"Death the leveller" summary
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Answer:
Here is a summary of ‘Death the Leveller’ by James Shirley, a poem on the power of good deeds to survive the strangle hold of death.
James Shirley’s ‘Death the Leveller’ is a hauntingly philosophical poem about the dismal march of death that tramples down human pride and pomp. It presents a vividly personified picture of death as the ultimate conqueror in whose realm perfect equality prevails.
The poem opens, reminding the reader of the futility of taking pride in one’s birth and state. No armour offers protection from the merciless hands of death. The ultimate leveller comes and lays his icy hands on kings and clowns alike. The sceptre and the crown of the king fall down and lie equal in the dust with the poor peasant’s scythe and spade.
Worldly victory and success too are futile before death. Some men reap and heap enemy heads in the battlefield and win laurels to adorn their heads. They too shall bow their heads before death. But poor mortals still tame and kill one another like thoughtless beasts.
Strength and courage too shall pass. We all die helpless and weak. The garlands on our heads wither and lose their charm and the victories they once proclaimed are forgotten. We too lose our charm and like pale captives we creep to death with a feeble murmur. Death’s altar is purple and no ‘blue blood’ has ever been shed there. Here the victors too, are victims. The winners too are sacrificed and sent to their cold tombs.
In the end, we must return to the dust from which we all came, but the good deeds of the just will blossom from the dust and smell sweet forever.
Answer:
The title of this essay is a reference to the book by George Dangerfield, published in 1935. In that book, ‘The Strange Death of Liberal England’, Dangerfield’s thesis was ‘that between the death of Edward and the War there was a considerable hiatus in English history’ and that ‘it was in 1910 that fires long smouldering in the English spirit flared up, so that by the end of 1913 Liberal England was reduced to ashes.’1 But what exactly is this concept of Liberal England? Although much of the book is spent discussing the Liberal party and parliamentary politics, clearly Dangerfield does not mean that the Liberal Party died in this period. Dangerfield is talking about something far more general, he is suggesting that a certain outlook, a certain set of ideas, a certain England, disappeared because of the events of 1910-14. Unfortunately Dangerfield never makes it clear what he means, the closest he comes is: ‘with his [Brooke’s] death one sees the extinction of Liberal England… . the diminishing vistas of that other England, the England where the Granchester church clock stood at ten to three, where there was Beauty and Certainty and Quiet, and where nothing was real.’ This is beautiful prose, but not only does Dangerfield seem to have overdosed on the rustic idyll, but also to acknowledge that the Liberal England that had supposedly died was not real, it was the construct of hindsight, and a hindsight which knew all about the horrors of the Great War. Dangerfield admits this: ‘All the violence of the pre-war world has vanished [because of rose tinted nostalgia amplified by the horrors of the war], and in its place there glow … . the diminishing vistas of that other England’.2 On any reasonable definition of Liberal England it is clear that Dangerfield’s thesis is both wrong and in its explanation simplistic. I am setting out to explain which Liberal England died and to what extent it died.