Afterthought

By ALAN BRIEN

I SPENT Iwo and a half hours on Tuesday morning in the bath reading Shake- speare's sonnets. Soaking there like Proust's petite madeleine, there came ...---. back to me too a long-sub- merged memory. I recalled the days when I used to N......,

dream of being an Oxford don. It seemed to me then

an occupation ideally suited to my temperament-comfortable without being too competitive, flattering to the ego, but not wearing on the nerves, socially impressive as well as intellectually distinguished. I reckoned 1 possessed just about the right balance of laziness and ingenuity, eccentricity and conformism, to sling my hammock betwen the poles of dangerous failure and perilous success, Draining off the lower level of old cold water with one big toe while admitting a surge of new hot water with the other, I realised that I had never entirely abandoned the dream. I had abdi- cated the title but retained the routine. Under the cover of journalism, I was still behaving as if I Were art unfrocked, disestablished don. This Solurnn is a kind of tutorial-substitute during Which I read my essays to an audience of invisible and restive pupils who later break out in a rash complaints in the letter columns. My book- lined London study is an academic cliché, looking ,,out through one window on a slightly grimed facsimile of the Banbury Road and through the Other on a built-up replica of Boar's Hill. I feel an urge to spend the day in alibrary the waY Some people (including me) feel the impulse tc

' sPend the evening in a pub. I indulge myself in nostalgically recreating the hours I used to pass a the Radcliffe Camera-dozing behind fingers

SPECTATOR CROSSWORD No. 1114

ACROSS

1. Pump centre? (6) 4. Mad with rage, the Royal Society has followers (8)

10. Getting about with Harry Lauder (7)

11. Kick upstairs in a spirited fashion (7)

12. Said in the speaker's place (4) 13. 'Calamity Pop, Von - Drop' (Gilbert) (10) 16. Join the cloth? (6)

17. Traditionally run by boys (7)

20. Arrested in a painful manner? (7) 21. What a fag for the man taking in the sails! (6) 24. To Celia, however, it was liberty (10)

5. Hang on to this in the castle (4) w Pasting o ( 7) get the better of a

29. Fed up, in a way (7) 30. Messrs. Perrin and Traill, for example (8) 31. 'And many goodly - and kingdoms seen' (Keats) (6) I)OWN I. In which a decree of 24 was cherubically enforced (8) 2. Understanding of the build-up of that Madrid team? (11) 3. Underwear for a trip? (4) 5. Idealparking-place for Santa Claus (4-4)

6. Vessel to get the party going (3-7)

7. Time for the end of a fabulous monster (3) 8. One of the hairy little island breed, (6) 9. Gang outcome of the plans of mice and men (5) .. ance, issuing tokens if not stamps. What seems to be holding them back, apart from having too many independent societies (there are 801 and two wholesaling centres), is democracy. Instead of broadening the base on which the co-opera- tive managements stand, the electoral system of appointment has narrowed it down and made it parochial. One can even discern traces of in- breeding here and there, with the obvious result that the past has too much influence on the present and may undermine the future.

sternly cupped over a wrinkled brow, racing the pages against the clock as though the information could somehow transfer itself to my memory without actually having to be read, rationing the number of times permitted for a smoke and a stroll round $t. James's Square, idly wondering how many of the long-haired girls in spectacles would turn out to be pretty if seen from the front.

I cheat a little by having no prescribed course of study or list of set books. Every now and then I recall with a start of relief that no one has obliged me to bone up on witchcraft in the Middle Ages or the history of medicine. Nobody is wait- ing for me to regurgitate what I can remember about Christian heresies, the Marxist approach to art, sex in Spenser or famous murder trials. It is only some residual Puritanism which makes me resent gathering scraps of knowledge without making an attempt to resell them on the open market. So that having been driven to eat my way through 153 sonnets of Shakespeare after Leslie Hotson's infuriating article ie the Sunday Times colour magazine, T cannot resist the oppor- tunity of scattering a few disconnected comments on the subject here.

Mr. Hotson's book on the identity of 'Mr. W. H.' and the 'Dark Lady' has not yet been published. And when it is, I will not be the person to review it. But as one article-writer to another, I can say that I find the claim that the young man is William Hatcliffe less convincing than Father Ronald Knox's proof that Queen Victoria wrote In Memoriam. Mr. Hotson seems to be correct in insisting that the Elizabethans were very care- less about spelling their own names-but how any warrants ever got issued, bills cashed, writs served and marriages celebrated if Marlowe could be called Morley and Marlin I cannot imagine. It still seems odd of Shakespeare (or Shaxberd), if he wanted to embody the name 'Hatcliffe' in his honest in this fashion (11)

15. Hai'monious craftsman (10)

18. Our sort of samovar! (3-5)

19. They come and go (8) 22. Put bar differently, quick! (6)

23. He was a Boojum, you see (5)

26. Mark the place (4) 28. Only a step to the health centre (3) Solution nest week

SOU'. [ION OF CROSSWORD 1113 ACROSS.-1 Hot-rod. 4 Pearmain. 10 Unicorn. 11 Innings. 12 Elia. 13 Wind- flower. 16 Loafer. 17 Because. 20 Tin- foil.' 21 Repeal. 24 Canonicals, 25 Swap. 27 Replete. 29 Slimmer. 30 Scot- tish. 31 Catnip.

DOWN.-1 House-fly. 2 Trinitarian. 3 Obol • 5 Evil-doer. 6 Ringleader. 7 Awn. 8 Nasard. 9 Anvil. 14 Washer- woman., 15 Leaf-insect. 18 Pitchers. 19 Claptra P. 22 Icarus. 23 Bliss. 26 Diva. 28 Pro.

verse, that he should always have written in 'Hat- leave,' 'Harliv,"Hatlife,"Hatler and 'Hatlive'-. especially in such line's as 0 t HAT you were your selfe,llut love you are

No longer yours, then you your selfe here LIVE. Even reading the Sonnets after Mr. Hotson's analysis, I can honestly say the name never once stood out from the text.

Much of Mr. Hotson's identification depends on proving that Shakespeare's sonnets are unique in referring to the male loved one as both royal and divine. This is very thinly documented. First, we have no other sonnets in English by Shakes- peare, or any other poet, dedicated in such physically doting terms to a man, so that there is no material for comparison. Secondly, Eliza- bethan sonnets to women were conventionally filled with references to the subject as a queen or an empress or a goddess without the reader being obliged• to identify the mistress with the Queen of England, or even the Queen of the May. Third, the examples Mr. Hotson gives don't always stand up to close examination. The terms of praise, he asserts, always refer to powers 'peculiar to a king ... "largess," for example, of which it is significant to note that in his other works Shakespeare applies "largess" only to the gifts or donatives of kings'. Now, largess, as far as I can see, occurs only once in the Sonnets so that it is hardly likely to hit the eye. It occurs only four times in all of Shakespeare-and one of those uses has nothing to do with kings.