Phantom-Wooer: The Thomas Lovell Beddoes Web Site | Critical Response

RICHARD HENRY STODDARD, 1892

“‘Death’s Jest Book’ is a nightmare rather than a drama, and should be judged, if one must judge it, for what it is, not for what it might be, or should be. A law unto himself, Beddoes is the most lawless of poets. The scenes of his tragedies are laid in the land of Nowhere, and the actors therein, if not wholly mad, are certainly not sane. They live, move, and have their being in a borderland between the worlds of life and death. The prey of spasmodic emotion and unnatural passion, there is no telling what they will say or do in their fits of delirium, which are as unaccountable as violent. The specialty of the elder Beddoes was the analysis of disease; the specialty of his son was the exhibition of disease in the actors of his gloomy masquerades.”

(Under the Evening Lamp, p. 211)

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