite fiction usually led to Keats reflecting upon his reading, and finding a way to apply it, then, to his life, his views his way of looking upon the world.
  • There are some scholars, for example, who find myriad similarities between Keats’ Odes and ‘King Lear’, a play that featured heavily in Keats’ life. ‘On Sitting down to Read King Lear Once Again’ was written in 1816.
• Themes

  • Power of poetry/arts
  • Inspiration
  • Imagination
• "O golden-tongued Romance with serene lute! Fair plumed Syren! Queen of far away!"


  • exclamatory ‘O’ to invoke his muse - described as ‘golden-tongued Romance’ - referring to his fascination with Medieval Romances, with their idealised characters and romantic adventures — not like ‘King Lear’.
  • Sirens - temptresses who lured sailors onto rocks. Here, they are luring Keats away from what he believes may be a more fruitful digression, the re-reading of ‘King Lear’.
  • ‘Queen of far-away’ made-up person who transports him to world of the imagination — but is inadequate for Keats' creative purposes.
• "Betwixt damnation and impassion'd clay must I burn through"


  • The speaker says that he must ‘burn through’ the conflicts presented in ‘King Lear’ — represented as ‘damnation and impassioned clay’. The description ‘burn through’ is startling, a powerful contrast to the prettiness of the opening references to sweet Romance and ‘melodizing’.
  • The sentence construction is interesting. He inverts the expected word order, leaving the powerful verb to the end, a device known as anastrophe.
• "Bitter-sweet of this Shakespearean fruit"


  • The speaker believes himself to be a modest poet — ‘humbly assay’ — trying to learn from the ‘bitter-sweet’ of Shakespeare’s work. The fruit metaphor is apt. Note also that ‘bitter-sweet’, a compound nun and oxymoron, was first used by Shakespeare in ‘Romeo and Juliet’.
  • The colon forms the volta or turn, also a caesura, after which the poet changes the mood and approach.
• "When through the old oak forest I am gone, let me not wander in a barren dream"


  • ‘old oak Forest’ - metaphor open to interpretation - conveys the complexity of Shakespeare’s play - work that needs to be navigated and interpreted. Keats’s fears that he will, ‘wander in a barren dream’ and not produce anything - ‘barren’ means empty, opposite to 'fruit'
  • compares to Lear, who wandered through the metaphorical forest during the stormy night. Keats also wanders through the “forest” of his mind trying to find inspiration
  • trees being “oak”, a symbol of England, related to the reference to “Albion”
• "consumed in the fire Give me new Phoenix wings to fly at my desire"


  • Keats wishes to be consumed by the ‘fire’ of inspiration. A Phoenix is a mythical bird that dies, is consumed by fire and is reborn from the ashes.
  • This is how the poet sees his inspiration his poetry will rise from the ashes at the ‘desire’ or command of the poet. Like the Phoenix, the poet will be eternalised through his work.
• Comparisons


  • On first looking into Chapman's Homer