Seanchan 'S Quest Restoring of the Poet's Right in Yeasts' Play the King's Threshold

Introduction

In this play, Yeats dramatizes the agony of a poet who tries to save the poet's right in a world of materialistic power. By fasting, Seanchan (pronounced Shanahan), the hero, shows the intrinsic elements of his quest, and he fights resolutely without any hesitation.

Seanchan takes his stand on the King's threshold with the intention of starving himself to death rather than submitting to "a dictate of the King that he must yield his traditional place of the honor at the great council of state".1 The plot of the play consists of a series of persuaders who try to convince Seanchan to give up his quest; they are the King, the Mayor, the Lord High Chamberlain, a monk, a soldier, the Princess, the Girls, the two crippled men, and his beloved Fedelm. They are representatives of society as a whole, with their various claims of compromise. They try to argue with him to make him surrender, but they fail.

The pressure is heavy upon him, but he defends his claims steadfastly, except for a brief moment of near-surrender to his beloved; then he insists on gaining the poet's freedom even if it is followed by death. The poet's question is elevated by Seanchan's death, whereby he achieves his spiritual victory over the authority of the King.

Moreover, the poet's pupils at the end have the ability to grasp their master's cause: "Die Seanchan, and proclaim the right of the poets"2 (p.140). Dorothy Hoarce remarks that The King's Threshold symbolizes "the conflict between wordly power and poetry and the ultimate triumph of the poet".2 Ultimately, Yeats's hero struggles against the trivialities of the material world. The chief poet pleads "the poet's right established when the world was first established" (p.109). He cannot yield without deceiving all the poets who are yet to be. Harold Bloom says that poetry, connate with the origin of man, gives to mankind the institutions of laws, the founders of civil society, and the inventors of the art of life.3

In The King's Threshold, Yeats fights for a place for art in society through a series of debates between the bard Seanchan and characters from all ranks of society; Seanchan tries to prove that a seat at the King's table is worthier than a gift of hands and money from the king, and even than the sorrow his death would give his mother and father. The poet pursues freedom from control and aims at freedom to control; in another sense, the poet looks for freedom from political control and wishes to obtain his liberty under artistic power. The poet stands fast against the limitations of the human world; he not only affirms his role, but he also regards his quest as a sacred mission: he wants to reach everybody and to show that poetry's concerns are greater than those of kings, bishops, soldiers, and young girls, or even the concerns of young poets, and he succeeds in elucidating its superiority. The individual will succeeds in overcoming institutional authority through "the poet's supra-individual vision".4

The King expresses his detestation and irritation at Seanchan's fasting: "He has chosen death/Refusing to eat and drink/That he may bring/Disgrace upon me" (p.108); if Seanchan dies on the steps of the King's threshold, the common people will raise a heavy cry against that threshold, "Even though it be the king" (p.104). The oldest pupil argues that his master chooses death "for a light issue" (p.108); Seanchan's privilege is denied by the King, and he is treated in a degrading way:

King: Three days ago

I yielded to the outcry of my courtiers –

Bishops, Soldiers, and Maker of the law –

Who long had thought it against their dignity

For a mere man of words to sit amongst them

At the great council of the state and share

In their authority. I bade him go,

(p.108)

The King's power is threatened by Seanchan's 'wild thought' and 'proud will'. The King compares his own institutional bond to an anarchic sublimity of verse5, as he addresses Seanchan:

King: But I that sit a throne,

And take my measure from the heads of the state,

Call his wild thought that overruns the measure. (p. 110)

Seanchan's poetic thought is "measureless breaking through all form, and thus dangerous to the hirarichies of state. His laughter is an energy that defies all boundaries, even the final boundary of death".6 The King tries to offer Seanchan "a house with grass and tillage land, / An annual payment jewels and silken wear, / or anything," (p.110), instead of the old right of the poets. The bard, Seanchan, reminds us that 'the images' are like "venerable things / God gave to men before He gave them wheat" (p.112). In Nietzchen's terms:

The poet makes human perfection that shows people the limits of the possible; without such images, future humanity would be disadvantaged, like the cripple who lingers on stage in Yeats's plays.7

Seanchan's starvation is striking proof that man lives by more than bread. He believes that destruction and calamity lead inevitably to rebirth; "when all falls / In ruin, poetry calls out in joy, / God's laughter at the shattering of the world." (p. 115). This kind of confidence "belongs to the imagination which envisions history as a cycle of rebirth, whose constant power is the eternal soul".8 Poetry, according to Seanchan's belief, prospers on sorrow and ruin; by the transcendental power of poetry, man can turn defeat into victory. The poet gains a spiritual victory that is beyond the reach of time.

Poetry is a mixture of "the fragile, and mighty things of God" (p.113), as Seanchan sees it. He reminds his oldest pupil: "At candlemas you called this poetry/One of the fragile mighty things of God/That die at an insult" (p.113). These lines can be understood on two levels, for those who believe poetry is fragile do not believe it can ever be mighty, or vice versa. Seanchan's action is the living source of this image. He is fragile enough to die and mighty enough to triumph over the power of the King.

The position of a poet and his art is shown from two points of view: one is adopted by Seanchan and his revolutionary quest, while the other is expressed by the Chamberlain, who is a poet of a sort. A. S. Knowland assumes that "Yeats is able to heighten the contrast between those who pay lip-service to poetry, and those whose dedication to it is uncompromising and total".9 Ultimately, the hero defends his attitudes and ideas in his conversation with the Chamberlain, who thinks that Seanchan longs for what is unusual and describes Seanchan as a thief who "has roused the common sort against the king/And stolen his authority", adding "That it is men of law/leaders of the king's armies and the like/That should sit there" (p.126). Seanchan answers him:

Somebody has deceived you,

In making it appear that I was driven

From the great Council. You have driven away

The images of them that weave a dance

By the four rivers in the mountain garden.

Chamberlain: You mean we have driven poetry away.

But that's not altogether true, for I,

As you should know, have written poetry.

…Is not to be compared with yours; but still,

Where I am honored, poetry, in some measure,

Is honored too. (pp.127)

In driving Seanchan from the council, the king has driven out the creative imagination. The poet invites the Chamberlain to join him in his protest until the king restores the poet's ancient right, but he receives no answer. The Chamberlain cannot afford to give up the prudent virtues, and he advises Seanchan to eat something because "he [has] had these thoughts from lack of food, /For hunger makes us feverish" (p.128). The dialogue between Seanchan and the Chamberlain concludes with the brilliant and memorable lines spoken by Seanchan. He compares himself and other poets to "a great wind that turns out of the waste/To blow the tables flat; and there upon/lie down upon the threshold till the king/Restore to us the ancient right of the poet's" (p.128). Yeats dramatizes Seanchan's character in his fight against three powers: the state, represented by the king and his council; the church, represented by the Monk; and finally society, which is represented by different kinds of people, such as the two cripples, the brain, and the Girls. He resists the rigidity of all these institutions and declares bravely for the poet's right and spiritual freedom.

The appearance of the Monk reflects the authority of the church and its authoritative power over mankind and his freedom. The Monk is the mouthpiece of the religious system. He regards Seanchan as a troublemaker who will destroy the peace of society: "If pride and disobedience are unpunished\ who will obey?" (p. 123)

The Monk regards the poet's proclamation as a kind of disobedience, because Seanchan's quest is against the authority of the church and the state. Seanchan longs for the high endeavor of art, especially when the poet has a crucial position in society, which gives him the power to charge, to purge the mind of the public. The Monk is irritated by the pride of the poets, which leads the country into chaos.

Before his death, Seanchan delivers his message that the world of the king is corrupt and that even nature is polluted; he mocks the present life, especially as he finds his final reconciliation in death: "I will mock and mock that image yonder, /That evil picture in the sky – no, no! /I have all my strength again I will out face it /O, look upon the moon that's standing there /In the blue day light, …because it is the white of leprosy" (p.141). F.A.C. Wilson asserts that the leprosy suggests the contagion of a philistine society with a tamed god, which replaces the older with its Dionysiac ethos.10 Seanchan's triumph is expressed when he faces death with a laughing face, "king! King! Dead faces laugh" (p.141); he dies with an unusual victory over the passivity of life. Barto R. Friedman points out that the hero, by dying, rises into a myth; from the ruin of time he builds a mansion in eternity.11 The play ends with Seanchan's funeral, when his pupils take up his body and cry loudly that "he seeks high waters and the mountain birds" (p.142), and they "will bless what he has blessed/And curse what he has cursed" (p.143). The trumpets that declare the death of Seanchan will be heard everywhere and will announce the rebirth and coming of the great race:

Youngest pupil: O, Silver trumpets, be you lifted up

And cry to the great race that is to come.

Long-throated swans upon the wave of time,

Sing loudly, for beyond the wall of the world

That race may hear our music and awake. (p143)

Seanchan becomes a pioneer of civil fortitude; through his starvation, he raises the slogan of the poet's right. He is distinguished as a leading figure in his society; his essential role is to defend poetry and pave the way towards purified art. Poetry should be an authoritative power like the authority of the state; the poet is like any member of the king's council and should have the same position and power. Indeed, the poet should not be treated as a man of mere words, because ''God gave [the words] to men before he gave them wheat'' (p112). In The King's Threshold, Yeats says that the civility of any society is elevated when the position of the poet and poetry is elevated too. Poets are the makers of beauty, love, and intellectuality.

Conclusion

Seanchan's actual life can be attained only when he sees his dream come true. This transcendental truth can be retained through his self-sacrifice, which liberates art and man from superficiality. Through his practical action, he is a teacher who gives a moral and spiritual lesson. The poet cannot live in between or as a shadow. He is the creator of art and civility. Seanchan's claim is an ancient one; he looks for a new kind of order and reality. The poet dies, but his claim is undefeated; he and his visions are glorious.

Bibliography