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.For this,Southey chooses May Day.The May Day celebration is largely welcomed by thevillagers and a maypole is erected in the doorway to the blacksmith s shop.Theopening of the play, with its traditional May song and festivities, emphasizescommunity concord.Everyone, except the blacksmith, lives in Merrie England.His melancholy is deemed inappropriate for the happy occasion.Wat is downcastbecause he realizes that the May Day holiday merely distracts the villagers fromthe hardship of their daily lives and, instead of celebrating, he continues with hiswork.His daughter Alice, her friends and her suitor, Piers, sing and dance aroundthe maypole, a totemic sign decorated with owers in celebration of the approachingfecundity of summer.The maypole stands as a phallic fertility symbol and as such is99 Edmund Burke, Appeal from the New to the Old Whigs , in The Works of EdmundBurke, ed.by F.W.Raffety, 6 vols (London: Oxford University Press, 1906 1907), V, 1 135(p.103).100 Southey, Life and Correspondence, I, 250.101 Mark Storey, Robert Southey: A Life (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), p.81.102 Hannah More, Village Politics 1793, ed.by Jonathan Wordsworth (Oxford:Woodstock Books, 1995), p.4. Precious rites and customs 61ironic; the rustic group dancing around it in effect celebrate their lack of power.Thepower it represents is unharnessed, and is feminized by the oral display.The songthe young people sing around it is an unselfconscious parade of oral and femalesymbolism:Cheerful on this holiday,Welcome we the merry May.On every sunny hillock spreadThe pale primrose lifts her head;Rich with sweets, the western galeSweeps along the cowslipped dale;Every bank, with violets gay,Smiles to welcome in the May (I.i.1 8).The people are acquiescent, failing to see and ultimately suppressing the more potentforce which rages through the beauteous landscape in this song: the western gale /Sweeps along the cowslipped dale and on each wild gale sweet music ows.Tyleralone understands the maypole as a sign of the impotence of the people, and hisrebellion begins with his refusal to bow to tradition and attend the festivities that aretaking place on his doorstep.The maypole is signi cantly positioned at the doorwayto his shop, blocking his exit from toil and debarring him from power.The May holiday is a temporary release from work, a time when the workercan rest.It is seen by Southey as a recreational distraction that may prevent thepeople from focusing on their captivity, and as an occasion on which to contemplaterebellion.For Wat to accept May Day as a gift to the worker would be to cooperatewith his own enslavement.May Day no longer holds any joy for him as cares hadquelled the heyday of the blood (I.i.23).The reference to Hamlet reminds us ofWat s political impotence.103 The maypole is also a painful reminder of the Edenicand youthful innocence and ignorance of Wat and his companions, of a time whenthey had no understanding of the power of the state.May Day is a corruption ofthe spring idyll, a remnant of a lost Hesiodian paradisal life when the villagers normarked the black clouds gathering o er our noon, / Nor feared the storm of night(I.i.25 6).The poet draws again on the imagery of the sinister wild gale , recallingthe tempestuous apocalyptic energy of Joan s divine visions.Wat spells out his political message to Hob: he is angry with the repressive state,which has chosen not to recognize the honour and moral worth of hard toil:TYLER Have I not been a staid, hard-working man?Up with the lark at labour; sober, honest,Of an unblemished character? (I.i.33 4)103 You cannot call it love; for at your age / The heyday in the blood is tame [& ] ,William Shakespeare, Hamlet, The Arden Shakespeare, ed.by Harold Jenkins (London:Methuen, 1982), III.iv.68 9. 62 The Romantics and the May Day TraditionUtopia is the just reward of such georgic values, but it is denied to the villagers.The blacksmith cannot accept that the festal happiness of spring now coexists withdystopia:nature gives enoughFor all; but Man, with arrogant sel shness,Proud of his heaps, hoards up super uous storesRobbed from his weaker fellows, starves the poor,Or gives to pity what he owes to justice! (I.i.114 18)Revolution, then, is intended to redress the imbalance that only charity ( pity )temporarily relieves; and equality is identi ed as a natural right.Southey stressesthat Tyler and his wife belong to the rural working poor, endlessly toiling for littlegain.Wat cannot reap the fruits of his toil, and he tells the people: your hard toil /Manures their fertile elds (I.i.246 7).The May song at the beginning of the rstAct is echoed and undermined by the rebellious song at the beginning of the second.In Act I, the peasants sing that the land is full of plenty, rich with sweets.Bythe second act, revolutionary zeal has taken hold, and Southey invokes the rhymetraditionally associated with the Peasant s Revolt: When Adam delved and Evespan, / Who was then the gentleman? (II.ii.1 2).The villagers unite in singing ofthe lot of the wretched infant born into poverty and slavery under the despotic ruleof the aristocrat who reclines on the couch of ease (II.i.15 18).The state rst demonstrates its power through the taxation of adults.Down tohis last six groats, the blacksmith is concerned that they must soon by law be takenfrom me (I.i.51).The attempted rape of Wat s daughter, the May Queen, by the tax-collector, ostensibly to discover whether she is at the age of maturity, sexualizes thepower of the state and highlights, too, the people s lack of power.Alice, as a younggirl ( not yet fteen ), has not graduated fully into recognition by the state and isineligible for taxation.The attack on her highlights the vulnerability of the worker,and in particular of women.As May Queen, Alice implicitly celebrates the power shelacks both as a child and as a female.In due course, the tax on each head is avengedby Wat s attack on the tax-collector s own head and, after this, an attempted attackon the heads of state.Through this violence, Wat gains power, reversing his ownpolitical emasculation.Wat and Hob employ this new-found power in the serviceof the people, issuing a general call to arms ( To arms! Arm, arm for Liberty; / ForLiberty and Justice! ), imploring them to reclaim their social potency (I.i.213 14).May Day in Wat Tyler is a catalyst for social rebellion.It highlights the powerof the people to determine and retain their own traditions, and at the same timeunderscores, through its mimicry of regal hierarchy, the people s lack of power andtheir suppression by the state.Wat bases his argument, that the current distributionof wealth is unjust, on natural rights.Nature gives enough / For all (I.i.114 15) and abundant is the earth (II.i.85), and the budding orchard perfumes the sweet breeze,/ And the green corn waves to the passing gale (II.i.88 9 [my italics]).The world isin a golden age , but access to its bounty is denied to the poor.The sun shines withequal ray on both rich and poor, but the distribution of its fruits is unequal (II.i.83)
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