Irelands and Englands of the Mind

Abstract

This chapter examines the relationship between the (Northern) Irish poet Seamus Heaney and Shakespeare, with whom Irish writers have, for political reasons, often had a difficult relationship, and then his relationship with important modern English poets, notably Philip Larkin. The relationship with Shakespeare is charted largely through the varied impact on Heaney (in his criticism as well as his poetry) of both Hamlet and Macbeth and also through what he reads as a self-definitive passage in Timon of Athens. Particularly close attention is paid, in these contexts, to both the volume North and to the poem ‘Keeping Going’ in The Spirit Level. Heaney’s relationship with Larkin was deeply appreciative but also extremely edgy, and this chapter characterises it and draws conclusions.