Persona, Elegy, and Desire

The paper explores a theory of persona expounded by John Clendon in 1710. We see that the theory depicts an eighteenth-century understanding that people had multiple and discontinuous personae, some of which may be public and others private. The same idea is noted in the elegy as William Shenstone theorizes it. As an example, the paper concludes with a reading of William Mason's and Thomas Gray's elegaic poetry, suggesting that Robert Lloyd and George Colman's satires demonstrate that one of Mason's and Gray's personae shows same-sex desire for each other.