Shakespeare without tears…

…by Margaret Webster, published first by McGraw-Hill in 1952. Pretty much the same point of view that I take is shared by this author. He is to be found in the verse and there lies his genius.

I had a read of Stanley Well’s chapter ‘The originality of Shakespeare’s sonnets’ in his book ‘Looking for Sex in Shakespeare’. I found that Samuel Butler, who wrote ‘erewhon’ and ‘the way of all flesh’ plus ‘Shakespeare’s Sonnets Reconsidered’ of 1899, managed to memorise the Sonnets within a few months!! Then he daily repeated 25 of them to complete the saturation process.

Helen Vendler also claims to have memorised them all. As does i believe Simon ‘the one who played amadeus on stage but not the film’ Callow. Probably Some Guy from New York has quite a few in memory too. Anyone know anybody else who claims to have memorised them all?