“Love is my religion I could die for that”: the bicentenary of the death of English poet John Keats (1795–1821)
On February 21, 1821, the 25-year-old English poet John Keats died of tuberculosis in Rome. To mark the bicentenary, the British School at Rome streamed a production of Pelé Cox’s 2014 play
Lift Me Up, I Am Dying about the poet’s last weeks, as he was tended to by the artist Joseph Severn.
Posthumous portrait of John Keats by William Hilton. National Portrait Gallery, London
The play was first produced at Rome’s Keats-Shelley museum, located in the house near the Spanish Steps where Keats died. When a proposed anniversary performance was cancelled because of the pandemic, Cox redrafted it as a short film. The actors filmed themselves in lockdown, with Cox, Art Director Fabio Barry and Assistant Director/Editor Thomas Painter editing the footage together for streaming at the time of the anniversary.