A Brief Return to Wordsworth

I’d like to take a brief step backwards before continuing to Mathilda. First, attached is an online text of the complete The Borderers, primarily for its introductory note in which Wordsworth provides an interesting contextual description for the play, and secondly in case anyone would like to read the entire text. Also attached is an essay by Judith W. Page that explores Wordsworth through a biographical and Feminist approach. Some subjects of the essay have already been discussed in class, however, it supplies a different reading of Wordsworth than we have primarily discussed and touches on thematic connections to Mary Wollstonecraft.

http://www.everypoet.com/Archive/poetry/William_Wordsworth/william_wordsworth_120.htm

http://content.cdlib.org/xtf/view?docId=ft1t1nb1dd&chunk.id=0&doc.view=print

I bring up Wordsworth again because his text seems to take part in a dialogue with Matilda. We have already discussed Godwin’s influence on The Borderers, but may also draw parallels between the Rivers/Oswald character and Mathilda, as both characters follow a sort of Romantic tragedy model: an initial tragedy occurs in either character’s life, forcing his/her mind inwards towards superstition and repetition, in which both texts may be read as only another repetition of the initial tragic tale.

As Coleridge describes at the close of the Ancient Mariner:

Since then, at an uncertain hour,
That agony returns:
And till my ghastly tale is told,
This heart within me burns.
I pass, like night, from land to land;
I have strange power of speech;
That moment that his face I see,
I know the man that must hear me:
To him my tale I teach.

As an aside: if anyone knows a good place to look for video/audio recordings of The Borderers, I am interested in what the Rivers character looks like on stage, but haven’t been able to find anything.

And finally, a sad endnote for our discussion on the whereabouts of Jonathan Wordsworth:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/obituaries/story/0,,1827932,00.html