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Acknowledgments
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ix acknow l edgments this study has been brewing for a long time. I began to warm it up in the late 1960s, turned it off for a decade or two, and then decided to reheat it. But it wasn’t until the last two years that I actually put it back on the burner and let it finish percolating, partly in response to the encouragement of my friend and editor Helen Tartar. The trouble with the metaphorics of these sentences is that they make the book sound like stale coffee. I don’t think A Fury in the Words has any more to do with coffee than taxation has to do with teabags. But in its own way it’s just as political as the teabags of 2009–10. It unpacks an interpretation of the politics of discourse in Shakespeare’s two Venetian plays. I dedicate the book to five dear friends and mentors with whom I’ve walked side by side through the green Renaissance years of the late twentieth century and after. Their work has been a beacon and model to me, as it has to so many others. Their commitment to our profession and their contributions to it have not only lightened my labors but also brightened my life. Their generosity as my friends and neighbors in Shakespeare for so long has taught me the meaning of love. And there are others. I’m deeply indebted to Graham Bradshaw, Jody Greene, and Will West not only because they had to put up with some of my more nuisancy demands but also because they did so with such grace and good will and, above all, with unfailingly helpful criticism . The insights of Zvi Jagendorf have contributed much to my understanding of the Venetian plays. I’ve also greatly profited from comments and suggestions by Lawrence Rhu of the University of South Carolina and by Michael Warren, my colleague at University of California , Santa Cruz, for more than four decades. Professor Warren’s critique of a first draft of my Preface was invaluable. More generally, x ‡ acknowledgments in my several visits to the University of South Carolina, Professor Rhu, his colleagues, and their students have been wonderfully responsive in their reactions to my work on Othello. I think with great affection and lingering enlightenment of conversations with Nina Levine, David Miller, Jill Frank, Ed Gieskes, Holly Crocker, and William Rivers. Specialthanksgotomyfriend,neighbor,colleague,andchiefcoffeemate , Forrest Robinson. For the past few years, teaching and talking with Forrest have been and continue to be my most important source of enlightenment about the things that matter in life. Whether we talk about Shakespeare, Melville, Twain, family, literature, the university, our joys, our disappointments, or merely our current writing projects, I come away from my meetings with Forrest refreshed, reinvigorated, and ready and eager to go back to work and try again. Much of my understanding of the Venetian plays derives from studies by Janet Adelman, Kenneth Gross, and Lawrence Danson, and from discussions with Richard Gabri. I was very much looking forward to the moment when, after finishing this study, I would call Janet and thank her for all she gave me—as she gave so many others— for so many years. But now it’s too late. Special thanks go to Helen Hill, of Cowell College Academic Services , not only for her technical expertise and the outstanding quality of her work but also for her supportive and encouraging attitude and the modesty with which she treats the most difficult assignments as if they were ten-minute trifles. For their help in difficult times, I thank my daughters Cynthia and Caroline and my grandson, Ezra. Thanks also to Tilly, Pam, Colleen, Dion, and Marsh for their devotion and support. But most of all, thanks to my best friend and critic and wife, Beth Pittenger. For twenty-five years I’ve been sustained by her love and courage and companionship, and by her deep insight into language, literature, and the human spirit. ...