"Even his name means wanker."

[Laurence Horn]

On Aug 14, 2014, at 10:35 AM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:

> You know who. Think about it. Oxford educator Pauline Kiernan spells it out
> again and again in her hilarious _Filthy Shakespeare_ (Quercus, 2005).
> 
> But wait... The dust jacket calls this Four-X-rated treatment of the bard
> "deeply insightful."  So it isn't hilarious after all! It's true! (Maybe
> both? Naaaa. But postmodernwise you can't tell what's real and what's a
> riotous put-on. If you think you can, perhaps you're already obsolete.)
> 
> As for Kiernan, you be the judge. In any event, you'll never read Sonnet IV
> the same way again.
> 
> JL

Referring, I gather, to the references to spending.  Point taken (unless we never read it the same way again in the first place).  But then again it was already pretty challenging (especially in class) to deal with line 5, where the poet addresses his narcissist lover as "beauteous niggard".

LH
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> "If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org