Today is Tennyson's Birthday!

On the 210th anniversary of Tennyson’s Birthday he describes birthdays as a time when we look both forwards and backwards

The 210th Anniversary of Tennyson’s Birthday

I am only merry for an hour or two

Upon a birthday: if this life of ours

Be a good glad thing, why should we make us merry

Because a year of it is gone? but Hope

Smiles from the threshold of the year to come

Whispering 'It will be happier;' and old faces

Press round us, and warm hands close with warm hands – Tennyson ‘The Foresters’ (I.iii)

Tennyson’s ‘The Foresters’, a play about Robin Hood and Maid Marian, is filled with references to Shakespeare’s ‘As You Like It’, where the forest becomes a space for celebration about the joy of life and what Shakespeare’s Rosalind would call a ‘holiday mood’ infects both plays.

On the 210th anniversary of Tennyson’s Birthday his comments about Birthday celebrations ring true. Tennyson describes a mood where we look simultaneously forwards and backwards, filled with happiness but also sadness. Tennyson describes Birthdays as a time where people come together, not only with each other, but also with their past and future selves, a sentiment once again echoed in ‘As You Like It’ by Jacques’s famous speech.

All the world's a stage,

And all the men and women merely players;

They have their exits and their entrances,

And one man in his time plays many parts,

His acts being seven ages.

The power of birthdays to unite and bring together is made explicit in the end of this speech from ‘The Foresters’ which brings the characters on stage together into a song. This song echoes that of ‘As You Like it’ where the characters also sing together, celebrating the end of winter and the coming of the summer, praying for rebirth, or even, a ‘birthday’. 

And thro' the blood the wine leaps to the brain

Like April sap to the topmost tree, that shoots

New buds to heaven, whereon the throstle rock'd

Sings a new song to the new year — and you,

Strike up a song, my friends, and then to bed.

Recent Posts

Alfred Tennyson - Poet Laureate

Tennyson served as the Poet Laureate from 1850 until his death in 1892 and wrote several poems during his tenure including "The Charge of the Light Brigade"…

Read More
Alfred Tennyson - Poet Laureate Posted: 26 Mar 2024

Indolent Reviewers

As a poet, Tennyson was a man very much led by his reviewers, forever commenting upon them and worrying about them.…

Read More
Indolent Reviewers Posted: 08 Dec 2023

Parodying Tennyson

It isn’t just modern-day readers who have found Tennyson inescapably funny, he was also parodied by his contemporaries and even his friends...…

Read More
Parodying Tennyson Posted: 07 Sep 2023

I, Tiresias

Tiresias is a prophet whose prophecies no one wants to hear, and as such has become a character that is used by many poets…

Read More
I, Tiresias Posted: 23 Mar 2023
© 2024 Farringford