In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 [First Page] [117], (1) Lines: 0 to ——— 3.734pt ——— Short Page PgEnds: TE [117], (1) c h a p t e r s i x “Shakespeare always and forever” Dickinson’s Circulation of the Bard R egarding Dickinson’s reading of Shakespeare, the poet’s niece, Martha Dickinson Bianchi, wrote, “Shakespeare always and forever; Othello her chosen villain, with Macbeth familiar as the neighbors and Lear driven into exile as vivid as if occurring on the hills before her door.”1 In fact, in her letters, Dickinson through allusion transforms herself and her friends into Shakespeare’s characters. This is hardly surprising considering that an expected acquisition of Shakespeare was promoted in her culture by its theaters, its magazines and journals, its Lyceums, its literary clubs, its scholarship , its publishing industry, its contemporary novels and poems, and, eventually , its schools and colleges. Quotations from Shakespeare played a major role in the newspapers Dickinson and her family read.2 For instance, on the announcement pages of issues of the Amherst Record in September 1871 there is an advertisement for a clothes shop in Northampton: “to buy, or not to buy, that’s the question / But before you buy, be sure and examine the magnificent stock of goods just received by Draper & Ockington.” Hamlet’s musings have become incorporated into every consumer’s dilemma. Shakespeare is a great writer, and this is a great place to buy clothes.3 Earlier, on Wednesday , 26 July 1871, Shakespeare is front-page news in the Record: an article by George Clair presents him as the writer who triumphed over his own limited education, a scarcity of literary models, and the superstition and ignorance of his time to write “monuments of wonder,” whose popularity and fascination remain.4 Clair proceeds to praise the immensity of his genius, calling him “the moulder and embellisher of his native tongue,” “the great exponent of nature,” the “definer and interpreter of humanity”: His dramatis persona are full of ill habits, frail by constitution, faulty and unequal, but they speak with human voices, and are actuated by human passions, as they pursue their affairs of life . . . we feel a deep interest in them, for they are the same nature as ourselves. Their precepts are an instruction, their fortunes an experience, their misfortunes a warning, and their testimony an authority. Shakespeare and his characters are ubiquitous in the private and public lives of Dickinson and her contemporaries, teaching lessons on wisdom, courage, 117 118 c h a p t e r s i x 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 [118], (2) Lines: 25 ——— 5.38751pt ——— Normal P PgEnds: [118], (2) charity, love, man’s blindness, and God’s providence that “we may look for in vain in any other writer.” Such sentiments were responsible for a proliferation in the poet’s lifetime of Shakespeareana—books and artifacts devoted to Shakespeare and his words.5 Two examples in the Dickinson household incorporated Shakespeare quotations into daily life. The first was Mary F. P. Dunbar’s The Shakespeare Birthday Book (1882), owned by the poet’s niece. It offered quotations beside each day of the year, and thus for all birthdays in the Dickinson Homestead and the adjacent Evergreens. Beside her own birthday, on the tenth of December, Dickinson has written “Aunt Emily,” and the quotations read “I hear, yet say not much, but think the more” (Henry VI, part 3 IV i 83) and “Angels are bright still, though the brightest fell” (Macbeth IV iii 22).6 Bianchi recalled bringing this book to her aunt and that the reticent poet “highly approved” of the quotations .7 Bianchi also mentions the use of “a daily Shakespeare calendar” in both Dickinson households.8 In fact, she refers to a note, in her mother Sue’s handwriting , which reads, “March 7th 1883, Emily, speaking to Ned of someone who was a good scholar, but uninteresting, said ‘She had the facts but not the Phosphorescence of books.’” Attached to the page are lines from a Shakespeare calendar that read, “When most...

Share