Shakespeare Contra Erasmus: A Reply to Catherine Nicholson

by David P. Gontar (September 2017)

—Theseus

I. Introduction: The Sonnet in the Plays

The distinction between facility and unction is illustrated con brio in Love’s Labour’s Lost, a lively court comedy in which verses by the king and his confreres are crafted to win the affections of the Princess of France and her ladies-in-waiting. To achieve that end each lord fashions a love poem focusing on the tension between romantic ardor and hasty vows of academic asceticism. The sonnets spring naturally from the rich linguistic soil of the court. The stanzas form a hierarchy of quality, beginning with the sonnets of Berowne and the king, descending to the juvenile efforts of Longaville and Dumaine. Rarely if ever included in collections, here is Shakespeare’s sonnet from Love’s Labour’s Lost.

If love make me forsworn, how shall I swear to love?

Ah, never faith could hold, if not to beauty vowed.

Though to myself forsworn, to thee I’ll faithful prove.

Those thoughts to me were oaks, to thee like osiers bowed.

Study his bias leaves and makes his book thine eyes,

Where all those pleasures live that art would comprehend.

If knowledge be the mark, to know thee shall suffice:

Well learnèd is that tongue that well can thee commend,

All ignorant that soul that sees thee without wonder,

Which is to me some praise that I thy parts admire.

Thy eye Jove’s lightning bears, thy voice his dreadful thunder,

Which not to anger bent, is music and sweet fire.

Celestial as thou art, O, pardon, love, this wrong,
That sings heavens praise with such as earthly tongue. (Bate, 332)

Earlier in the same play, we witness the same phenomenon a step lower in the social scale when picaresque Don Adriano de Armado, court parasite and acolyte in the king’s circle, finds himself with a crush on dairymaid Jaquenetta. He exults:

The lush Euphuistic style of the late 16th century is expressly satirized by Shakespeare in this word-worldly comedy. Florid, super-sophisticated or antiquarian verbiage exploited by a number of characters in rounds of courtly one-upmanship (including Rosaline’s sparring with Boyet and Katherine) is diagnosed by Shakespeare as a social malaise. It sows confusion and equivocation, encourages snobbery and resentment and lies at the root of misunderstandings between the sexes. Only at the end of the play, after the damage has been done, does Berowne finally grasp that on account of the insinuative and oblique nature of his speech, Rosaline has lost faith in him, forcing him to recant.

Thus pour the stars down plagues for perjury.

Can any face of brass hold longer out?

Bruise me with scorn, confound me with a flout.

Thrust thy sharp wit quite through my ignorance,

Cut me to pieces with thy keen conceit,

And I will wish thee never more to dance,

Nor never more in Russian habit wait.

O, never will I trust to speeches penned,

Nor to the motion of a schoolboy’s tongue

Nor never come in vizard to my friend,

Nor woo in rhyme, like a blind harper’s song!

Taffeta phrases, silken terms precise,

Three-piled hyperboles, spruce affectation,

Have blown me full of maggot ostentation.

By this white glove—how white the hand, God knows!—

Henceforth my wooing mind shall be expressed

In russet yeas and honest kersey noes.

And, to begin, wench,—so God help me, law!—

My love to thee is sound, sans crack or flaw. (5.2.416-437)

Euphuistic speech is a chain reaction setting off clouds of inflated discourse. It is alliterative and essentially hollow, though its recursions be camouflaged by synonymous constructions. At the center of this whirlwind of words in Love’s Labour’s Lost, like Satan in the bowels of Hell, is Holofernes the pedant. His own poetical ventures, though resting on classical knowledge, exhibit obsessive, childish iteration and a taste for smut.

The preyful princess pierced and pricked a pretty pleasing pricket.

Some say a sore, but not a sore, till now made sore with shooting.

The dogs did yell, put ‘l’ to sore, then sorrel jumps from thicket.

Or pricket sore, or else sorrel, the people fall a-hooting.

If sore be sore, then I, to sore makes fifty sores o’sorrel.

Of one sore I an hundred make by adding but one more “L.” (4.2.45-50)

You find not the apostrophus, and so miss the accent. Let me supervise the canzonet. Here are only numbers ratified, but for the elegancy, facility and golden cadence of poesy, caret [that is, it is lacking]. Ovidius Naso was the man: and why indeed ‘Naso’, but for the smelling out the odiferous flowers of fancy, the jerks of invention? Imitari is nothing: so doth the hound his master, the ape his keeper, the tired horse his rider. (4.3. 95-99)

You must lay lime to angle her desires

By wailful sonnets, whose composèd rhymes

Should be full-fraught with serviceable vows. (3.2.68-70)

When we examine the poems of 1609 under the title of SHAKE-SPEARES SONNETS we see they are entirely consistent with the intimate dyadic posture of the sonnets in the plays. It’s easy to see why the vast majority of readers over the past four centuries have always recognized that the 144 Sonnets are not hornbook exercises designed to inculcate memory and articulation but, rather, the dramatic sonnets are envois directed to some actual historical individual or individuals for purposes of sensitive communication, preservation, nurture, guidance and persuasion. We also have a sense that, on account of the risk that these delicate envois might be intercepted or purloined, the contents of some aspects are conceptually encrypted so as to shield personal affairs. Such is the nature of the Sonnets, and though subjective impressions and styles of reading come and go, no facts have ever been adduced to bring that sturdy realism into serious question. As with the amateurs depicted in Love’s Labour’s Lost, the Voice of the Sonnets fairly seethes with the burdens of social entanglements. Who would fardels bear indeed! That is why the Sonnets have survived and are so assiduously cultivated in the 21st century, while the cooler, more cerebral essays of Montaigne or Erasmus are, beyond the Ivory Tower, almost completely unknown. The sentiments of the Sonnets, whatever their ultimate meaning may be, are palpable, urgent and poignant in their resonant sallies. To imply otherwise argues a kind of tone-deafness, the “malady of not marking.” (King Henry IV, Part Two, 1.2. 86) Human beings have unresolved issues which they seek to address through literature. Though many would challenge this, it is what makes us human. One of the reasons Shakespeare is a hero to so many is that he is someone who has “looked on tempests” and is “never shaken” on account of his love. (116) That means something, whether one eventually pierces the ironic veil in this bitter indictment or not. This is why ordinary readers respond to Shakespeare. Something momentous is there that lifts us up and transfigures what is left of our tattered souls. Planted within, the Sonnet grows. Resonates. To put it bluntly, “Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” is not a weather report. Yes, someday the microchip lodged at the base of each baby’s brain will accomplish a similar feat but at the cost of destroying the very humanity Shakespeare cherishes and nurtures.

As noted at the commencement of this discussion, another complication with the number 14 arises in connection with the first 14 of the Sonnets, popularly termed “procreative.” These patently encourage a handsome but headstrong youth to win immortality by getting a son. Later that goal will be sought by the poet through the eternality of those Sonnets which memorialize the comeliness of that young man. Such amiable conceits have given many the idea that Shakespeare was sexually attracted to this fellow, a somewhat controversial notion having little to recommend it. What sets the fourteen procreation sonnets apart is the fact that they are one and all dedicated to an identical theme, urging the recipient to get a son to perpetuate his alluring lineaments. Of course the willingness to repeat the same refrain over and over has long puzzled scholars. Now in the post-modern era in which “the wiser youngsters of today” (RL Stevenson) have turned away from the biographical narrative of the Sonnets, a straightforward reading of those mysterious poems is replaced by pure subjectivity. The Sonnets currently have no more inherent meaning than the psychologist’s Rorschach (inkblot) test. This confers on us the supreme blessing: the freedom to say whatever we wish without fear of correction.

Enter Catherine Nicholson

As part of his theoretical disquisition on the art of letter-writing . . . Erasmus supplied schoolboy readers with an array of sample letters, including a long epistle urging a youthful male acquaintance to overcome his reluctance to marry and shoulder the privileges and responsibilities of continuing the family line. (Nicholson, 192)

It is not without significance, however, that this “long epistle” is neither made a part of Nicholson’s article nor quoted at length. Yet it is as clear as is the summer’s sun (King Henry V, 1.2.88) that:

In his handling of Erasmus’s epistle on marriage, Shakespeare might simply be said to have combined a number of Erasmus’ classroom exercises . . . into a sustained bravura performance. (Nicholson, 193, emphasis added)

Might simply be said to have? Conspicuously? Which is it? How tenuous grow the tenets of philosophy! An expert on letter writing as renowned as Erasmus would no doubt be able to explain what would possess a man to write to a non-relative to impel him to marry. The letter is actually neither an even-handed treatment of marriage and celibacy nor, a fortiori, is it a pattern for other forms of literature such as sonnets. An authentic presentation would at least have included the advisee’s reply. That’s why our greatest philosopher wrote Dialogues—not monologues. This leads us to ask in what sense Shakespeare might have been influenced under the circumstances. Nicholson’s claim in brief runs this way: Erasmus, in making the case for matrimony, argues that it has the inestimable merit of leading to the next generation. Shakespeare picks up on this theme in focusing on “increase,” but what actually increases is not the human population but the Sonnets themselves.

For the products of 16th-century training, the rhetorical force of the image may well have inhered in its very conventionality, its familiar—indeed generic—power. For as Erasmus suggests about the epistolary form itself, familiarity is the mother of rhetorical inventiveness, and variety is the engine of continuity: the rose that blooms in Sonnet 1 begets the mirror image reflected in Sonnet 3, the perfume distilled in Sonnet 5, the musical notes that sound in Sonnet 8, the seal impressed in Sonnet 11, the counterfeit painted in Sonnet 16, while the argument these figures illustrate remains—like the genealogical succession it is meant to inspire—constant. (Nicholson, 193, emphases added)

Sonnets are pretended letters. But we saw in our inspection of the plays that Shakespeare’s characters, bound like Laocoon in amative complexities, produce actual sonnets—or hope to—and post them to their beloveds. Whence, then Nicholson’s invitation to pure didacticism? As we confront Shakespeare’s procreation Sonnets circa 1609, can we be reasonably certain that, like the model epistle of Erasmus in De Conscribendis Epistolis, they were not actual envois meant for the eyes of flesh and blood persons? Is it indeed “conspicuous” (i.e., fairly self-evident) that the first fourteen Sonnets must be self-replicating mannequins rather than condign remonstrations? After all, it is often lamented that Shakespeare, the world’s flagship writer, left us no letters. Are they not hiding in plain sight?

Adagia that “commonplaces acquire distinction by being ‘passed around’: like ‘a road . . . well polished in use and circulating’, the commonplace proves its singular merit by spreading itself as widely as possible.” (Nicholson, 188, emphasis added)

Commonplace marks . . . secure the value of the play-text by not insisting on its integrity as a complete work, or, to put it more precisely, the value of the whole depends upon the dispersal of its component parts into the hands and mouths of the multitude. (Nicholson, 188)

It is then suggested that William Shakespeare was a fellow traveler with Erasmus along the path of commonplacing as a source of value and merit in Renaissance literature. If it could be shown that Shakespeare sometimes wrote largely for the purpose of manufacturing truisms and quotable quotes this might have some plausibility, but why then did he not publish the Sonnets himself—or so many of his other works? The fact that he is so often quoted—more than any other writer—hardly entails that it was ever his principal wish to be so. To hunt after mere fame may be a desideratum for a puppet like the King of Navarre, not for the genius who created him. (Love’s Labour’s Lost, 1.1.1-7) Nothing could be more alien to Shakespeare than such vulgarity. There is no evidence he was ever a scribe or schoolmaster, or sought to make a penny as a purveyor of primers. The “mouths of the multitude” are always displayed by him with unconcealed revulsion. It will be recalled that what is “common” is a term of reproach in Hamlet. (1.2.73) In fact, it is a reproach in the Sonnets themselves.

Those parts of thee that the world’s eye doth view

Want nothing that the thought of hearts can mend:

All tongues, the voice of souls, give thee that due,

Utt’ring bare truth, even so as foes commend.

Thy outward thus with outward praise is crowned,

But those same tongues that give thee so thine own

In other accents do this praise confound

By seeing farther than the eye hath shown.

They look into the beauty of thy mind,

And that, in guess, they measure by thy deeds.

Then, churl, their thoughts, although their eyes were kind,

To thy fair flower add the rank smell of weeds:

But why thy odour matcheth not thy show,

The soil is this, that thou dost common grow. (69)

“Passed around” evokes nothing more directly than the kissing scene in Troilus and Cressida in which Troilus’s celestial beloved permits herself to be passed about amongst the salacious Greeks for introductory busses like a bottle of beer in boot camp. (Gontar, 107) As for the “road well polished in use and circulating,” that is precisely the denigrating trope by which Doll Tearsheet is ridiculed by Prince Hal and Poins:

PRINCE HENRY

This Doll Tearsheet should be some road.

POINS

I warrant you, as common as the way between St. Albans and London.

(King Henry IV, Part Two, 2.2. 116-117)

The difficulty is candidly granted by Nicholson:

copia, refers both to the original from which further iterations are derived and to the successive versions which are perfectly preserved in one another,” all tending to an “ongoing, repetitive dialogue.” (Nicholson, 194-195) The Sonnets follow their own linguistic dialectic; the “youth” addressed is a mere symbol. What we are left with then is a 21st century version of what FH Bradley famously called an “unearthly ballet of bloodless categories,” a reductio ad absurdum of certain systems of neo-Hegelian philosophy. At this point human beings take a back seat; fecundating abstractions rule the roost.

From fairest [pun on family name] creatures we desire increase [a son]

That thereby beauty’s rose [Elizabeth Tudor, Tudor Rose] might never die,

But as the riper [the aging poet] should by time decease,

His tender heir [grandchild] might bear his memory [take the throne].

But thou, contracted to thine own bright eyes [lascivious]

Feed’st thy light’s flame with self substantial fuel [self-arousal],

Thou that art now the world’s fresh ornament

And only herald to the gaudy spring [pleasing to ladies]

Within thy own bud [hand, penis] buriest thy content [sex, seed]

And, tender churl, mak’st waste in niggarding. [squandering instead of planting]

Pity the world or else this glutton be,

To eat the world’s due by the grave and thee. [onanism is self-destructive].

[I]t must be admitted that reading the Sonnets in this fashion—partially and selectively, with one’s own rhetorical agenda in mind—is the only way to maintain the impression that Shakespeare wholeheartedly embraces the poetics of the commonplace book. For if we read past the opening sonnets to the fair youth, the poet’s faith in the virtues of abundance and accessibility undergoes a series of stressful trials: the incursion of his mistress into His relationship with the fair youth, followed by the competitive advances of the rival poet, precipitates a yearning for a more proprietary model of erotic and literary value. (Nicholson, 196, emphasis added)

III. De Conscribendis Epistolis

As the present undertaking involves a contested matter, we may not be judged uncharitable or ungrateful to observe that to comment extensively on a particular work, claiming that another by a later writer is a restatement of it, without placing before the reader those portions of both works which support that comparative thesis, is at best an inconvenience, and may lead some to conclude that the most vital and essential evidence for the claim has been deliberately left out. In fact, the copiously cited epistle isn’t even included in Nicholson’s “Select Bibliography” and neither is the edition of Shakespeare identified from which quotations are made. (Nicholson, 202-203) To bring forth a scholarly essay to persuade us that the first 14 Sonnets are nothing more than a “re-working” of a section of De Conscribendis Epistolis without a detailed exposition of the latter is to concede failure at the outset, and implies a curious willingness to waste the reader’s time. For all Nicholson’s fervor the epistle of Erasmus is entirely missing from her article. And it goes without saying that this lacuna has a direct bearing on the “conspicuousness” of the view that Shakespeare’s first 14 Sonnets are little more than restatements of that epistle. When we repair to the omitted manuscript we find it to be of such a wholly different character as to be incommensurate with the drama underlying the Sonnets. A plain reading of Erasmus’s epistle is enough to convince anyone it had zero impact on Shakespeare. When that silly copybook lesson is put away we are free to return to the procreative Sonnets to try to discern in the spirit of realism and objectivity the role they played in the succession dilemma in Elizabethan England about which so much has been written.

1. De Conscribendis Epistolis: Availability

Those interested in consulting an English translation of this letter may find it in: Desiderius Erasmus, Literary and Educational Writings, JH Sowards, ed., C. Fontazzi, trans., Vol. 3, University of Toronto Press, 1985, pp. 129-145. The pertinent chapter is titled, “On The Writing of Letters,” and the section is #47: An example of a letter of persuasion.”

What follows are comments on this letter as it pertains to the claim it was adapted by Shakespeare in the Sonnets.

2. Age of Correspondents

The letter of Erasmus is couched in expressions of parity. The writer and the man counseled are coevals (“my beloved kinsman,” 129). Their long friendship “began almost from the cradle.” The recipient has very often advised the sender, who says he always followed those recommendations. In the Sonnets, on the other hand, the avuncular poet is substantially older than his comrade. (See, e.g., 37, 71, 74) There is no evidence this young man ever presumed to advise Shakespeare and his voice is never heard. But we do hear the retort of the address in Erasmus’s epistle.

3. Relation of Personages to One Another

Erasmus’s parties are friends. There is no sign of emotionality, stress, intensity of feeling or concern that would imply a relationship more effectively grounded in consanguineous bonds or close dealings. In the Sonnets the poet is obviously involved with his interlocutor in an intimate bond of shared experiences and feelings. All manner of tropes are used to convey a connection of extraordinary profundity, intensity and impact. What happens to the advisee affects the poet directly. It matters to him personally and his own interests are at stake.

4. Marriage v. Reproduction

Lo, in the orient, when the gracious light

Lifts up his burning head, each under eye

Doth homage to his new-appearing sight,

Serving with looks his sacred majesty.

And having climbed the steep-up heavenly hill,

Resembling strong youth in his middle age,

Yet mortal looks adore his beauty still,

Attending on his golden pilgrimage,

But when from highmost pitch, with weary car,

Like feeble age he reeleth from the day,

The eyes, fore duteous, now converted are

From his low tract and look another way:

So thou, thyself outgoing in thy noon,

Unlooked on diest unless thou get a son. (7)

rhetoric for grammar school students learning to write</em>; the content is merely adventitious. As such, it could never enjoy the status of Sacred Doctrine. It could not be stamped nihil obstat and given the imprimatur of the Church because, as a rhetorical exercise, it lacks doctrinal intent.

In this exclusively rhetorical context, Erasmus accuses those who avoid marriage and family as traitors to the human race.

It is clear that one who is not affected by the love of

is an enemy of nature, a rebel against God who brings

destruction upon himself by his own folly. For a man who

plots the destruction of his race is crueler than one who

plots his own destruction. (135, emphasis added)

But it can hardly be overlooked that Desiderius Erasmus was by inclination, training and practice for years a Roman Catholic priest, a willing, contented celibate who never married, and who was perfectly capable of setting forth powerful refutations of each and every thesis of the epistle. None of the arguments is to be taken seriously. For example, Erasmus claims that every species feels and submits to the reproductive imperative, but when he writes, “The instinct to protect their young drives donkeys through fires that stand in their way,” (135) we can almost hear him laughing up his sleeve. Evidently Homo sapiens has much to learn from Equus africanus asinus. Do donkeys trot off to assignations and honeymoons or thrash out custody claims in Los Angeles Domestic Courts?

When we turn to Shakespeare we are fairly overwhelmed with more imposing conceits that cry for recognition.

For shame deny that thou bear’st love to any,

Who for thy self art so unprovident.

Grant, if thou wilt, thou art beloved of many,

But that thou none lov’st is most evident:

For thou art so possessed with murd’rous hate

That against thyself thou stikst not to conspire,

Seeking that beauteous roof to ruinate

Which to repair should be thy chief desire.

O, change thy thought, that I might change my mind.

Shall hate be fairer lodged than gentle love?

Be as thy presence is, gracious and kind,

Or to thyself at least kind-hearted prove.

Make thee another self, for love of me,

That beauty still may live in thine and thee. (10)

We may summarize the two writings:

In the Erasmus letter we have:

“marriage”

“wedlock”

rejection of celibacy

wives justified as supportive companions

the legitimacy of sexual gratification

partnering

“children” and “offspring”

the family “line”

mock forensic oratory

prose

In the procreative Sonnets we have:

BREED6, 12

BEAUTY 3, 5, 6, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14

SON 7, 13

SELF 1, 3, 4, 10, 13

POETRY

Here is the step on which Professor Nicholson “must fall down or else o’erleap, for in [her] way it lies.” (Macbeth, 1.4.53-55) No “reworking” of the pedestrian epistle could ever yield the passion of Shakespeare. The Sonnets are not well construed as old wine in new bottles.

5. Discursive Reasoning v. Tropes of Passion

Sonnets were occasioned by shared calamities and tensions arising in the course of life, and could never have emanated from the tepid stirrings of dogmatic theology. Poetry and drama are the products of inner conflict, something unregistered in the psyche of Desiderius Erasmus. Listen to him and judge whether he might have set Shakespeare on his career as SONneteer.

First of all, if you are moved by considerations of honour,

which should be a matter of primary importance among

men of upright life, what is more honourable than marriage,

which was honoured by Christ himself, who not only thought

fit to be present at a wedding together with his mother,

but also sanctified the wedding feast with the first fruits

of his miracles? (130)

This is Sunday morning homiletics, not epochal art. Who might read such sermonizing and then sit down to write this?

O, that you were yourself! But, love, you are

No longer yours than you yourself here live.

Against this coming end you should prepare

And your sweet semblance to some other give.

So should that beauty which you hold in lease

Find no determination: then you were

Yourself again, after yourself’s decease,

When your sweet issue your sweet form should bear.

Who lets so fair a house fall to decay,

Which husbandry in honour might uphold

Against the stormy gusts of winter’s day

And barren rage of death’s eternal cold?

O, none but unthrifts! Dear my love, you know

You had a father: let your son say so. (13)

Take the reference to “so fair a house.” What might that signify, if not the House of Tudor? After all, the Sonnets are not about residential home repair in early modern England. The House of Tudor was an English dynasty that produced five monarchs: King Henry VII (1485-1509), King Henry VIII (1509-1547), King Edward VI (1547-1553, Queen Mary I (1553-1558), and Queen Elizabeth I (1558-1603). Henry VIII had made it a top priority to ensure male succession, and several of his wives paid a high price for his ruthless determination. The refusal of Protestant Elizabeth to marry or bear legitimate children created a dire prospect for her Realm, which risked falling into the maw of Catholic Europe, and in fact the next sovereign was James Stuart, a Scot whose mother had been a Catholic. A concerted effort was therefore made to place Elizabeth’s issue on the throne, and when that did not happen, there was widespread but discreet interest in a royal male grandchild as potential monarch. That underground movement was blocked by the machinations of Robert Cecil and his faction. It was during this emerging debacle that “SHAKE-SPEARES SONNETS” were produced. Only a few are today willing to put two and two together. Hence the mystery continues out of willful ignorance and bad faith.

The procreative Sonnets should be explored in that context which would permit a more rational reading and lead scholars back from their daydreams and nightmares. For the language of the Sonnets is, again, the idealized language of the court, and arguably a courtier so writ. If we neglect the historical context we inevitably place ourselves at the mercy of subjective impressions, which include the daffy notion that Shakespeare’s procreation Sonnets are derived from Erasmus (a pedant).

The difference between the epistle of De Conscribendis Epistolis and the Sonnets is not one of degree but of kind. No matter how one might tinker with the former there could only be an asymptotic approach to the singularity of Shakespeare. Sows’ ears rarely morph into silk purses, and it is tempting to suggest in this setting that those who find otherwise may be wearing those porcine ears. Shakespeare’s Sonnets are not blank tablets on which we may scribble whatever we fancy. It is worth bearing in mind that truth and novelty are odd bedfellows, varying in inverse proportion to one another. Last week’s big discoveries are nearly always restatements of what is already known or just plain foolishness. Unfortunately, post-structural studies and cultural materialism have opened the floodgates of subjectivity so that one person’s judgment can never be preferred as more satisfactory than its rivals. The resentment felt towards Shakespeare drives a thousand academic projects all designed to reduce his art by likening it to unworthy sources. Thus we find Shakespeare learning his trade from Montaigne, Erasmus and other thinkers whose works rarely escape the library. Meanwhile motion pictures based on Shakespeare gush forth every year.

WORKS CITED

J. Bate, E. Rasmussen, eds., William Shakespeare Complete Works, The Royal Shakespeare Company, 2008. All primary source references to this edition.

D. Erasmus, “On the Writing of Letters,” De Conscribendis Epistolis, in Literary and Educational Writings, Vol. 3, JK Sowards, ed., C. Fontazzi, trans., University of Toronto Press, 1985.

—Collected Works, University of Toronto Press, 1999.

D. Gontar, Hamlet Made Simple and Other Essays, New English Review, 2013.

C. Nicholson,” Commonplace Shakespeare: Value, Vulgarity and the Poetics of Increase in Shake-Speares Sonnets and Troilus and Cressida,” in The Oxford Handbook of Shakespeare’s Poetry, Oxford University Press, 2013.

WK Wimsatt, The Verbal Icon: Studies in the Meaning of Poetry. University Press of Kentucky, 1954.

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Unreading Shakespeare. He is also the author of Hamlet Made Simple and Other Essays, New English Review Press, 2013.

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