Witty Scholarship
Dick, Bernard F.
Witty Scholarship Shakespeare's Lives, by S. Schoen- baum. Oxford University Press. 838 pp. $12.50. Reviewed by Bernard F. Dick When a massive study of Shake- speare begins, "He died in...
...Was Hamlet's alleged Oedipus complex connected with the death of Shakespeare's son, Hamnet...
...A homosexual...
...Professor Schoenbaum would probably concur, but like Pope he feels that wit is a better weapon against me- diocre critics than invective...
...Most students know some- thing about the authorship question, but the story of Delia Bacon's attempt to convince the world of her outra- geous theory that Francis Bacon au- thored Shakespeare's plays has never been told so engagingly...
...Is the Dark Lady proof that black was beautiful even in the Age of Elizabeth...
...Like Gilbert Highet's The Classical Tradition and C. S. Lewis' The Allegory of Love, it can be read by both the layman and the spe- cialist, for the subject is one that will even fascinate the most militant anti- Shakespearean who had to memorize Antony's funeral oration for his mar- tinet English teacher...
...An ale-addict...
...A pa- pist...
...Why did John Benson change some of the pronouns in the sonnets to W. H. from "he" to "she...
...It is clear that Schoenbaum shares Dry- den's view...
...While these questions sound more like a blurb for a Helen Maclnnes novel than for a scholarly work, they have been pondered by critics over the past four centuries in their often misguided attempt to apply the science of exegesis to the genre of the detec- tive story...
...Did Shakespeare really have "small Latin and less Greek...
...No one will ever be able to flesh out the enigma, but somehow, thanks to Shakespeare's Lives, the eyes of the frequently reproduced Janssen portrait (The Bard as Burgher, sleek and smugly affluent) stare less vacant- ly than they did before...
...Reviewed by Bernard F. Dick When a massive study of Shake- speare begins, "He died in rainy April," one knows intuitively that it will not be the usual tome where pedantry masquerades as erudition...
...If one had to single out the best writing in a work of such uniform excellence, it would be the chapter on Delia Bacon...
...Shakespeare's Lives (an exact but modest title) by S. Schoenbaum is un- questionably the finest piece of schol- arship that has come out of Academe in many years...
...Shakespeare's Lives is almost Pope- an in its presentation of "what oft was thought, but ne'er so well ex- pressed...
...Witty Scholarship Shakespeare's Lives, by S. Schoen- baum...
...A deer-poacher...
...Schoenbaum tells Delia's story as if it were a Vic- torian melodrama—her slouching to- ward Stratford, her meeting with Car- lyle, her great expectations, and her inglorious end...
...A good deal of what men of letters have written through the years will reinforce one's conviction that the history of Shakespearean criticism is the best reason for the reinstatement of corporal punishment in academic cir- cles...
...Lame...
...In An Essay of Dramatic Poesy, Dryden claimed that while he admired Ben Jonson, he loved Shakespeare...
...Was Shakespeare fat...
...Was King Lear conceived on a stormy night...
Vol. 35 • August 1971 • No. 10
