Dylan Thomas

Dylan Thomas 's "Do not go gentle into that good night : through "Lapis Lazuli " to 'King Lear (William Shakespeare , William Butler Yeats s on Language Literature s on Language Literature 3 /22 /1998 Cyr , Marc D Dylan Thomas 's "Do not go gentle into that good night " was influenced by William Butler Yeats 's "Lapis Lazuli " and William Shakespeare 's 'King Lear ' but the villanelle bears a stronger resemblance to Shakespeare 's play . The attitudes toward how an individual lives in the face of impending death , explored by Thomas , are similarly examined

with the portrayal of Gloucester and Lear Dylan Thomas 's "Do not go gentle into that good night " has been noted to bear the influence of and even echo W . B . Yeats , especially "Lapis Luzuli " and , secondarily via this poem , Shakespeare 's King Lear . One scholar notes its "Yeatsian overtones (Fraser 51 another judges Thomas 's villanelle to have "much of the concentrated fury of expression which the poetry of the older Yeats contained , but . more tenderness and sympathy (Stanford 117 , and goes on to say , citing "Lapis Lazuli " that "Yeats described the poet as one who knows that `Hamlet and Lear are gay (118 . William York Tindall cites not only "Lapis Lazuli " but also Yeats 's "The Choice " as sources (204 . Another scholar seems to skip over Yeats entirely (though his own phrasing echoes line 1 of "Lapis Lazuli , seeing the "Grave men /blind " tercet (which contains the injunction to "be gay ) as "perhaps invok[ing] the Miltonic (Tindall also mentions Milton 205 ) and the effect of the phrase "be gay as "rather hysterical sentimentality (Holbrook , Dissociation 53 of the earlier "Wise men /lightning " verse , however , he says "The images are merely there , histrionically , to bring in the phrase `forked no lightning ' to give a Lear-like grandeur to the dirge (52 I would like to propose that "Do not go gentle into that good night bears a much stronger and more direct connection to Shakespeare 's play than is suggested by references to Yeats or to "Lear-like grandeur " I would like to propose that the attitudes towards death--or , more precisely , the attitudes towards how one lives in the face of impending death--that Thomas explores in this poem--the implied attitude his speaker attributes to his direct audience , and the one he urges be adopted in its place--are similarly explored in King Lear and dramatized in the characters of Gloucester and Lear . I also propose that the voice we hear in "Do not go gentle " may not be a directly lyric speaker but an obliquely drawn persona , that of Gloucester 's son Edgar . Further , when read in the shadow cast by King Lear , the tone of Thomas 's poem grows dark indeed "Do not go gentle into that good night " is addressed to Thomas 's father David John , known as D . J . According to biographer Paul Ferris , D .J . was "an unhappy man . a man with regrets (27 born with brains and literary talent , his ambition was to be a...