John Keats coined the term negative capability in his letter to his two brothers named George and Thomas in the year 1817 , 22nd December. He used this term in assessing the works of William Shakespeare which he believed he possess it enormously. By negative capability, Keats defined it as ” I mean Negative Capability, that is, when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason”. It means to suggest that negative capability is actually the ability of a person to remain in a state of doubt or uncertainty without coming to a conclusion or reaching any logical facts or solution to the doubts or mysteries.
As far as Shakespeare’s dramas are concerned, he possess it in his plays and it can be seen in most of his tragedies including Hamlet , King Lear and others. Hamlet is a character in the play Hamlet who possess negative capability and it is reflected in his soliloquies. In his soliloquies, Hamlet was in a state of confusion and doubt whether he should kill Claudius or not and remain in that moment of uncertainty without coming to any particular conclusion or facts. In the play like King Lear , Lear also possess negative capability where he also endures all the uncertain questions and reasons pertaining to his banishment from his own kingdom and the grief he endures after realizing his own two daughters pretended to love him without coming to a particular solution and remains in a complete state of dilemma. This makes Keats to characterize Shakespearean work of art having the traits of negative capability.
However, negative capability can also be seen in the Keats Ballad La Belle Dame Sans Merci where negative capability as Keats talks about in his interpretation of Shakespearean work is weaved beautifully. The knight in the ballad is in a state of utter confusion and mystery and when he recalls back what exactly happened to him, he was unable to full expose the entire story while remaining in the absolute mystery and doubt without attaining any fact or reason or simply a logical conclusion to what really happened to him after his meeting with the mystery woman he encountered in the depth of the forest. This is the negative capability that Keats used in his ballad.
However, there is another interpretation of negative capability. Many literary terms also highlight that negative capability has to do with the idea of “objectivity”. The idea of “objectivity” means in connection with negative capability is the removal of poet’s personal self and objectifying oneself into a particular object to portray it objectively. Keats Odes uses such interpretation and one cannot fully use the above interpretation while explaining some of his odes. The idea of objectivity which is the another interpretation for negative capability is seen in Ode on a Grecian Urn , Ode to Nightingale and other odes. The first stanza itself in Ode on a Grecian Urn shows the use of negative capability when the poet compares the Urn to a story telling quality of his own self or “Sylvan historian”. A historian as typically narrates stories from the past and when the poet compares the urn to a historian , the poet is actually objectifying the quality of story telling of his own self into the urn where his own self gets removed from the poem automatically making the poem portray objectively. This is negative capability.
