The Stranger in Shakespeare [antikvár]

Preface To have written this book at last means to have kept at last a promise made to myself some twenty-five years ago, a promise long deferred and nearly despaired of. In one of the first lectures I ever gave before an audience of my academic peers, 'Shakespeare and the Paradox of Illusion', I listed what seemed to me in 1948 his 'four essential myths', then went on to say that 'I hope some day to treat all four in some detail When this talk was reprinted in i960, however, I felt obliged to confess in a footnote, 'I no longer believe I shall really come to terms at great length with Shakespeare, but I leave the hope of 1948 in the text to remind myself of what seemed possible twelve years ago.' Yet, twelve more years having passed, here is that impossible book. And though not exactly the one I dreamed earlier, it ends with the same paragraph as my original lecture - only a little changed to suit its new context. It is primarily for myself, then, that I have written this book; to bind my past to my present and to refresh my soul by immersing myself for a little while in a stream of living words and images. I have grown desiccated on the long march through the arid flatlands of ordinary language: the language of law courts and committee meetings, of newspapers and demonstrations. And towards what Sinai I thought I was advancing I find it difficult to remember. Perhaps it was always Shakespeare, though I did not know it. Nonetheless, I consider this study not an act of self-indulgence but rather one of ascesh, since anyone confronting Shakespeare begins with chutzpah and joy but ends in humility and terror. Moreover, he must also come to terms with the body of Shakespearean criticism, at least walk penitentially past library shelves full of unreadable books on the most readable of poets. And taking down the handful that survive for him, he finds little