Beowulf (The Poem and Its Tradition) || 11. THE LISTENING AUDIENCE

II. THE LISTENING AUDIENCE

CLEARLY critics need to take into account the audience of Beowulf, given the assumption that the poem was meant to be

performed before some sort of group. Attempts to identify the exact nature of these performances, however, are never likely to be more than guesses in the dark. Did the audience consist of a band of pious thanes, of secularly oriented monks, or some mixture of the two? Did it consist of men only or of both sexes? Of young, of old, or of all ages? Was the poem designed for the education of a prince? Did the per-formance take place continuously or on two or three successive occa-sions? Was it performed indoors or outdoors? By day or by night? On a high feast day or major state occasion, or on just any day?

Each reader of the poem may have a favorite response to these questions, but no response can be proved. Matters are complicated by the possibility that the poem had different audiences at different times, like recent South Slavic epic songs.1

One may be tempted to imagine an audience that resembles, in its essentials, the audience in Heorot that listens to the song of Finn and Hengest. An image could come to mind of an Anglo-Saxon singer chanting or singing in the midst of warriors in bright tunics, each with his seax hung at his side and his weapons close at hand, while a woman silently walks through the great hall filling the cups with beer. From time to time men come and go, but softly, out of respect for the singer who recites the tales of old, fingers hovering over the strings, occa-sionally plucking a chord or run. Perhaps a fire is blazing, while out-side the wind blows from the sea . . .

Colorful though such a picture is, it will not help reconstruct the milieu in which the surviving text of Beowulf was performed. For one thing, the audience in Heorot includes no ecclesiastics, while the courts and monasteries of the later Anglo-Saxon period assuredly did. For another, if our exact text of the poem was performed in such an environment, a learned cleric must have read it from a book, for a sec-

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ular text of this sort is not likely to have been memorized. Alterna-tively, if the poem was recomposed in the act of oral performance, then such a public performance could not have generated the text. Only a singer's private, leisurely dictation before a scribe or a team of scribes could have done so. The poem would thus already have been divorced from its natural function and setting, like most oral poetry collected in our own day.

Instead of advancing my own hypothesis about the probable audi-ence of the poem, I prefer to direct attention to the more fruitful question of the nature of the audience in the poem. In what ways is audience response important in this work? By what rhetorical strate-gies is the audience made to participate? Such an approach renders Beowulf less of an artifact, like a piece of goldwork on display in a mu-seum, and more of a semidramatic song.

Such a phenomenological approach is demanded by the evidence pointing to the poem's relation to the oral verse-making tradition of early Germanic scops. Apart from the thorny question how the poem was composed, an approach focusing on the audience's response can be fruitful if one simply starts from the assumption that the text was pri-marily intended to be declaimed or sung aloud rather than read pri-vately. When readers pick up Beowulf privately today and study it as it was never studied in Anglo-Saxon times, they can perhaps gain some additional insight into it by putting themselves in the place of original listeners, who did not have the text before them but entered an arena in which speaker and audience participated in a game of the imagina-tion.2 To experience the poem in this way is more complicated than either listening to it or reading it. It is to read it as a means of listening to it in the mind's ear, past a gap of many centuries and momentous social changes. While such an approach to the work may seem arbi-trary, it is really far less so than approaching it as if it were meant to be perused in an armchair or read in a university classroom.

I have already discussed how the poem presupposes a narrator who validates the story and establishes it within a framework of belief. The audience is assumed to share certain values to which the narrator al-ludes from time to time as a way to reinforce the exemplary aspect of the tale. The term lof "praise" or "glory," for example, is clearly ex-pected to reverberate with positive connotations rather than with the negative ones that might be appropriate to more sternly devotional literature. By saying that a person will always prosper through



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lofdœdum, "praiseworthy deeds," such as the generous acts performed by Scyld's young son (20-25), the narrator predisposes the listeners to nod their heads in agreement when he later praises Beowulf's actions with the words, "So should a man act when he hopes to gain lasting lof in combat (i534b-36a). When the hero is finally praised for being lofgeornost, "most eager for praise" (3182b), in a summary judgment of his career, it is clear that a high compliment is intended for a man who has directed his life to lofty ends. Even if hypothetical clergymen in the audience were accustomed to regarding the pursuit of lof as an idle occupation when compared with the pursuit of salvation, they might thus be encouraged to suspend their usual strict values and unite with the rest of the audience in admiration of a hero who seeks lof very nearly in the Seafarer's sense; that is, by warring against the enemies of God on earth.3

Besides assuming that his audience has certain values, the narrator assumes that it has a certain, fundamental knowledge. The listeners do not have to be told who Cain and Abel were, and knowledge of the Creation, the Flood, Doomsday, heaven, hell, and salvation is taken for granted. On the other hand there are no direct quotations from Scripture, as there are in such a poem as Elene, which at one point in-cludes three biblical quotations within twenty lines (345-363). The audience needs no more detailed religious knowledge than any layman of the time possessed.

The sophisticated knowledge that the narrator assumes on the part of the audience concerns not scriptural history but Germanic lore. Such kings as Ongentheow, Onela, and Offa are introduced as if, like Cain and Abel, they were known to all. Offa's less famous kinsmen Eomer, Hemming, and Garmund are assumed to be so familiar that the poet need not tell what they did. The story of Scyld's arrival among the Danes as an infant is also introduced allusively, as if the au-dience knew it well. Only modern readers who do not know the story well will wonder whether he arrived surrounded by precious gifts or as a helpless foundling.4 The Beowulf audience knew whether Hengest spent the winter in Finn's land willingly or unwillingly, whereas mod-ern readers are in doubt as to how to reconstruct the story.5 The story of Hama and his apparent theft of the Brosinga mene from the court of Eormenric was known well enough to allow the poet to introduce it through a cryptic allusion, and today we will never know if Hama was thought to have entered a monastery, as he did in late Scandinavian



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tradition.6 Nor will we ever know if Hama's necklace was identi-cal with the goddess Freya's Brisinga men, known to us from "trymskviSa." If so, then perhaps in this instance the poet's cryptic style results from his desire to suppress materials repugnant because of their association with pagan mythology.

Besides this kind of substantive knowledge, the audience is assumed to be familiar with the poetic medium itself. This assumption is so basic that it is easy to overlook. The kennings, though not nearly as recondite as the Chinese boxes of skaldic metaphor, depend for their effect on the audience's familiarity with the idiosyncrasies of the poetic language. The large proportion of the vocabulary that is virtually un-known in prose leads one to posit an audience of connoisseurs. This does not go far toward narrowing one's conception of who constituted the audience, because probably all aristocratic Anglo-Saxons (except possibly those who lived their whole lives in a cloister) heard native po-etry by the time they could walk or run. Still, one can be sure that the audience brought with it the linguistic and cultural knowledge it needed for the words to make sense. With regard to diction as well as the material of Germanic legendry, listeners would have been able to appreciate the nuances of a story that takes for granted a cultivated ear.

if The audience not only brings its own knowledge and beliefs to the poem but sometimes is drawn into the action by the presence of an au-dience within the poem. So regularly does the hero appear accompa-nied by others that a listening audience could identify with almost all his movements by reference to those people around him. Whereas the hero approaches the superhuman, these anonymous Danes or Geats are ordinary souls. To a certain extent their role resembles that of the chorus in a classical tragedy, for they both witness the action and, oc-casionally, comment on it. Often they function as a sort of dramatic audience, for one sees and hears the action as if through their eyes and ears. Their emotional reactions can thus shape ours, and the poet fre-quently exploits this possibility for aesthetic effect.

One critic has identified the dramatic audience in each of the hero's three great fights as a means by which "the poet establishes suspense in spite of anticipatory comment." Even though readers are made to know in advance how the fight will turn out, they are encouraged to identify with the situation of a group of Danes or Geats who serve as



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"functional onlookers" of the narrative event and who are ignorant of its outcome.7 Doubtless the use of such a dramatic audience does en-hance suspense for readers, as has been claimed. In addition, it can serve other, equally important purposes, especially when one regards the poem not as a text to be read at home but as a public event shared by a performer and his audience.

The scene in Heorot shortly after Beowulf has returned in triumph from Grendel's mere provides examples of the importance of such functional onlookers. Hrothgar and the Danes have been drinking as usual. The doors open and their eyes grow large when Beowulf— whom they had not expected to see again—walks in with his band of Geats, several of whom carry Grendel's severed head by the hair. There is an obvious use of the device of the audience within the poem here, but more interesting is what happens when Beowulf tells Hroth-gar of his success and presents him with a second token of victory, the hilt of the giant sword that he found in the monster's hall. For a long moment the Danish king examines the hilt and the ancient runes with which it is inscribed. No one speaks. Although by this stage in the narrative the Danes' propensity for noisy merriment has been well es-tablished, here the narrator pointedly says that "they all fell silent" (1699b). Hrothgar then begins his address before what seems to be a spellbound audience.

The narrator's aside (swigedon ealle) is not exactly a means of creat-ing suspense in this situation. Nothing in the immediate plot hinges on Hrothgar's words, and the very real suspense of the underwater fight is now resolved. Rather, the aside is a means by which listeners are prepared for a speech of great thematic importance. It is a signifier, a signpost, that tells us to prick up our ears. By making an issue of the Danes' falling silent at this moment, the narrator does what he can to encourage the members of his own audience to follow suit. By this means the narrator's audience is put into a situation very much like that of the dramatic audience within the poem, and the two groups begin to merge. Even more, the narrator himself then begins to merge with Hrothgar, for it is through his voice that the fictive Danish king speaks. Hrothgar's wisdom thus leaps past normal distinctions of time and space: it is addressed as much to the listening Anglo-Saxons as to the listening Danes.

Somewhat later in the same speech, as the king turns to address Beowulf directly, the relation of speaker to listener is made yet more



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intimate. It is as if each member of the listening audience were being encouraged to take the king's wisdom personally to heart. "You take heed by this," Hrothgar says. "In the wisdom of my old age, I have spoken these words concerning you!" (i722b-24a). T o any young man in the audience, particularly if he identified himself at all with the hero (as who would not?), the speaker's paternal admonition would seem to be directed precisely at himself. In oral performance, Hroth-gar's homiletic address would have an immediacy that goes beyond its possible effect on most people encountering the written text.

A dramatic audience of a similar kind functions in many different parts of the narrative, not merely in the three scenes of combat. The funeral of Scyld is seen as if through the eyes of his followers, his "own dear companions" (29a). As the king's ship departs over the waves, lis-teners know no more of its destination than do the retainers left griev-ing on the shore. At the end of the poem, the listening audience can again imagine itself standing by the shore of the sea as mute witnesses to the funeral of a glorious king. The last words of the poem represent a collective eulogy in his behalf. The Geats who circle the barrow speak with a single voice in praise of their king, and any listener who so wishes is encouraged to join his voice with theirs in imagination "as is fitting" (3174b).

The collective voice of the dramatic audience is also heard just after the Grendel fight, when people come from all over to look on the monster's trail and trace it to the mere. Again one sees the scene through the eyes of participants in the poem: the bloody tracks, the water mingled with gore, the fair paths leading back through the wastes to Heorot. The men unite in high praise of Beowulf, thus tak-ing the active role of a chorus (850b-86i). They then revert to their usual passive role of dramatic audience as the king's thane strikes up a song of Sigemund. Once again the narrator and the narrator's fictive speaker merge for a while, just as the listening audience may find itself modulating toward the group of listening Danes. After praising Beowulf, the Danes now hear a singer celebrate his praises. In either way, listeners are stirred from their impassivity and encouraged to share the emotional response of actors in the poem.

During the three fights, the device of the dramatic audience not only creates suspense but helps to condition the listeners' emotional response. When the Danes feel "terrible fear" as they hear Grendel howl in Heorot (784a), their reaction magnifies the sense of terror and



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wonder that any imaginative listener might feel at this point in the ac-tion. A similar sense of horror is evoked when the men solemnly ven-ture out along the narrow path that leads to Grendel's mere and come to a halt where /Eschere's head is lying on a cliff. The pool wells with gore. "The men looked on," the poet tersely adds (1422b). No fur-ther description is necessary, for the listeners are encouraged to use their own powers of imagination to visualize the scene just as it would appear to the Danes and Geats on the shore. Later, after Beowulf has descended into the waters and the Danes have given him up for dead, any listener would be able to share in the reversal of emotion that the Geats feel as they see him emerge unharmed. From being "sick at heart" (1603a), they are suddenly rejoicing (1633a), and their reac-tions would be capable of triggering corresponding ones on the part of any listener who participated in the creation of the poem by permitting his or her own feelings to be engaged.

It would be a mistake to conclude that these corresponding emo-tions would necessarily be identical. The device of the dramatic audi-ence can also lend itself toward irony, as happens in Greek tragedy when the chorus is ignorant of the true situation facing the characters.

T o return to the previous example, when the Geats look on the wa-ters of Grendel's mere "sick at heart," there is an important difference between their reaction and what a listener's would be. The listener knows that the blood welling to the surface of the mere is that of Grendel and his mother. The dramatic audience thinks it is Beowulf's. By establishing a distance between the two points of view, the poet is able to put his listeners into a slightly superior and more detached po-sition than that held by any of the actors in the narrative. The listen-ers, but not Beowulf, the Danes, or the Geats, know more or less what the outcome of each fight will be. The listeners, but not the Danes, know that Heorot is vulnerable to destruction and that the marriage between Ingeld and Freawaru is not destined to be blissful. On the sec-ond night in Heorot, the listeners know that one of the Danes or Geats will fall victim to Grendel's mother, but the men themselves sleep in ignorance of her approach. More significant, the listeners know that Grendel is part of the brood of Cain, but the actors in the narrative do not. The listeners know that the Danes' religious devotions are no other than devil-worship, but the Danes know no better. The listeners are told that Beowulf's soul is saved, but his companions have no such knowledge.



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Ultimately, despite all the ways in which it is drawn into active par-ticipation, the listening audience remains somewhat aloof. Its percep-tions are not necessarily the same as those of the dramatic audience, though the two may sometimes coincide. In this way a complex inter-play is established between the audience in the poem—the chorus, as it were—and the audience of the poem, which sometimes sees what the chorus sees and sometimes has superior knowledge. A similar interplay exists between the narrator's voice and the various voices he imper-sonates, several of which (Unferth's, for example) obviously speak in foreign accents and others of which (Hrothgar's in the "sermon," for example) sound very much like his, in that they express traditional wisdom that is not conditioned by boundaries of time and space.

flln this chapter I have called attention to a few of the ways in which the poet "seems to call upon its audience to take an active part in the composition of the narrative," in the words of one critic.8 With Beowulf, as with the Homeric poems, there is some justification for supposing that the act of oral performance would have set up "a kind of common 'field' in which poet, audience, and the characters within the poems are all defined, with some blurring of the boundaries that normally separate the three."9 According to the view presented here, this "blurring of the boundaries" between the actors within the poem and the participants in its live semidramatic enactment is what chiefly creates the excitement of the oral form. Although a portion of this ex-citement can be reconstructed by a reader who approaches the poem as a text, the poem becomes most nearly its true self when readers read through the text to place themselves in the position of a hypothetical Anglo-Saxon listener. They will then fully take part in the poem's game of the imagination, as any listener is meant to do.



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Beowulf (The Poem and Its Tradition) || 11. THE LISTENING AUDIENCE