SOURCE: Stevenson, John W. “The Martyr as Innocent: Housman's Lonely Lad.” South Atlantic Quarterly 57, no. 1 (winter 1958): 69-85.

In the following essay, Stevenson discusses the function and meaning of the main character, as well as the narrative point of view, in A Shropshire Lad. He concludes that the Shropshire lad symbolizes the loss of innocence and man's search for identity.

It is strange that no one has thought to define the nature and attitude of Housman's characters: his soldiers, his lovers, his rustics. Such people as Ned and Dick turn out to be merely names of the only character of the poems, the Shropshire lad. Unlike names that are usually associated with a particular novel or poem or drama, there is revealed on the surface only an anonymous person in the ubiquitous lad of the western hills, an anonymity, on closer examination, discovered to be very real. He is...