Abstract
“The Fire Sermon” begins with water, layering the River Thames (both Eliot’s desolate version and Spenser’s glistening one), Lake Leman (where Eliot worked on The Waste Land), and even the Old Testament rivers of Babylon, where exiled Israelites weep (“By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion,” Psalm 137.1). Beginning with line 185, though, the poem’s riverscape becomes grim and industrial:
But at my back in a cold blast I hear
The rattle of the bones, and chuckle spread from ear to ear.
A rat crept softly through the vegetation
Dragging its slimy belly on the bank
While I was fishing in the dull canal
On a winter evening round behind the gashouse
Musing upon the king my brother’s wreck
And on the king my father’s death before him. (WL 185–92)
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
Copyright information
© 2015 Allyson Booth
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Booth, A. (2015). “And on the king my father’s death before him”: Shakespeare’s Tempest . In: Reading The Waste Land from the Bottom Up. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137482846_27
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137482846_27
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-69583-6
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-48284-6
eBook Packages: Palgrave Literature CollectionLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)