Identity, though it dances to many tunes, stands on two legs: commitment and recognition. In the recent work on Shakespeare … More

“How ‘blow’? How ‘blow’? Speak to be understood”—demands The Princess to Boyet in the final act of Love’s Labour’s Lost. … More

In Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, the good great houses of Orsino and Olivia insist upon decorum and the traditions of civilization; … More

If I were asked to give a complete account of what it means to dwell, I could do little more … More

This is a post on Shakespeare’s sonnets, read narrowly through Empson’s analysis in Some Versions of Pastoral. A friend of … More

The last line of “A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning” riddles, urging us to return to the start of the poem, as … More

Dryden honored music in his verse, and his verse in general repeatedly challenges us to better tune our ears to … More

John Donne’s “The Sun Rising” exemplifies Donne’s art because the poem issues from Donne’s exertion to shift the truth of … More

Jonson’s “To Penshurst” is an extraordinary achievement of technique: a poem that feels relaxed, and at ease, and yet is … More

Donne’s poetry does not achieve ambiguities at the cost of compression; it achieves compression with the success of ambiguities. That … More