Disinterred by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
"Disinterred" by Ella Wheeler Wilcox is a satirical poem written in response to the Baconian authorship controversy — the claim, fashionable among certain Victorian sensation-seekers, that Francis Bacon, not William Shakespeare, wrote the plays attributed to the Bard. The poem opens with Wilcox's sardonic ventriloquism of the sensation-hungry public, personified as a collective voice demanding that Shakespeare's grave be metaphorically disturbed. This crowd has grown bored with older scandals — the Byron affair, the debunking of Edgar Allan Poe's authorship of his own work — and hungers for fresh controversy. Shakespeare, resting "too well, and sound," must be dragged out for public consumption. Wilcox escalates the satire by imagining a parade of further desecrations: the crowd will not stop at Shakespeare. She mocks the logical endpoint of such sensationalism by suggesting that someone might next "prove" that Thomas Moore did not write *Lalla Rookh*, or that some obscure "Blifkins" ghostwrote Moore's verse — reductio ad absurdum deployed as a rhetorical weapon. The names Jones, Smith, and Blifkins serve as deliberately banal placeholders, highlighting the absurdity of the enterprise. The poem's central argument is that sensation-mongering critics and journalists are essentially grave robbers — they "disinter" the dead not to honor or understand them, but to provide morbid entertainment to a gaping, intellectually passive public. Wilcox's tone is one of contemptuous amusement; she does not treat the Baconian theorists as serious intellectual opponents, but as performers serving a debased audience. The title "Disinterred" operates on multiple levels simultaneously. Literally, it refers to the exhumation of a body; figuratively, it describes the act of dragging a poet's reputation and legacy out of its deserved rest for spectacle. Wilcox implies that the great poets — Shakespeare, Byron, Keats, Shelley — earned their peace, and that those who disturb it are engaged in something close to desecration. Structurally, the poem uses a brisk, ballad-adjacent stanza form with a consistent rhyme scheme that reinforces its satirical energy. The regularity of the meter enacts a kind of mechanical inevitability, as if the scandal-machine will always produce another victim. The irony is sustained throughout without tipping into earnest indignation — Wilcox remains in sardonic control, addressing the sensation-mongers with mock-cooperative encouragement ("Sensation, keep your servants out; / Let them be watchful, and alert!"), which makes the critique sharper than outright denunciation would. The poem ultimately defends literary reputation as something that belongs to posterity and to the integrity of cultural memory, not to the appetites of a sensation-hungry press or public. Wilcox positions herself as a clear-eyed observer, amused and disgusted in equal measure, watching the crowd demand that the dead be made to perform one more time.
By Ella Wheeler Wilcox · First published 1873 · Genre: Satire, Poetry, Literary Criticism · 355 words
First lines
[Written after the attempt of Sensation Lovers to prove that / Shakespeare's plays were written by Lord Bacon.]
Lo! here's another corpse exhumed! / Another Poet disinterred! / Sensation cried, "Dig up the grave, / And let the dust be hoed and stirred; / And bring the bones of Shakespeare out! / 'Twill edify the throng, no doubt.
Genres
- Satire — The poem is a scathing satirical critique of sensationalism in literary criticism and the public's obsession with exhuming and discrediting famous poets' legacies for entertainment and scandal.
- Poetry — Structured as formal verse with consistent rhyme scheme and metrical patterning, employing traditional poetic devices and lyrical form.
- Literary Criticism — Directly engages with authorship debates and the legitimacy of critical claims made about canonical poets, particularly addressing the Bacon-Shakespeare controversy.
- Dramatic Monologue — Structured as direct apostrophe to 'Sensation' itself, with the speaker addressing a personified force as both accuser and predictor of future literary outrages.
Tags
poetry · American literature · early twentieth century · lyric verse · spirituality · love · loss · death · memory · nature · faith · grief
What this Textopian page supports
Disinterred is listed on Textopian as a poem by Ella Wheeler Wilcox, dated 1873 CE.
This source record anchors work identity, reading entry points, and catalog context for checking claims about the work.
- Work type: Poem
- Author: Ella Wheeler Wilcox
- Date: 1873 CE
- Language: English
- Genres: Satire, Poetry, Literary Criticism, Dramatic Monologue, Social Commentary
- Length: 355 words
- Structure: 1 section, 6 paragraphs
- Reading fit: Very Easy (5th Grade or below)
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