Word: shakespeareans
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Died. Hesketh Pearson, 77, British biographer, frustrated Shakespearean actor, whose gossipy, tarts-and-all style of literary portraiture produced 18 skin-deep but readable studies of improper Victorians Charles Dickens (one illegitimate child) and Oscar Wilde (two legitimate ones), other figures from Britain's King Charles II ("most civilized of monarchs") to that self-styled rebel against "the tyranny of sex," George Bernard Shaw; of jaundice; in London...
Besides its philosophical protagonist, the work draws on a Goethean, even Shakespearean gamut of characters--from a university professor to the almost bestial beings that infest Central Park. And Miller's language rises at times to impressive prose poetry: "The wish to kill is never killed, but with some gift of courage one may look into its face when it appears and with a stroke of love--as to an idiot in the house--forgive...
...book would offer new material (there has been none discovered since 1931), but that it would somehow be intriguing and different. Alas, Rowse is no further along than his second chapter before it becomes clear that he is going to bog down in much of the traditional blather of Shakespearean biography...
...presented by Rowse, the sonnets do seem delightfully clear. They read, in fact, almost like a novel. But is Rowse's theory fact? U.S. Shakespearean critics are inclined to think so, since it agrees with the current commonsensical view. But with characteristic scholarly caution, they wish that Rowse would not be so cocksure about it. "Until there are some new documents," said Harvard's Professor Alfred Harbage, expressing a whole scholarly philosophy of life, "we want more people to say 'I don't know...
...this theme, but otherwise things have sadly changed. Uneasy still lies the head that wears a crown-the $80,000-a-year presidency. Nobody tells old President Edwards, due for mandatory retirement, anything he does not want to hear. He is even provided with the tragic flaw of the Shakespearean hero. He likes to pinch women's gloves from dime-store counters and file them away in his great big desk. It is a pretty harmless foible, but if this were known, what would it do to the "Company Image"? Two extraverted corporate types are rivals for his ballpoint...