 |
 |
Really I shouldn't have said that, not because it isn't true, for it is in its way, but because I live in a tall house in West Yorkshire and have no business sending brickbats (what exactly is a brickbat?) across the Atlantic Ocean into a thought-climate of which I am increasingly ignorant. I feel your Shakespeare authorship campaign, Kent, is very much an American affair. Its tone reveals it as an American protest against so much "convention", "authority", "tradition", outdatedness etc. (you haven't used all those words) -- all the things that British poetry has constantly been accused of from over there, and still is. The idea of being behind. I find that over here we live, poetically, very happily with behindness and all those other things in one way or another. American advancedness has caused more poetical messes than I can count, such as the desperate failures which are The Cantos and Maximus. "insulted" figuratively, as demeaned, brought discussion of down to point-making concerning checkable facts which never get checked. In this "debate" for every six points on side there are half a dozen counter-points on the other side. This is far too much like the way the media report politics. It is best not to get involved in it, for it will never resolve itself. Shakes IS so special that I too would like to know who he "really" was, but I never shall. I accept the tradition. And that's because the works are all we have, and for me that is plenty. It's not even true that the Sonnets show him to have been bisexual. We are stuck with poetry. Peter On 19 Oct 2016, at 00:42, Kent Johnson wrote: Peter, But "Shakespeare" is for me the greatest writer in our language. I'm not sure what you mean by your claim I have insulted... What have I said about the work that would insult? >>> Peter Riley <[log in to unmask]> 10/18/16 6:24 PM >>> On 18 Oct 2016, at 23:22, Kent Johnson wrote: I meant to say regarding Robin's comparison of me with Trump: Now I have been insulted twice without insulting anyone. pardon, and with respect and appropriate humility before your many worthy efforts, you have insulted Shakespeare by reducing him to a game of Cluedo. P