Analysis of Shakespeare's Festival

Katharine Lee Bates 1859 (Falmouth) – 1929 (Wellesley)



WHILE we keep our Poet's Tercentennial,
Every school and city with its emulous
Antic or solemnity, what tremulous
Laughter on the air! O Puck perennial!
Leave us clumsy mortals to our drolleries,
Strenuous gambols of Shakespearean gratitude,
And be off to find him in Beatitude,
Win his genial glance with elf cajoleries,
And then tell him of our sage frivolity
Till his golden laughter wake eternity,
And about him flock his old fraternity,
All his scapegrace fellows of the quality,
Greene not jealous, Heminge no more stammering,
Marlowe one white flame of passion glorious,
Rare Ben modest, vagabonds victorious,
All about the Master crowding, clamoring,
Talking all at once in odes and triolets,
Sonnets like the stars for prodigality,
While Will Shakespeare loafs with Immortality
On a stolen bank of Arden violets.


Scheme ABBABCCBDDDDEBBEBCDB
Poetic Form
Metre 11110101 1001010111 10101001100 10101110100 1110101101 1001110010 01111101 11101111 011111010100 11101010100 00111110100 1111010100 11101111 1111110100 11101000100 10101010100 101110101 1010111 111110100 10101110100
Closest metre Iambic hexameter
Characters 810
Words 134
Sentences 4
Stanzas 1
Stanza Lengths 20
Lines Amount 20
Letters per line (avg) 33
Words per line (avg) 7
Letters per stanza (avg) 668
Words per stanza (avg) 132
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

40 sec read
110

Katharine Lee Bates

Katharine Lee Bates is remembered as the author of the words to the anthem America the Beautiful Bates was born in Falmouth Massachusetts and lived as an adult on Centre Street in Newton Massachusetts An historic plaque marks the site of her home The daughter of a Congregational pastor she graduated from Wellesley College in 1880 and for many years was a professor of English literature at Wellesley While teaching there she was elected a member of the newly formed Pi Gamma Mu honor society for the social sciences because of her interest in history and politics for which she also studied She lived at Wellesley with Katharine Coman who herself was a history and political economy teacher and founder of the Wellesley College Economics department The pair lived together for twenty-five years until Comans death in 1915 It is debated if this relationship was an intimate lesbian relationship as different sources maintain or a platonic relationship called sometimes Boston marriages as the local historical society of her birthplace maintain more…

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