also indicates the novelist’s intention of creating a tragedy, given the closeness already mentioned between the historical facts and situation and those presented here. In real life the three men endured a gaol sentence and Saunders Lewis lost his university career, but Shakespearean tragedy in particular and theories of tragedy in general suggest the death of the protagonist.
Humphreys is perhaps suggesting that martyr deaths transform historical accounts and create myths; that the Penyberth fire produced its (relatively short-term) heroes, but this fictional account in having a sacrificial victim might have had a different (ultimate) outcome.24 The immediate consequences, however, are very similar. Ironically, the basic myth here is strongly evident of the influence of a patriarchal society. G. R. Manton attributes to patriarchy the numerous myths which concern the clashes between father and son, characteristic of a society ‘where the son succeeds to the position of the father’.25 This description of patriarchal society is more typical of England than of Wales, which is of concern here.26 Manton points out that Freud would argue many of the father–son conflicts are psychological ones (for example, the sexual interpretation of the Oedipus myth) but that in some the sexual element is ‘absent or barely noticeable’, as it is here. The question becomes, then, whether Humphreys is omitting to distinguish between English and Welsh patterns of social behaviour (the importance of primogeniture, for example) or whether, in fact, these have merged and there is no reason to distinguish between them; or whether he is deliberately suggesting that the evil element in Owen’s character stems from his schooling in English society, as opposed to his Welsh parentage.
Humphreys’s first published novel, then, shows strong evidence of a variety of kinds of deliberate patterning in its plot and structure, which were not used in the rejected first version of A Toy Epic.27 Perhaps in consequence, the plot of The Little Kingdom is strong, dramatic and structured. The basic outline and many details are taken from the historical event. This not only adds structure, it adds political, Welsh and contemporary historical significance to the fiction, and producing a heightened awareness of this, to Humphreys, key episode in Welsh history would have been a welcome outcome. The uses of Celtic myth contribute to the Welsh identity of the novel and also to the sense of recurring archetypes, which is achieved by the numerous Shakespearean allusions. However, it is impossible to argue that the author was using myth as a strategy of appropriation given that Greek myth and Shakespearean allusions are more in evidence. It is unclear whether the author intended to increase the stature of his work or undermine his protagonist by the connections he makes between Owen and various tragic heroes. What is very clear is that this work indicates the author’s interest in drama and his skill at dramatic characterization, at ‘scenes’, which later in his career will both dominate the narrative technique of novels such as Outside the House of Baal and lead to an alternative career as a dramatist. Humphreys has found a way of writing successful fiction but there are drawbacks. Only in the Penyberth fire could he perhaps find a situation which could justify the high sense of tragedy his allusions inject into the text. And only in the contemporary situation of the writing of the novel in the aftermath of a world war would this intensely emotional approach seem justified by the heightened drama surrounding political leaders, such as Hitler and Mussolini, and the evil attributed to them.
This first novel is using an incident which was overpoweringly important to the author and using a place about which he knew, rather than being a novel which sets out to explore the Welsh condition. In his second novel, The Voice of a Stranger (1949), Humphreys again chose to use his own experience, this time of Italy’s confusion in the aftermath of war, in the setting of his novel and also in many of the plot details, particularly those concerning the three war workers. The use of three individuals here rather than one may even have stemmed from his use of three voices in the original A Toy Epic, characters who can all be seen as facets of the author as well as individuals. For the central action of the novel, however, Humphreys uses a Shakespearean plot. This work benefits from there being fewer allusions to Shakespearean tragedy than in The Little Kingdom, but the situation of the protagonists, Guido and Marcella, is clearly based on Romeo and Juliet, which works as before to give tragic stature to the work and to prefigure the plot, giving a sense of destiny to the outcome.
The situation observed by Humphreys in Italy immediately after the war, particularly the conflict between surviving partisans and fascists, clearly suggested to him the feuding Capulets and Montagues. Given the familiarity to most readers of the Romeo and Juliet story, this patterning device achieves the same effect as the chorus which opens that play and the sense of fate which permeates it. Again it would seem the author was intent on making his fiction tragedy. Indeed, in his diary mentioned above Humphreys wrote that ‘it needs an Elizabethan to do justice to Europe to-day, another Webster’,28 presumably referring to the corruption and Machiavellian manipulation he found existing in the administration of the camps, but suggesting too why he felt the situation needed the tragic approach. There are numerous ways in which Guido and Marcella echo Romeo and Juliet: the way they fall in love, the opposition to their marriage, Marcella’s fond father and cold mother, Guido’s friend Riccardo, who combines the Mercutio and Tybalt roles, the mix up of messages, Sorella Crispi as nurse and Morrell as Friar, causing plot complications which result in the tragic death of Marcella. Humphreys adds to the sense of repeated patterns by authorial comment: ‘he [Guido] had an uneasy vision of all the past as a long plain of existence along which an unnamed power had guided them towards each other, and already they had both spoken of the draught of destiny they had felt in the instant of their meeting’.29 On the other hand, Marcella emphasizes their uniqueness: ‘we are come together as only lovers come together, and from our first contact we are the warp and woof of a new pattern weaving’,30 showing how the author is balancing in his text his concept of history not repeating itself against the Welsh condition that does.31
The sexual triangle in this novel is closer to that in Othello than in the myth of Blodeuwedd. Marcella has the innocence of Desdemona, whilst Riccardo combines the role of Iago and Cassio, increasing for the reader both the evilness of Riccardo and the sense of the inescapable conclusion. Marcella’s death, when she is depicted as a sacrificial victim in white, echoes Desdemona’s and simultaneously Guido begins a kind of anagnorisis in his comprehension of his own decreasing morality:
He was an idiot wandering through life with indelible bloodstains disfiguring his hands – a killer dwelling among killers, a crude inaccurate instrument of destruction. The contempt he felt for himself made him press his hands against his face, ready to dig in his nails and gouge out his own eyes.32
This passage is typical of Humphreys’s method of multiple allusion, emphasizing his character’s archetypal qualities. However, it could equally be argued that the text is overloaded, and made significant to an extent not justified by the actual situation.
Humphreys uses many references to classical myth, their numerousness being possibly due to the Italian setting, but they tend to be a momentary connection rather than revealing underlying patterns, as when Williams’s wife is named Helen.33 Fairy-tale references are used similarly, particularly the symbol of the rose, which so often indicates female sexuality or repressed sexuality between father and daughter.34 On occasion, however, myth is used to suggest the basic human dilemma in which a character can be trapped, making the character representational rather than individual. So Marcella’s dream indicates the way in which the female is destined to be a victim; either raped Leda or seductive Eve, she is always to be seen in relation to the male.35 Humphreys also plays with myth, reversing it, as in the use of Daphne when Marcella wants Guido to chase her,36 and using it mock-heroically.37 This novel, in fact, seems to be working as an exploration of different uses of myth simultaneously, or even indiscriminately, as though any myth use is going to enlarge and reinforce the stature of the novel. The Bible is brought in to make reference to archetypal relationships and types of behaviour. For example, David and Jonathan are used to explain the relationship between Guido and Riccardo, ‘bound by bonds of experience more lasting, more mystical than marriage’,38 whilst there are several references
