Critical Analysis: The Highwayman

 The story of 'The Highwayman' is highly dramatic. The predominant tones in this poem are of adventure and suspense. The poem was written by Alfred Noyes. It was set in 18th century rural England.  ‘The Highwayman’ is old-fashioned in a number of ways, considering it was written in the twentieth century. It goes back to older themes – such as the world of highwaymen, robberies, and revenge.

The poem was written on the edge of a desolate stretch of land in West Surrey known as Bagshot Heath. The world that Noyes creates through this poem is a world where laws do not seem to have much of a place.

The poem, tells the story of an unnamed highwayman who is in love with Bess, a landlord's daughter. Betrayed to the authorities by Tim, a jealous ostler, the highwayman escapes ambush when Bess sacrifices her life to warn him. Learning of her death, he dies in a futile attempt at revenge, shot down on the highway. The ghosts of the lovers meet again on winter nights.

The poem makes effective use of vivid imagery for the background and of repetitious phrases to create the sense of a horseman riding at ease through the rural darkness to a lovers' tryst or of soldiers marching down the same road to ambush him. Each stanza of this poem follows the same simple rhyme scheme – AABCCB. 

Noyes seems to be saying that an act of sacrifice for the sake of love is a good thing. Even though the highwayman is eventually killed, Bess’s suicide did in fact save him from the patrolmen the night he returned. It is only on the next day that the highwayman dies and then only through his own unthinking ways.

This poem strives to show that true love never dies. This is not the kind of love that can invoke jealousy, as it did in Tim. Jealousy, for Noyes, is a bad emotion, for it can result in such disasters as he describes. However, the kind of love that can lead one to sacrifice oneself for the sake of their beloved is precious and never forgotten, no matter what the final outcome is.