Note 5 to Chapter 2 of the author's Tennyson's Major Poems, which Yale University Press published in 1975. It has been included in the Victorian Web with the kind permission of the author, who of course retains copyright.
William Cadbury, Utility, provides a fine analysis of this point. His contention that the poetic mask draws attention away front the speaker and toward the conflict, however, seems to me only half right.
Last modified: 28 March 2001