Dickinson’s Prosodic Music and the Songs on Death in Hamlet

Abstract

This essay argues that the language of Hamlet emboldened Dickinson to develop her prosodic music. The essay’s argument unfolds in three steps. The first step instances Dickinson’s prosodic music by reading the poem draft “When what they sung for is undone” (Fr1545A, M 630). This step finds Dickinson’s prosodic music arise in distinctive word arrangements that show three features: interlaced phonic echoes, the rhythms of short-lined verse where rhyme marks stanzas, and the motions of intonation. The essay’s second step interprets the evidence of Shakespeare’s influence in the one poem where Dickinson named not only Shakespeare, but also Hamlet, Romeo, and Juliet, “Drama’s Vitallest Expression is the Common Day” (Fr776, M 381). A new reading of this poem shows that Shakespeare inspired Dickinson to develop her lyric art. The essay’s third step pursues the copious evidence of Shakespeare’s influence elsewhere in Dickinson’s writing. This step explicates categories of reference to Shakespeare and to Hamlet, focuses on the songs on death in the play, and interleaves in its discussion of these songs the reading of two Dickinson poems on death, “All overgrown by cunning moss” (Fr146, M 86) and “Praise it - ’tis dead - ” (Fr1406, M 595). Prosodic and thematic ties relate the songs in Hamlet to these poems and show that Dickinson’s lyric art is more inventively resonant in her own distinctive arrangements of words.