The word “lonely” may well be one of the words coined by Shakespeare, and the above line may be the first use of the term we have. The word appears in Shakespeare’s late tragedy, Coriolanus, in the phrase above, which Coriolanus speaks to his family, friends, and supporters as he leaves Rome under banishment. He says:
What, what, what!
(Coriolanus 4.1.18-38)
I shall be loved when I am lack’d. Nay, mother.
Resume that spirit, when you were wont to say,
If you had been the wife of Hercules,
Six of his labours you’ld have done, and saved
Your husband so much sweat. Cominius,
Droop not; adieu. Farewell, my wife, my mother:
I’ll do well yet. Thou old and true Menenius,
Thy tears are salter than a younger man’s,
And venomous to thine eyes. My sometime general,
I have seen thee stem, and thou hast oft beheld
Heart-hardening spectacles; tell these sad women
‘Tis fond to wail inevitable strokes,
As ’tis to laugh at ’em. My mother, you wot well
My hazards still have been your solace: and
Believe’t not lightly–though I go alone,
Like to a lonely dragon, that his fen
Makes fear’d and talk’d of more than seen–your son
Will or exceed the common or be caught
With cautelous baits and practise.
The idea of the “lonely dragon” stands out here. It seems likely that Coriolanus refers to a fearsome beast when he speaks of a dragon because the line seems to reflect the same creature mentioned in King Lear when Lear warns Kent “Come not between the dragon and his wrath.” (King Lear 1.1.123) Yet, the dragon in the lines spoken by Coriolanus, like Coriolanus himself, is a retreating, solitary figure. Although presumably capable of great violence or destruction, Michael Goldman suggests that it is the dragon’s “fen”, the desolate and potentially dangerous place in which he dwells, that lends him a “fear’d and talk’d of” aura or mystique. * Perhaps. Yet, perhaps there is more here as well.
Usually ferocious by nature, dragons (as reflected in the mythology of the western hemisphere) may be rugged enough to dwell in places that would be far too inhospitable for other kinds of creatures. Yet, this particular dragon is also lonely, a quality emphasized by repetition. “I go alone,/Like to a lonely dragon” highlights not solitude, but the lone-ness, the lonely state in which the potentially fearsome creature finds itself. Coriolanus seeks to reassure his friends and family, but his own words seem to betray his feelings a bit here.
Of course, Coriolanus tells his mother, Volumnia, that he will not fall into bad ways in spite of the fact that he goes “alone” and “lonely”, and it is his reassurance to her on this subject which actually suggests that enforced solitude that may threaten his character and being the most. In an age where increasing focus fell on emotions and the conditions that might bring about emotional states (Burton’s The Anatomy of Melancholy would be published in 1621), this may be especially significant.
Loneliness wounds us. It can even kill us, carving years off of our potential lifespan.** In fact, the possible adverse effects are only just beginning to be studied and apprehended more comprehensively. Yet, here, in Coriolanus, is a suggestion that loneliness may change the landscape of our human lives.
Where solitude may be sought or sometimes preferred, loneliness comes unbidden, bringing with it a host of attendant doubts and sorrows. It can descend on us suddenly or gradually, and if the state is sustained, it can become the foundation of a wailing brutality of emptiness. A sinking swamp. A marsh. A fen. Something that sucks things down into the depths. Loneliness, by its very nature, may change us in profound and irreversible ways.
From a later age come the words of American poet, Edgar Allen Poe:
From childhood’s hour I have not been
As others were—I have not seen
As others saw—I could not bring
My passions from a common spring—
From the same source I have not taken
My sorrow—I could not awaken
My heart to joy at the same tone—
And all I lov’d—I lov’d alone—
Then—in my childhood—in the dawn
Of a most stormy life—was drawn
From ev’ry depth of good and ill
The mystery which binds me still—
From the torrent, or the fountain—
From the red cliff of the mountain—
From the sun that ’round me roll’d
In its autumn tint of gold—
From the lightning in the sky
As it pass’d me flying by—
From the thunder, and the storm—
And the cloud that took the form
(When the rest of Heaven was blue)
Of a demon in my view—
(Edgar Allen Poe, “Alone”)**
Inscribed as an entry in an autograph album, the poem was never printed in Poe’s lifetime. The lines reflect how prolonged or sustained periods of loneliness may permanently alter our perspective, setting us forever apart from others. We not only see differently, but we also experience the world differently, and this remains a permanent change, with our experience informing all subsequent experiences. Outer and inner landscapes merge, pebbles and twigs may become scarecrow friends, and demons may emerge or preside anywhere.
Grief and loss may precipitate loneliness. Being separated suddenly from friends, lovers, colleagues, our work, our purpose, or feeling the hollowness of ’empty nests’ when our children leave, or when we downsize to leave our old homes behind us, all of these may shake our internal pinions in such a way that we become proverbially unhinged, losing the ability to steer or navigate successfully through life.
The word “lonely” appears only one other time in Shakespeare’s work, in A Winter’s Tale. Near the end of the play, before Paulina opens the curtain to reveal the ‘statue’ of Hermione (which is, in fact, Hermione herself, who has been sequestered away for sixteen years while Leontes learns to atone for his rash and destructive fit of jealousy), Paulina describes the statue:
As she lived peerless,
(The Winter’s Tale 5.3.16-22)
So her dead likeness, I do well believe,
Excels whatever yet you looked upon
Or hand of man hath done. Therefore I keep it
Lonely, apart. But here it is. Prepare
To see the life as lively mocked as ever
Still sleep mocked death. Behold, and say ’tis well.
Deserved or not, Leontes gets a second chance, and critics like to expound on the possibilities suggested by the writing of a more mature Shakespeare, as The Winter’s Tale is generally agreed to be a later play. Loss and grief have worked a kind of partially restorative magic in this case, incomplete though it may be (as Leontes’ son, Mamillius, and the Lord Antigonus, are gone forever). Yet, this ending where Hermione’s statues comes to life (which may often be enormously moving when produced on stage) also suggests that the venom of loneliness remains. Even though, in the case of Hermione’s resurrection, it does not completely slay the bitten Leontes, in this case–acting instead as a curative kind of pain, the play also subtly reminds us that loneliness frequently does not act in such a way at all. “Lonely, apart” suggests that isolation persists as separation from the main.
Perhaps all of this urges us to keep in touch. It becomes all too easy to let friends slip away, especially as time, task, and distance intercede. Yet, this is clearly a mistake. No matter what solace we may take from other quarters, we remain dependent on other people. “No man is an island entire of itself” as John Donne reminds us, and he is right. Isolating ourselves may be an important part of our lives, but cutting ourselves off, whether individually or communally, can be fatal in so many ways.
William Henry Harrison Murray, the American clergyman whose series of articles on the Adirondack Mountains earned him a reputation as the father of the Outdoor Movement, wrote these lines:
Ah, friends, dear friends, as years go on
and heads get gray,
how fast the guests do go!
Touch hands, touch hands,
with those that stay.
Strong hands to weak,
old hands to young,
around the Christmas board, touch hands.
The false forget, the foe forgive,
for every guest will go
and every fire burn low
and cabin empty stand.
Forget, forgive, for who may say
that Christmas day may ever come
to host or guest again.
Touch hands!
– William Henry Harrison Murray (1840-1904)
We can be lonely for many reasons, or sometimes without seeming reason. We may be as lonely in a crowd, or with well meaning friends and family, as by ourselves. Life circumstances may take us far from colleagues or friends, and may leave us bereft of life’s usual solaces, unable to take comfort in the sound of crickets or the songs of birds, or even a host of daffodils, yet left with those as our only potential comforts.
Outdoor sustenance is wonderful. Essential. Yet, for all that, it is the people and the communities in our lives we tend to miss the most when they have gone. They forever leave an emptiness, no matter how fierce the dragon may be. Once the little boy grows up and moves on, Puff the magic dragon cannot bear it. Life’s adventure is at an end.
It will almost certainly end anyway, but there appear to be two potential roads that one may take. Bon voyage or the empty house. Although they may be different flavours, one still seems infinitely more appealing.****
*Goldman, Michael. “Characterizing Coriolanus.” Ed. Stanley Wells. Shakespeare Survey 34, no. 28 (Cambridge: CUP, November 28, 2002): 73-84.
***Poe, Edgar Allen. “Alone.” American Poetry: The Nineteenth Century, Vol. 2: Herman Melville to Stickney, American Indian Poetry, Folk Songs and Spirituals. (New York: Library of America, 1993). In spite of the fact that Poe lived from 1809 to 1849, the poem was first published by Didier in 1875.
****A note of special thanks to my readers, for having been my colleagues, in a sense, during an isolating time.