Tennyson, Alfred Tennyson, Baron
Tennyson, Alfred Tennyson, Baron(known as Alfred, Lord Tennyson) (1809–92),English Poet Laureate. Tennyson, like most eminent literary Victorians, was steeped in Shakespeare from childhood, through reading rather than the stage, although he saw Fanny Kemble perform at Christmas in 1829 and discussed Hamlet with Henry Irving after a Lyceum performance in March 1874. He even thought to emulate Shakespeare with Queen Mary: A Drama (1874; abridged and performed 18 April 1876). Among his poems, ‘Mariana’ (from Poems, Chiefly Lyrical, 1830) is inspired by Measure for Measure; a satirical poem addressed to Bulwer Lytton, The New Timon, and the Poets, appeared in Punch (28 February 1846); the intense elegiac emotion expressed for Arthur Henry Hallam in In Memoriam (1850) is sometimes compared to the Sonnets; and the introspective inactivity of the hero of Maud (1855) is often identified...
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