The Poetry of Mary Robinson: Form and Fame

22 The Poetry of Mary Robinson

FEIGNED Signatures: had she avowed them at an earlier period the plea-

sure she now feels would have been considerably diminished, in the

idea that the partiality of friends had procured the sanction her Poems

have been favoured with from the candid and enlightened.... (iii)

Here, the pseudonyms have asserted the legitimacy of Robinson’s

poetic talents by protecting the poems from the “partiality of friends”

and from its opposite. Even though it is both posturing and market-

ing, this preface initiates a public performance in which Robinson, no

longer on stage, asserts a textual claim to fame that her poems will

have to fulfill. Her handsome volume, elegantly printed by Bell, is,

moreover, a material product of her successful networking. But this

success is contingent upon the game she has learned how to play. Her

avatars are not disguises—they are all testaments, artifacts of her lit-

erary and cultural authority. She continues to use a pseudonym even

after everyone knows it belongs to her. An avatar thus is all about

being that version of oneself: she can be Laura Maria or she can be

Oberon as a textual feature of the poetic instance. This is how she

manifests and proliferates herself through form.

Oberon as Robinson—Not Robinson

as Oberon

Were her avatars theatrical performances in print, Robinson sim-

ply could have picked a character, say, from Shakespeare and writ-

ten poetry as that character. Swift and Franklin, for instance, had

constructed coherent characters for periodical publication. But her

pseudonyms are far more complicated than that, as her Oberon ava-

tar demonstrates. Oberon provides a useful case study. She used

it early in her career for her contributions to Bell’s newspaper the

Oracle and revived it years later when she worked for Stuart at the

Morning Post during the final year of her life. The signature is

interesting because it is a male persona and thus recalls Robinson’s

stint as an actress known for playing “breeches” parts. And, obvi-

ously, the name ostensibly alludes to Shakespeare’s quasimalevolent

king of the fairies from A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Stylistically,

the tetrameter couplets and quatrains that feature in Robinson’s

first Oberon poems recall the charming musicality of Ben Jonson’s

1611 masque Oberon, The Fairy Prince and the fairy songs therein;

likewise, Robinson’s Oberon poems also recall Robert Herrick’s

playfully erotic Oberon poems, “Oberon’s Feast” (sometimes

called “Oberon’s Palace”) and “The Fairy Temple; or, Oberon’s

9780230100251_03_ch01.indd 229780230100251_03_ch01.indd 22 12/31/2010 4:20:09 PM12/31/2010 4:20:09 PM

10.1057/9780230118034 - The Poetry of Mary Robinson, Daniel Robinson

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