A Level English Literature students were transported back in time on Monday when they took part in a practical exercise designed to reinforce their understanding of one of the course’s key texts – The Eve of St Agnes by John Keats – following the success of last year’s experience day centred around the same poem. 

The Eve of St Agnes, which is set in the Middle Ages, was inspired by the legend that unmarried women could see their future husband in their dreams if they performed certain rituals on 20 January, the evening before the feast of St Agnes.

It follows the young maiden Madeline as she escapes a loud and festive family party to go to her bedroom and perform the rituals, hoping to see her lover Porphyro in her dreams, despite being from opposite sides of two rival families.

Madeline does see Porphyro that evening, but her dreams morph into reality as her lover – having snuck into her room while she was at the party – emerges from his hiding place in the closet and attempts to rouse her by laying out a feast and playing the lute.

To bring them closer to Keats’ poem, 6.2 English students were asked to work in groups across two classes to produce tableaux representative of the poem. They sought the help of the school’s costume department to find appropriate attire and recreated the scenes in various locations – including the Lupton Hall, the sand quarry and All Saints Church in Steep, with some venturing as far as Midhurst.

After producing the tableaux, students attended a class led by Julia Bevan and Jen Moore, where they were challenged to identify the stanza represented in each tableau. This photo in particular – with Alex, Anya, Helena and Freya – triggered a lot of discussion, as it potentially matched a number of the poem’s stanzas. It was, in fact, XXXIX: 

“Hark! ’tis an elfin-storm from faery land,
       Of haggard seeming, but a boon indeed:
       Arise—arise! the morning is at hand;—
       The bloated wassaillers will never heed:—
       Let us away, my love, with happy speed;
       There are no ears to hear, or eyes to see,—
       Drown’d all in Rhenish and the sleepy mead:
       Awake! arise! my love, and fearless be,
For o’er the southern moors I have a home for thee.” 

However, as class discussion revealed, it could pass for VI: 

       They told her how, upon St. Agnes’ Eve,
       Young virgins might have visions of delight,
       And soft adorings from their loves receive
       Upon the honey’d middle of the night,
       If ceremonies due they did aright;
       As, supperless to bed they must retire,
       And couch supine their beauties, lily white;
       Nor look behind, nor sideways, but require
Of Heaven with upward eyes for all that they desire. 

It could also represent IX: 

So, purposing each moment to retire,
       She linger’d still. Meantime, across the moors,
       Had come young Porphyro, with heart on fire
       For Madeline. Beside the portal doors,
       Buttress’d from moonlight, stands he, and implores
       All saints to give him sight of Madeline,
       But for one moment in the tedious hours,
       That he might gaze and worship all unseen;
Perchance speak, kneel, touch, kiss—in sooth such things have been. 

What this revealed about Keats is that common themes and motifs – of love, passion, magic and fantasy – are unmistakably woven throughout the poem. It’s well known that Keats was a great admirer of William Shakespeare, and at the time of writing The Eve of St Agnes was inspired by Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet (both include storylines of two lovers divided by family hatred).

However, it also nods to another of Shakespeare’s plays, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, with the inclusion of dreams, visions, fantasies and rituals. Symbols such as the moon – given the same associations of coldness, virginity and mystery – are borrowed from the play, as well as deliberately Shakespearean language, and a rich visual, scent and sound imagery. In this photo, which looks like it could be a scene from A Midsummer Night’s Dream or The Eve of St Agnes, the students capture the magic evident in both texts very well.

If you know The Eve of St Agnes, can you match these photos to the stanzas? 

II:

  His prayer he saith, this patient, holy man;
       Then takes his lamp, and riseth from his knees,
       And back returneth, meagre, barefoot, wan,
       Along the chapel aisle by slow degrees:
       The sculptur’d dead, on each side, seem to freeze,
       Emprison’d in black, purgatorial rails:
       Knights, ladies, praying in dumb orat’ries,
       He passeth by; and his weak spirit fails
To think how they may ache in icy hoods and mails.

VI:

   They told her how, upon St. Agnes’ Eve,
       Young virgins might have visions of delight,
       And soft adorings from their loves receive
       Upon the honey’d middle of the night,
       If ceremonies due they did aright;
       As, supperless to bed they must retire,
       And couch supine their beauties, lily white;
       Nor look behind, nor sideways, but require
Of Heaven with upward eyes for all that they desire.

VII:

       Full of this whim was thoughtful Madeline:
       The music, yearning like a God in pain,
       She scarcely heard: her maiden eyes divine,
       Fix’d on the floor, saw many a sweeping train
       Pass by—she heeded not at all: in vain
       Came many a tiptoe, amorous cavalier,
       And back retir’d; not cool’d by high disdain,
       But she saw not: her heart was otherwhere:
She sigh’d for Agnes’ dreams, the sweetest of the year.

XLII:

       And they are gone: ay, ages long ago
       These lovers fled away into the storm.
       That night the Baron dreamt of many a woe,
       And all his warrior-guests, with shade and form
       Of witch, and demon, and large coffin-worm,
       Were long be-nightmar’d. Angela the old
       Died palsy-twitch’d, with meagre face deform;
       The Beadsman, after thousand aves told,
For aye unsought for slept among his ashes cold.