Michael Field — Reading Notes

Tragic Irony in The Tragedy of David

Sturgeon devotes considerable attention to The Tragedy of David (1884), particularly its handling of dramatic irony. In Act IV, Scene 5, King Robert, unaware that his son David (Rothsay) is starving to death in Falkland Castle, muses affectionately about the boy's fear of the dark. The king recalls how David 'used to throw a cushion on the floor, / And lay him down as featly as the hound, / His foolish yellow head against my knee.' This tender memory is undercut by the audience's knowledge that Rothsay is at that moment dying of starvation. Sturgeon calls the scene 'masterly,' and the excerpt she provides shows the king's ignorance deepening the pathos. Earlier, Rothsay's own speeches—'I ever thought / Death was a shadow.—I myself am Death'—reveal a character who becomes the very skeleton he once saw in books. Sturgeon's analysis highlights how the play uses physical deprivation to dramatize psychological collapse, a pattern she traces through the verse.

The Land Question in William Rufus

In discussing William Rufus (1885), Sturgeon notes that the play was explicitly conceived as a drama about the land question, inspired by a visit to the New Forest where the poet found the stone marking Rufus's death. The arrow that killed the king seemed 'directed by Nature's anger at the destruction of her food-bearing fields for the insolence of pleasure.' Yet Sturgeon argues that the play's 'dramatic instinct' overrides this political agenda: 'Michael Field has been better than her creed.' The evidence, she suggests, lies in the texture of the drama itself, which feels organic rather than imposed. She quotes the poet's preface to show the ulterior motive, but insists that the work succeeds on its own terms. This tension between intention and execution is a recurring theme in Sturgeon's criticism, and she returns to it when examining the poets' later devotional verse.

The Collaborative Voice

Throughout the study, Sturgeon grapples with the question of how two writers produced a single poetic identity. She draws on the poets' own statements—such as the epigraph from Gordon Bottomley, 'the two friends ... Who sought perfection and achieved far more'—and on the testimony of friends like Charles Ricketts and Havelock Ellis. The excerpts from the plays show a consistent dramatic voice, but Sturgeon is careful not to claim that she can distinguish Bradley's hand from Cooper's. Instead, she focuses on the shared preoccupations: the exploration of power, desire, and mortality. The preface's mention of 'the life of Michael Field' as 'epical in romance and heroism' suggests that Sturgeon sees the collaboration itself as a kind of creative act. Her method is to let the poetry speak for the partnership, using the plays and lyrics as evidence of a unified sensibility.

Sturgeon's study is best read as an introduction rather than a definitive biography. She acknowledges her debts to many who knew the poets, and her tone is that of an advocate eager to share a discovery. Readers new to Michael Field will find here a guide to the major plays and poems, with enough quotation to suggest the quality of the verse. Those already familiar with the work may wish to compare Sturgeon's readings with the original texts, particularly her claims about dramatic irony and political intent. The book remains valuable as a contemporary account of a literary partnership that was, even in 1922, in danger of being forgotten.

I have often kept Mary Sturgeon's wise book on Michael Field near my desk, for it whispers of two women who wrote as one flame. But next to it, I find Sappho: A New Rendering — Text and Context, whose broken songs hold the same quiet hunger, the same ache for a voice that must be shared. They seem, across ages, to nod to each other.