“Wherefore Stopp’st Thou Me?”:  The Function of the Wedding-Guest in Coleridge’s “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”

 

Abstract.    The “Rime,” among S. T. Coleridge’s best-known poems, is most famous for its nightmarish images of supernatural figures and events.  These hallucinatory scenes were suggested by a dream of the poet’s neighbor, Cruickshank, and further ideas from William Wordsworth.  They are narrated in the poem through Coleridge’s own frame-narrator, called the “Wedding-Guest,” to whom the “mariner” delivers an abrupt, sermon-like message near the conclusion of the “Rime.”  Many readers and scholars, reading the poem, get the impression that the frame story and the moral message do not fit in well with the purely imaginative story told by the Mariner.  In a phrase, there is a marked absence of organic unity, a concept that Coleridge valued highly.  The haunted sea-voyage, compared to the frame story, is overwhelmingly vivid and striking.  The Wedding-Guest seems too sketchily described to be interesting, and the Mariner’s preaching is not well prepared for, and his message appears inconsistent with the tone of the balance of the poem.

       As a result, both of these elements are repeatedly passed over in critical evaluations.  Indeed, in later times, the poet himself commented that the work had either too little message, or “too much.” Nevertheless, Coleridge never removed these elements from his early poem, through thirteen further stages of revision (Beer 314).  This suggests that, despite the recognition of some failing in “The Rime,” the frame story’s moralization did, somehow, fulfill his intentions.  This paper examines the text of the poem and elements of Coleridge’s life, uncovering a thread of references and symbols by which the poet attempted to stitch his own sermon onto his friend’s nightmare.  It shows how the Wedding-Guest is intended to function:  by carrying on a pattern of conversion that shows the reader how Christians ought to relate to other members of his or her society.  This interpretation of the textual and historical evidence reveals a consistency of purpose that is well suited to the situation of a young poet who had only lately been offered a position as a Unitarian minister. 

“Wherefore Stopp’st Thou Me?”:  The Function of the Wedding-Guest In Coleridge’s

“The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”

中山大學博士班 歐書華

National Sun Yat-sen University PhD Candidate, English Literature

Christopher J. O’Brien

The lyric that the Mariner recites in “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” is presented through the device of a frame story:  one that ultimately proves functional as well as artistic.  The Wedding-Guest, who seems to be a randomly-chosen figure, provides Coleridge with the chance to prompt emotional reactions from the reader, and at last proves to have been mystically drawn into playing a role in the curse that has afflicted the Mariner for so long.  In critical writings, the Wedding-Guest is often passed over as the reader's token alter ego, necessary for functional reasons, but not developed by Coleridge into a rounded character.  But since the poem's denouement sees the Wedding-Guest change from a carefree, would-be reveler into a “sadder and a wiser man,” (line 624) it seems reasonable to perceive the Guest as a character in his own right.  Though Coleridge does not describe the Wedding-Guest in great detail, the Guest's actions, words, and situations allow one to assess his function within the work.  By paying attention to the Guest, it is possible to gain further insight about the nature of Coleridge's intentions with “The Rime:” insight that cannot be gained by dismissing the Guest as a mere cipher.  Such consideration further sheds significant light on a solution to the dispute noted by early readers:  on whether “The Rime” has no moral, “too much,” (in Coleridge's words[1])—or if, instead, the moralization in the final stanzas of the work are an integral part of it, proceeding organically from both the content of the Mariner's tale, and from the Mariner's references to Christian symbols and faith.

In most readers’ eyes, the weirdness of the Mariner’s haunted voyage dominates the impressions left by “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” I will show that, in terms of Coleridge’s manipulation of the borrowed images and the “Poet’s Reverie” (as the poem was subtitled in the 1800 edition of Lyrical Ballads),that whole section of the work is treated as an instance of the correctional punishment inflicted supernaturally;  its details, in the main, are not directly related to the moralization that prompted the addition of the Wedding-Guest and his frame story.  This study examines the poem in its cultural and historical context, considering the personality and situation of its poet, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, in order to account for the seeming disparity between the “Rime’s” vivid, nightmarish voyage and the comparatively colorless and pedantic conclusion. 

Two concepts that were on Coleridge’s mind during the initial composition of the “Rime” are reflected in the poem itself.  One of these was the idea that the human heart was extremely significant, and in the expanding and contracting action of the heartbeat one can find a metaphor for life.  This is the pattern that is shown on various levels within the poem:  both in the frame story and in the sea voyage’s narration.  Thematically, the idea of this muscular action is tied to the process of becoming aware of one’s own significance; one’s relationship with God and with the other members of society.  There are three steps that are iterated several times.  In the first stage, the individual considers himself rather ordinary and unimportant, one cell in the body of the mass of humanity called society.  This represents the expanded state of the heart.  The contraction comes when supernatural forces designate one member of society to be the recipient of the Teaching, or message, that is bestowed upon the Mariner.  This message is not merely textual; the mystic forces also work a change in the man, transforming him and forcing him to see himself and his world in a cleansed way.  Once the change has been effected, there is a period of isolation, followed by a return to one’s original hometown:  the re-expansion of the heart.  But this time, with his new awareness, the one who was chosen can see his role more clearly, and due to this enlightenment, must go forth into the world in order to repeat the process, so the heartbeat can continue.  This is a pattern of evangelism. 

The other concept, the “one Life,” is not explicitly Christian, but it does not conflict with Christianity.  It is simply the idea that all things were created by God, and as such, all God’s creatures are related to each other; therefore, we must respect all life.  This is probably what Coleridge was thinking of when he wrote the work, and is reflected in the repeated statements of the marginal glosses as the “laws of hospitality.”  These glosses were added in his most vigorous revision of the poem for his 1817 edition of Sibylline Leaves, by which time Coleridge’s thinking had already changed somewhat; nevertheless, the “one Life” concept is still easily recognized, especially in the “moral” delivered directly to the Wedding-Guest at the end of the “Rime.”

The poem was originally based upon a dream of Coleridge's neighbor Cruikshank, who saw a skeleton ship with figures in it.  The insertion of the cruel act of killing the lucky Albatross into the story was suggested by Wordsworth (Abrams 335).  On November 13, 1797, Wordsworth proposed that the shooting of the Albatross could be used as the cause of the ship’s troubles; his idea had been inspired by his reading of Shelvock’s Voyages a few days earlier (Beer 209).   A true friend and respecter of his sources, as well as respecting his “Friend” (as Wordsworth reciprocally referred to Coleridge in The Prelude, Book First, line 46) as a poet of great merit and importance, Coleridge again tried to retain the integrity of Wordsworth's intentions with this key action--while still wanting to employ the action within his own Christian agenda.  This would explain the “out-of-left-field” feeling of the “prayeth best” passage:  the emphasis on all of God's creatures, while not precisely what Coleridge has seemed to be building toward, fits Wordsworth’s conception of the correction for the Mariner’s immoral act.  A difference in nuance is present, though:  Wordsworth would likely have thought of the Albatross as an example of a “creature,” meaning a living animal, but Coleridge, I feel, emphasizes the “created by God” aspect of the same word.  One receives a feeling that Coleridge retained, in all examples, respect for his source materials, and was careful not to change the intentions of his donors; he was content, at this stage in his artistic growth, to elaborate upon them. 

The other details of the poem, including the creation of the frame story, were Coleridge’s own. The germ of the story, proposed by Cruickshank and supplemented by Wordsworth, represents the origin of the supernatural and emotional persuasiveness of the famous story within the frame:  the eerie sea voyage, with the killing of the Albatross and the punishment and penance that follow.  In order to understand the way that the Wedding-Guest and his frame story function, one must consider the intentions of the poet.  An important clue is found in Coleridge’s statements concerning his contributions to Lyrical Ballads.  In Biographia Literaria (ca. 1808), he specifies that, for the poems he was to compose for that volume, “the incidents and agents were to be, in part at least, supernatural; and the excellence aimed at was to consist in the interesting of the affections by the dramatic truth of such emotions as would naturally accompany such situations, supposing them real.”  (397).  Part of the motivation, then, for inventing the frame story is clearly to facilitate the communication of the emotions that Coleridge had in mind.  The Wedding-Guest is the vehicle of that communication. 

 

Every Man an Anyman in “A Work of the Pure Imagination”

The Wedding-Guest is, in swift strokes, designated as one who seems rather anonymous:  he is only “one of three” (line 2).  That is all we know of him when he begins to speak with the Mariner, and he clearly does not know why he has been selected:  he asks the old man, “Now wherefore stopp’st thou me?” (line 4).  Coleridge neither provides any physical description of the Guest, nor with any name by which to call him.  The randomness of his appearance seems to have led some critics to disregard the nondescript figure as unimportant, aside from his narrative function.  But in this reading, a clear description of the Wedding-Guest would not only have been unnecessary; it would have been detrimental to Coleridge’s purpose. It is the poet’s purpose to let readers identify with the Guest, because, ironically, those who seem to be a “nobody” can also metaphorically be employed as an “everybody”—or an “anybody.”  

It is widely agreed that the presence of the Wedding-Guest supplies, most importantly, a sympathetic character with whom the reader can identify.  From line two until the last line of the poem, the Guest’s character is built only by his words and his actions, save for his appellation as a “Wedding-Guest:”  a guest who, ironically, never attends the wedding featured in the plot of the frame story.  Although Coleridge’s description of him is sparse, it is sufficient for my argument that the Guest is intended, not as a nobody, but as one of several examples of randomly-chosen figures in “The Rime” that highlight the universality of Coleridge’s message.  Indeed, though some readers remark that the vagueness of the Guest constitutes a flaw in the poem, it is his very lack of description that allows readers to identify with him more fully.  For instance, a physical description of the Guest would only serve to distance the reader from him. 

One cannot deny that the Guest seems to be a randomly-chosen figure, but he is random in specific ways.  In other words, enough information is given to emphasize his similarities with any member of the general public, including the audience of readers to whom Lyrical Ballads was sold.  From the very beginning of the poem, the Wedding-Guest is portrayed as a solitary figure, the sole hearer of this telling of the Mariner's tale—it could have been anybody, but he was selected—and simultaneously as one who comes from a large, but equally faceless, group.  The first fact that readers learn about the Guest is found in line six:  “I am next of kin”—to a Bridegroom who never appears as a character in the poem.   The reference to a bridegroom implies the wedding that is described in greater detail later:  a wedding with many other guests, musicians, and other participants sufficient to generate a “merry din” (line 8).  Likewise, the Guest's role within the social tradition of the wedding—the next of kin—shows the reader that the Guest is a member of a larger group, with a family and companions, and also that the Guest has responsibilities that must fulfill as a member of his society.  The wedding, which is both important and delightful enough to cause the Guest to beat his breast repeatedly in frustration at being compelled to miss it (in lines 32 and 37), identifies him as a person who probably views society as representing predictability, ceremony, and at least occasional opportunities for revelry.

The details of the Mariner’s story offer parallels between the Guest and the Mariner..  In a comparable “face in the crowd” manner, he was merely serving duty upon a ship, working among two hundred other mariners.  The Mariner reveals that he was working in his chosen profession in the company of at least one family member:  his brother’s son (line 341); this reflects a similarity with the Wedding-Guest’s situation.  And, like the Guest, the Mariner worked at his responsibilities “merrily” with the others of his social group (line 22)—until he was singled out by fate, personal decision, or supernatural forces (it is not entirely clear which) for an extraordinary, life-altering experience. 

There are several repetitions of phrases used in the poem, operating in similar ways; the reiteration of the root word “merry” in such close proximity here is rather striking, and a suitable illustration of Coleridge’s method.  Generally, people writing in English are loath to use vocabulary words too often in their compositions:  one reason, perhaps, for the survival of so many synonyms in the language.  When writers repeat words, therefore, usually they want to create a specific impression or effect upon the reader.  The closely-spaced use of the words “merry” and “merrily” (with only three stanzas in between), far from betraying a paucity in Coleridge's vocabulary, is a manifestation of Coleridge's intention to link the Wedding-Guest and the Mariner.  It indicates their previous complacency and satisfaction with their roles in society.

Before their lives were changed, both of these characters were cheerful members of their social order, going about their business as usual.  In this way, in fact, they both rather resemble anybody in society-at-large.  The details that Coleridge gives us about their past lives, such as working among others and participating in civic services, are more or less universal, and can be assumed to apply well to the readers of the first edition of Lyrical Ballads in 1798, or indeed to any later readers.  Coleridge himself was married at the time of the poem's composition, and very likely had attended weddings as well.

I suggest that Coleridge wanted to imply, in the first part of “The Rime,” that the nature of the happenings described—in particular, their random specificity—should apply to the reader as well as to both of the characters.  The details mentioned above help the reader to identify, early in the poem, with these figures.  This identification, in this reading, is intended by Coleridge to help readers perceive and accept the lesson that the Mariner is transmitting.  Through unexpected and unpredictable means of selection, any one of us may be suddenly chosen for a sudden change of course; or, likewise, by the performance of a single, random action, may set wheels into motion unintentionally.  And, likewise, since we have all, at times, been “alone on a wide wide sea,” (line 598) we all may benefit from the life-alteration that I will show the Mariner to have undergone. 

Of course, the weird and supernatural events that follow may not be expected to happen to normal people; Coleridge describes the work as being one of imagination.  In Biographia Literaria, Coleridge describes his contributions to Lyrical Ballads as describing “incidents or agents. . .supernatural” that, though fictional, would engage readers’ interest by portraying his protagonists experiencing “such emotions as would naturally accompany such situations, supposing them real.”  (Coleridge 2 397)  But the Mariner's troubles were all set in motion by a wholly voluntary and avoidable action:  his killing of the Albatross (described in line 82).  The albatross , like the Mariner and the Wedding-Guest, appears to be a randomly-chosen victim.  Indeed, if the Mariner had previously been taught the lesson that he finally confers upon the Wedding-Guest, that of loving all of God's creations, his troubles would have been avoided, and the supernatural forces summoned by the wanton killing of the Albatross never would have interfered with his life.  This lesson, already having been applied to the Mariner's life, is metaphorically applicable to the Wedding-Guest’s life. . .as well as to the reader’s.  When the Mariner preaches to the Wedding-Guest, delivering his moral lesson in the final part of the poem, the reader receives the teaching as well:  “He prayeth best, who loveth best/All things both great and small;/For the dear God who loveth us,/He made and loveth all” (lines 614-17). 

Another aspect of the Wedding-Guest’s introduction into the poem is to demonstrate for the reader how one is supposed to respond to the Mariner and his message.  At key points in the story, we are supplied with the Guest’s exclamations of annoyance; then of fear.  Through his senses, the reader perceives the Mariner’s appearance and his voice, and comes eye-to-eye with the mesmerizing or hypnotic force that acts as a spiritual catalyst.  And at the end, after the Mariner departs, the “heart” begins to contract again (as Coleridge allegorizes here):  the Guest is disoriented, and seeks solitude.  The final lines of the “Rime” take place just before the next expansion of the “heart,” when the Wedding-Guest, changed forever, is about to return to his familiar social scene, and to begin to change it, continuing the cycle and expanding the army of ‘self-aware’ creatures of God in the process.

More than three decades after the original composition of the poem, in 1830 (Abrams 352), his contemporary, the poet Mrs. Anna Laetitia Barbauld, complained to Coleridge that the “Rime” had no moral (Beer 493).  Coleridge protested to her that “The Rime” had “too much” of one (352); still, I maintain that it must not be disregarded.  Though the poet’s view on religion changed repeatedly over the course of his lifetime, his outlook, first and last, was Christian.  Coleridge, son of Reverend John Coleridge, was raised as a Christian; early in his life, Coleridge was prepared to take a position as the minister at a Unitarian church in Shrewsbury (he preached briefly there, but received a life annuity soon afterwards that allowed him to be financially independent upon the job.) (Abrams 328).  After the first publication of the Lyrical Ballads in 1798, he was influenced by the German writer Immanuel Kant, and modified his views (328).  In his later life, the poet became an Anglican, and wrote searching essays on the subject of the Holy Trinity (329).  Less than half a year before his death, in a poem intended to be his own epitaph, he asserted that his life had been lived as a Christian (in Beer 490). 

The minister’s position was offered to Coleridge—1797, the same year when this poem was written, and by January of 1798, he was preaching.  Such lessons, then, were doubtless on his mind at the time as he was considering being a teacher for such assembled ears as would also attend weddings.  Gatherings of Unitarians in Coleridge’s church were familiar with the characteristics of Christ, and of His parables that, though presented as isolated stories about random and unfamiliar figures, are understood to metaphorically apply to every body in the sanctuary of God's love.  And, as a minister in training, Coleridge must have passed some time in pondering ways to make the teachings in Christ’s parables both interesting and immediate to his prospective congregation. 

 

Cross Purposes:  Dream Images Brought to the (Metaphorical) Pulpit

The killing, though superimposed from the outside from Wordsworth's suggestion onto Cruikshank's dreamscape, becomes in Coleridge's hands literally crucial.  That Coleridge adopted the suggestion indicates his interest in shaping the eerie, dreamlike experiences of the Mariner (as dreamed by Cruikshank) into a lesson in morality, as opposed to a pure fantasy, such as “Kubla Khan,” was purported to be when  published in 1816 (Abrams 354). 

As John Beer (1993) and others have shown, there is in the killing of the Albatross an undeniable exploration of the “one life” concept that had been on Coleridge’s mind for months before composing the “Rime.”  Coleridge’s idea was that all life is a reflection of God, who had created all things, and that he who harms any living being harms all (Beer 210).  As Beer puts it, “men should turn to the source of life and live and. . .their best form of prayer to that source is to love all living creatures until they are completely at home within the harmony of the ‘one Life.” (210)  Therefore, according to this moral, the shooting of the Albatross stands for the way that humans typically “cut themselves off from the central harmony of the creation.” (210) 

Though a Christian himself, Coleridge’s idea about the one Life is not directly related to Christ; it seems rather more pantheistic (Beer 494).  Beer suggests that, if this pantheistic tone were detected by his readers, Coleridge might have been exposed to criticism from rather more fundamentalist Christians.  In order to camouflage it, he added several elements to the poem in 1817, such as the marginal glosses and additional Catholic references (494-5). 

Beer’s criticism here appears to indicate that the religious references that Coleridge wrote into the “Rime” are in fact a sort of smokescreen technique, used to disguise a non-Christian outlook, thus protecting Coleridge from critical defamation.  However, through careful reading of the poem, and considering Coleridge’s life over the years between 1797 and 1833, a consistent pattern emerges that does not support such a hypothesis.  It is clear that, partially due to its mixture of inspirations and the poet’s varied intellectual thoughts, the “Rime” could not possess true organic unity.  Coleridge’s attempts over the years never quite succeeded; organic unity must not be achieved, but instead be present from the beginning.  The disparate elements could not be wholly reconciled, but this paper attempts to show how Coleridge labored to patch the seams that never quite closed. 

Many Unitarian churches of today do not endorse the idea of the Trinity (though the Catholic church has always done so), and therefore do not emphasize the figure of Christ in their services; such Unitarian churches represent Jesus of Nazareth as a wise prophet, but not as the son of God, rather as the Jewish faith does; likewise, His crucifixion is not emphasized.  But it is significant that Coleridge himself was not a Unitarian of this kind.  We have the eloquent testimony of William Hazlitt, who in January of 1898 (less than one year after the composition of this poem, and shortly before the first publication of Lyrical Ballads) attended one of Coleridge’s church sermons, that the poet of “The Rime” was unequivocally one of those clergymen “who preach Christ crucified” at that time (in Abrams, 446; emphasis Hazlitt’s)  Abrams reports that, in Coleridge’s later life, he became an Anglican (328), one of the branches of Christianity.  It is also notable that his father, Reverend John Coleridge, was a minister before Samuel (Hazlitt, 446) 

As further support for the idea that the “Rime” takes place in a specifically Christian world is the time setting.  One clue is the soundings of the “vespers,” which is a time in the Catholic tradition, relevant to the mediaeval traditions of monks, and indicating a time of day around dusk.  At the time of first publication, the poem was called “The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere,” and, throughout the work, had a more pronounced feeling of antiquity than the later printings did (Coleridge, 1798 editon, 214).  The many archaisms with which the first printing of the poem, in the 1798 edition of Lyrical Ballads, was liberally peppered (and, though reduced in later revisions, still remain in the final version of 1817) help to place the setting as approximately the Middle Ages.  This is a time in history before the Christian church was still “Catholic,” (that is, unified):  before the Protestant reformation.  The fact of the Catholic church’s dominance in the setting of the “Rime” also places emphasis on the unified nature that Coleridge felt true of all human and animal beings, in parallel with the still-undivided Christian church.  In Europe and England, it was a Catholic-dominated world. This is the time of the Gothic, which (as a genre of fiction-writing) at its height at the time of the “Rime’s” composition.  The genre was much involved with the ideas of supernaturalism and take place in a Catholic world, many times; in its way, the “Rime” can be seen as one of Coleridge’s contributions to the movement, along with its contemporary poem “Christabel.” 

Within the text of the sea-voyage passages of the “Rime,” there are numerous references to Christian ideas, both direct and allusional.  When the Albatross first appears, the crew of the Mariner's ship hails it joyfully “in God’s name” (line 66), and it proves to be a creature of good omen.  The bird, portrayed as a wholesome, blameless, and beneficent figure, fated to die despite its admirable qualities, is sacrificed at random by the Mariner.  After the Albatross has been pierced by a shaft that is let loose by the Mariner from his crossbow (line 81); images of blood (line 112) and water (line 119) enter the narrative.  These elements of the narrative are suggestive of the story of Christ’s crucifixion from the New Testament, in which it is reported that, while on the cross, Jesus was struck in the body, and from his wound flowed water and blood.  In Part 4, the ocean's water itself turns a bloodlike red color (line 271).  This calls to mind how, in the Old Testament, Moses impressed the Egyptian Pharaoh by using the power of God to turn the Nile into a river of red blood. 

The pivotal act of random killing is the beginning of the woes that the entire crew of the Mariner's ship must either die (Abrams 341) or atone for (lines 582-5).  Later, the corpse of the Albatross is hung about the neck of the Mariner “instead of the cross” (line 141).  Its body, a guilty burden that weighs the Mariner down, cannot be alleviated until he prays silently (lines 288-290).  In each these details, Coleridge indicates subtly but persistently that the Albatross serves as a sacrificial figure, related symbolically to that of Jesus Christ. 

Although the Mariner kills the albatross alone, the entire crew is willingly implicated in the murder.  The analogy should not be taken too far, perhaps, but it is true that, as the nation of Israel takes the death of Jesus of Nazareth upon its own head (NIV Matthew 27:25), the crew members of the Mariner's ship “make themselves accomplices in the crime” of the Albatross's death (“Rime,” 338).  This parallels the manner in which the Jews, accepting the blame for the crime for generations to come, must also pay the price when Pilate's men put Jesus to death on the cross (NIV Mark 15:24).  In another Biblical parallel, the Mariner's transformation from a wanton killer into a kind of unwilling preacher is closely analogous to the story of Saul, a killer of Christians who, after being confronted with a spirit-like manifestation of God's power, was stunned and was blind for three days (NIV Acts 9:1-4).  Later, he changed his name to Paul (Acts 13:9) and became a disciple of Jesus. . .and ended up writing a number of the books now included in the modern Christian Bible (NIV, including Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, and Galatians).    But whereas the apostle Paul, having been thus converted, became a willing preacher, the Mariner is, at least at first, compelled against his will to tell the story of his experiences, and subjected to fits until the penance was paid (“Mariner,” lines 582-590). 

Though in these lines it is made clear that just such a supernatural compulsion (it is ambiguous whether this agent is the “lonesome Spirit” of the South Pole (Abrams 346), “Life-In-Death,” the Holy Spirit of God, or some other) is the agent that elects the Wedding-Guest as the next enforced auditor of the tale, it appears that the Mariner, after the many years of penitence that have earned him the appellation “ancient,” no longer wishes to fight the power that forces him to tell his story.  There are many interjections peppered through the Mariner's tale which either appeal to or refer to God and to Christian symbols; they do not seem like examples of the proverbial foul-mouthed swearing of an ill-mannered sailor, taking the Lord's name in vain.  Rather, they seem to be spoken in earnest; to reflect the wonder and horror that he feels at an immediate reliving of the experiences that the Mariner is describing.  One might infer that, whatever supernatural entity or entities have demanded this penance of him, be they on the side of the “holy rood,” (line 489) of the Antarctic spirit, or of “Life-In-Death,” they do not allow him a dispassionate recitation of the verses.  A bored recitation of the “rime” would not have the effect that the tale does on the Wedding-Guest—and, without this further condition, the tale would certainly become tedious after decades of repeated tellings.  Much to the contrary:  the effectiveness demanded by the supernatural forces depend upon a passionate and affecting recitation for its life-changing results to have success.

We have seen how the Wedding-Guest serves in this poem as a proxy of sorts for the reader:  as an example for us to follow, and as our eyes and ears, allowing us to take in the sensory input of the scene, particularly the Mariner’s hypnotic eyes.  In a similar way, the poet is represented, in a way, by the figure of the Mariner.  Coleridge himself, like many artists, was subject to fits of a medical kind, as we know from William Wordsworth.  He, like the Mariner, suffered from painful spasms that forced him to “throw himself down and writhe like a worm” (Abrams, 329).  Likewise, his inspiration came in fits all his life (Beer xl), particularly after the time of the “Rime” (330).  One such creative frenzy is described as having come upon Coleridge in 1797, in the famous preface to Kubla Khan (published in 1816).  After awakening from an opium dream, the poet, “taking his pen, ink, and paper, instantly and eagerly wrote down the lines. . .” that he had composed in his reverie (Beer 203).  Notably, as many critics have pointed out, the figure with “flashing eyes” in Kubla Khan represents a poet-prophet, analogous to Coleridge himself.  It is likely that the fits to which the Mariner was subjected may have been inspired by a combination of these two kinds of throes. 

The idea of inspiration has always been an important one to poets, including William Blake, who saw himself as a “Bard,” a poet-prophet who passed on Truth from above to his fellow man.  Very likely, Coleridge had something like this in mind when considering his own life and the figure of the Ancient Mariner.  The Mariner may serve, then, as a substitute for Coleridge as one who passes on revelations from mystical sources.  This is suggested by the violent fits suffered by both the poet and the narrator, and also by the nature of the message both pass on.  John Beer suggests that, when Coleridge first composed the Rime in 1979, “he was using the narrative to explore the idea that in periods of extreme physical suffering the human sensibility, normally frozen into conventional attitudes by custom, became more than usually receptive to revelatory experiences—even if that experience, not fully understood, might be felt basically as terrifying.” (xxxiv)  In these comments, one may see Coleridge as the very pattern of his Mariner.

In a like way, the Mariner’s fellow sailors, isolated in their way aboard ship, seem to present a figure for worldly society, in microcosm.  Their vacillation is not untypical of the world at large:  men who think as a body, easily swayed by passing whims.  When the superstitious sailors see that the Mariner kills the lucky Albatross, they curse him, but later when their luck turns, they cheer for him.  The world of ‘creatures’ is, in Coleridge’s idea of the “one Life,” not a world where everyone is simply an element in the larger body, without any autonomy.  Instead, people should think critically, because every life has value.

The word “reverie,” used to describe the opium-induced state in which Coleridge supposedly first composed Kubla Khan (Abrams 353), has a brief but suggestive appearance in the decades-long development of the final version of the “Rime.”  Two years following the initial publication of the poem (1798), following which the hallucinatory character of the sea-voyage caught much attention and admiration from Charles Lamb (Abrams 416) and others, the second edition of 1800 appeared.  By this time, Coleridge had increased his use of laudanum (opium dissolved in alcohol), which had begun before 1897.  In this edition, Coleridge made several changes to the poem, including the addition of a telling subtitle to the “Rime:” “A Poet’s Reverie.”  Is this an admission that, having been supplied with a basic premise for the poem by Cruickshank and Wordsworth, Coleridge had dreamed up some portion of the body of the poem in an intoxicated state?  Or, perhaps, did Coleridge wish to give that impression?  It is uncertain, but it is an intriguing suggestion.  At any rate, Coleridge deleted the subtitle in a later revision (Abrams 416).  Between 1800 and 1801, in attempts to cure himself of his painful infirmities, the poet had become addicted to opium; it had changed from an imagination-freeing substance to a kind of torture (329).  Therefore, by the time of its removal, it is probable that Coleridge no longer wished to publicize opium’s presence and influence on his life and work.  It is worth noting that, though Kubla Khan was written in either late 1797 or early 1798 (the same half-year when the “Rime” was first composed), it was left unpublished until 1816; therefore, no influence from public reception of Kubla Khan should be inferred, though other friends (including Lord Byron) had read that poem before publication. 

Beer, like the present writer, interprets part of Coleridge’s theme the importance of being awake to the consequences of our actions, lest one work evil acts unintentionally, and suggests that, if one must suffer the “privations” that the Mariner undergoes in order to awaken to this kind of awareness, very few people are likely to do so (xxvii).  However, it appears that Coleridge is describing a fictive way to increase the number of converts; I submit that here is where the layers of parallelism and identification come into force.  It is plain that some magical force is operating, for the Wedding-Guest is repeatedly reported to have no choice but to stay and hear the tale; the same force, probably, that forces the Mariner to speak.  The mysterious, magical force—which some readers interpret as a kind of mesmerism or hypnotism inherent in the Mariner’s glittering eyes—helps the Wedding-Guest to relive the Mariner’s experiences, as I have explained above.  In effect, the Wedding-Guest has undergone the same suffering.  The proof is in the last stanza; he is indeed a changed man by the end.  Presumably, in the future, the Wedding-Guest will have the potential to continue this mystical chain of conversions, which may branch out repeatedly to change the outlook of an ever-increasing number of ordinary people. 

The Mariner states that, when the “woeful agony” comes upon him, his heart burns painfully until his tale is told (lines 579-585).  But even after the tale is finished, within the context of “The Rime,” the Mariner continues to talk with the Guest for an additional eight stanzas (lines 582-617), sharing more of the truth of his life than he has to do.  This is the truer mark of the Mariner's own changed character, for in these eight stanzas he shows his good will toward the Guest and imparts of his delight at being and praying among fellow Christians.  But the confession that the Mariner makes to the Guest also has a meta-narrative function.

The circumstances of the Mariner’s forced recitals reveals more about the role of the Wedding-Guest, which brings his importance into a clearer perspective for readers who identify with him.  The Mariner explains that when he is seized by the painful urge to tell his tale, the spirit that compels him to speak also determines his audience.  “That moment that his face I see, I know the man that must hear me:  To him my tale I teach.”  (line 588-590).  The ancient sailor is describing a recurring event, but the  Guest, as the reader, knows that in this case, he was not selected at random, despite appearances.  He was appointed, specifically—not by the Mariner himself, but by a power other than mortal.  In a meta-fictional way, then, Coleridge (as represented by the Mariner) seems to be saying that the reader, too, has been chosen by a higher power to receive an important spiritual lesson—for the teaching function of the Rhyme is quite explicit here.  In other words, Coleridge seems to be calling “ordinary” readers, who may regard themselves as having no special importance, to be awake to the possibility of personally playing a role in the retribution of his or her fellow humans.  The idea of a chain, and the unobvious special essence of each link in it, has now reached the reader at its most obvious and strongest expression.  The albatross, though ordinary in its way, served as the impetus for the Mariner’s life-changing lesson; the Hermit and the Mariner’s other auditors were somehow specially nominated to pass on the message; now we have received the same teaching.  Coleridge seems to be challenging us to make the next move by converting the teeming multitudes of strangers into an ever-growing army of self-aware creatures of God in the manner of spiritual leavening agents.

Though the “he prayeth well, who loveth well/Both man and bird and beast” passage (lines 612-13) is usually singled out as the poem's moral, in my reading these lines are seen as merely a concluding iteration of the larger message, related after the Mariner’s tale has ended.  The crux of this passage is:  “O Wedding-Guest! this soul hath been/Alone on a wide wide sea:/So lonely ‘twas, that God himself/Scarce seemed there to be” (lines 597-600).  But now, the Mariner has returned to habitation among people, and more specifically, among Christian people; he is once again a “face in the crowd.”   The Mariner has gone from one-among-many, to one-singled-out, and back again to something like his original state.  But he is now a changed man.  He has learned to follow the laws of loving God's creatures, and willfully participates in spreading the word of what he has learned to others. 

Having discharged his responsibility—the relating of his tale—as well as generously sharing the word of his love for God and God’s creatures; after telling of a supernatural battle between God’s ministers and pagan spirits, it remains now to see the reaction of the Wedding-Guest, in order to determine the effectiveness of the Mariner’s teaching.  The Guest, who has functioned throughout the poem as a sounding-board for the purposes of guiding the readers' response, is now a test case for the whole moral of the strange tale.  If he shrugs the message off as the meaningless raving of a “graybeard loon,” (line 11) the reader may also be led to disregard it, seeing in it no more meaning than in the drugged images manifested in "Kubla Khan" or the rough dream images from which the poem sprang. 

The message is the primary objective of the poet’s artistic shaping of his friend's dream:  the superimposed moral structuring that had no place in Cruikshank’s original nightmare.  Therefore, in my reading, the response of the Wedding-Guest is of paramount significance to the delivery of Coleridge’s message, as well as the Mariner’s.  In that light, it makes sense to interpret the title of the poem as signifying “The Ancient Mariner’s Message in Rhyme” and not “The Poem About an Ancient Mariner;” in other words, perhaps Coleridge is referring here to the “Rime” within the frame, as having the most importance, instead of the entire poetical composition.

 

“The Wedding-Guest Turned From the Bridegroom’s Door”

In six brief lines, Coleridge relates the Wedding-Guest's response to the impact of the Mariner’s tale. 

                .  .  .  and now the Wedding-Guest

                Turned from the bridegroom’s door.

                He went like one that hath been stunned,

                And is of sense forlorn.

                A sadder and a wiser man,

                He rose the morrow morn.  (lines 620-5)

The Guest, who with great urgency had wanted to join the wedding party and its merriment, has been struck so by the Mariner's narrative and message that his initial reaction is to forego the festivities and be alone.  I interpret this as being a token of rejection:  not of human company per se, but of his previous naive image of a church:  primarily as a place for social gatherings and fun.  Perhaps, previously, he had missed the point of church.  Surely Coleridge’s time was much like our own, when many nominal Christians substitute religion for faith and see the Sabbath as their Sunday morning activity, a time to pray and chat in public; Coleridge would have known for sure.   Within the frame story, the Wedding-Guest has previously spent time in church among people, but now he will learn to function within the ‘Body of Christ,’ as it is figured in church to mean the Christians of the world.  Like the Mariner, he undergoes the transitions between being a careless member of society, to a man alone, and finally returning to society at last, with a different perception of himself as a member of it. This isolation is another iteration of the emphatic lonesomeness of the Mariner:  “Alone, alone, all, all alone,/alone on a wide wide sea!” (lines 228-229 of the 1817 edition). 

Because of the exciting confrontation between ancient supernatural forces of good and evil (with its violent alternations between joy and despair), and no doubt too because of the curse's supernatural influence as well as the Mariner's powerful delivery, the Guest has been profoundly moved.  The “Rime,” with its images that appeal constantly to the senses of vision, hearing, and touch, and smell, has also created for the Guest an magically-intense imaginary experience, perhaps analogous to the 'virtual reality' of today’s technology.  In all but fact, I suggest, he has relived the traumatic events described by the Mariner.  And, like the Mariner, the Guest finds himself initially stunned, like the Biblical Saul; his personal transformation cannot take place instantly, though it does occur overnight:  the Guest emerges the next day a changed man.

Also, we have the enigmatic and unchanging labeling of the auditor of the Mariner's story as “the Wedding-Guest,” which, as remarked above, is not quite an accurate appellation, as he never attends the wedding.  But I maintain that this name is intended as a delightful, ingenious, and inspired title, which was chosen for its double meaning.  When anyone—whether or not a church-goer—makes a mature decision to let Jesus into their lives, their “old man” (their prior selves) are said to die, and the “new man” is born:  the believer becomes “born again.”  The Wedding-Guest makes an analogous transformation, leaving his old world behind, becoming like a confused child, and waking up a changed man.  The symbolic ceremony in which the man is transformed, baptism, incorporates the use of water into the process of being saved, being the transitional phase between death and life in Christ.  In becoming born again, the new Christian’s soul is described as the Bride of Christ, and they are “wedded” at this point for eternal life.  It is in this sense, then, that the “Wedding-Guest” finally becomes a guest at a more lasting and significant marriage than the one he has foregone.

The first important word in the poem’s title, “Rime,” is a clear indication to readers that the poem’s happenings take place in the far past, and that the words and the story will feature significant archaisms.   The Guest’s change into a “sadder but wiser man” must be interpreted in the Mediaeval context that Coleridge intended; in a Mediaeval setting, it makes sense to interpret “sadder” as an archaism:  used in the Old English sense, it means “more serious.” (Heritage 1083)  The Guest's character transformation, a result of the Mariner's lesson, is meant to bear the moralistic brunt of the frame story, and these final lines of the concluding stanza drive the last nails in:  it is wise to and love all God's creatures seriously.  Interpreting "sadder" as meaning merely dejected or piteous, as a modern writer would intend, is surely not what Coleridge meant; it makes little sense in lieu of the story the Guest has been told, no matter how the story is explained.

The emphasis in the final passage, then, seems to be on not taking God for granted, but instead taking one's life seriously, and as a part of God's community of Christians.  One troublesome element that is hard to assimilate into this Christian, moralistic conception of the poem is the unmotivated nature of the crime against the Albatross.  One might object that, if Coleridge wanted to use this for a Christian symbol, the Mariner should have been shown killing the bird for spite or evil, not just for indifference or (shall we say) sport.  Coleridge might even have had in mind thoughtless, literal sports of his day such as, perhaps, foxhunting or falconry.  Such an evil act would appear to be more fitting for supernatural retribution.  But I maintain that the cool and careless manner of the killing fits well with the poem's conclusion and beginning; what is changed in both the Mariner and the Wedding-Guest is the tone of indifference to God and his laws that both held when they were merely thoughtless automatons within their society.  Thus, the poem may persuade readers to despise not only active evil, but also passive indifference in one’s activities, for though no real harm may be intended, harm may nevertheless be suffered.  The Mariner’s tale urges readers to foster a sense of accountability for their acts in a particularly graphic way.

 

Summary and Conclusion

        To explain my conception of Coleridge’s approach to the shaping of the material from Cruikshank’s dream and Wordsworth’s suggestions, I wish to make an analogy to Shakespeare’s composition of his history plays.  According to Dr. Francis So, in dramatizing the stories of England's Mediaeval kings, Shakespeare could not change history, nor could he grossly misrepresent it.  What he could do was shape the characters, decide upon the words they would speak, and reorder (in subtle ways) the presentation of the events as he received them from his historical sources, to create a dramatic and artistic work that could express the themes Shakespeare wished to emphasize (So, class discussion).  In a similar way, I propose that Coleridge did not substantially alter what he had received from his friends; all the vital elements were retained.  In this way, his friendly loyalty to Cruikshank and the friendly and professional respect he held for Wordsworth’s contributions may have hampered the effectiveness of Coleridge’s delivery of the moral message, and, some would argue, the delivery of any kind of satisfying conclusion.  But by the inclusion of the frame story and the Wedding-Guest, by the way he had the Mariner comment on his adventures, by the way he treated the crucial killing of the Albatross, Coleridge was able to tinge the dream narrative (which had no intrinsic moral of its own) with an overlaid theme that suited his purposes and thinking at the time.  Inclined in an ecclesiastical direction, and searching for a possible parable, Coleridge looked for any element of the dream that suggested a moral struggle; with the killing of the Albatross, despite its being another intrusive element in the dream, he found one, however slight.  Since the dream's elemental struggle between seemingly evil and holy forces seemed moral but ultimately pointless, Coleridge strove to imply that the weird confrontation constituted a penalty for the somewhat unconvincing crime of killing a seabird.  The opening and closing passages were then brought in to bear the brunt of the commentary on the dream, which allowed Coleridge to solidify the rather flimsy moral superimposition.  Therefore, the “wherefore stopp’st thou me?” of this article’s title is answered succinctly:  to allow the implication of an evangelical sequence of moral teaching that Coleridge wanted to pass, in turn, to his readers.

And, to some extent, history shows that Coleridge succeeded.  Charles Lamb, writing to his friend Wordsworth, supplies some testimony whose evidence seems to concur with this idea.  Evidently, Lamb had indeed received the imagery of the sea-voyage and been fully engaged in its visions, for he says “I was never so affected with any human tale.  After first reading it, I was totally possessed with it for many days. . . .” (416)  Lamb’s real life imitated art:  the Wedding-Guest’s confusion and immersion in the tale was echoed in Lamb’s own life, and then he shared his experience with others.  And history has further shown that the sea-voyage’s tale—which constitutes the lesson that the Mariner must “teach” (line 590)—has spoken to many generations of later readers as well.

It seems to me that Coleridge, having grown in more than poetic maturity in more than thirty years, and having significantly (and also repeatedly) revised his religious thinking, reread his early poem in much the way that I did at first.  That is, the crucifixion images and other religious implications placed early in the poem were perhaps too subtle, so that the closing comments on holy kinship among all of God’s creations seem ill prepared, and not subtle enough.  Since the final words of the Mariner hold a rather concise and isolated closing message (much as Shakespearean exits are often marked by a significant rhymed couplet), the “be kind to animals” entreaty comes across as the primary moral by virtue of its placement.  In short, then, the moralization (largely overlooked by modern readers until the “prayeth best” stanzas) seems rather heavy-handed and clumsily inserted, intruding upon an otherwise thrilling and fantastic story of “the pure imagination” (Beer 211).  I suggest that this fact is what Coleridge regretted in 1830:  not the existence of a moral message, but the treatment he provided for it.  Despite his well-meant efforts, Coleridge did not succeed in changing the dream-leopard’s spots.  The marriage of dream fantasy and moral lesson, in the last analysis, did not really work artistically; the graft was not organically suitable.  Clearly, the poem had seen significant success since its first publication, so that Coleridge would not have wished to discard it, though he could of course recognize that, due to its mixed origins, it could never represent the organic unity that he highly valued (See his notes on the concept in Literaria Biographia, 1808, page 408).  Better, he must have amended, to have eliminated the moral altogether than to have an interposed an intrusive homily, subtle as a brickbat, that tends to distract readers from the more successful elements of his poem.  And, as literary history has ultimately shown, “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” is now remembered mostly for the vivid, nightmarish images that Coleridge described so well—the same elements that made the unadorned, laudanum-inspired images of Kubla Khan so popular as well—and not for the moralizing that Coleridge spoke out against near the end of his life.

 

 

Works Cited

Abrams, M. H., et al, eds.  The Norton Anthology of English Literature. 5th ed. Vol. 2.  New York: Norton, 1986.

The American Heritage Dictionary, Second College Edition.  Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1985.

Beer, John.  Poems: Samuel Taylor Coleridge. (commentary.)  London:  J. M. Dent, 1995.

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor.  Literaria Biographia.  In Abrams, 386-405. 

---.  “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.”  (1817 edition)  In Abrams, 335-352.

---.  “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.”  (1798 edition)  In Beer, 214-254.

Hazlitt, William.  My First Acquaintance With Poets..  In Abrams, 443-446.

The Holy Bible, New International Version (NIV).  Great Britain:  International Bible Society, 1994.

Lamb, Charles.  “A Letter to Wordsworth,”  in Abrams, 415-418.

So, Francis.  “Shakespeare's History Plays.”  Class discussion.  Kaohsiung City,                         Kaohsiung County, Taiwan, R. O. C.: National Sun Yat-sen University, fall         2000.

Wordsworth, William.  The Prelude, Book First  In Abrams, 229-244.