Curiosa: Shakespeare happens

[nebroadwe]

Sometimes I find it difficult to do my job, as when, in a drowsy mid-afternoon slump, I scan the columns of William Jaggard's Shakespeare Bibliography in search of a citation that matches the characteristics of the object in front of me (the edges of whose pages are gently disintegrating into jaundiced dust as I breathe upon them), and find myself increasingly prone to misreading Mr. Jaggard's -- let us say, unfortunate? -- yes, unfortunate choice of abbreviation for the name "Shakespeare":

Sh--

As in, Our English Sh--. And The Lover's Sh--. And A Poem; with an Ode to Sh--. And First Annual Jubilee Oration Upon Sh--. And the oft-cited Sh-- Works. I keep reminding myself that Jaggard is cataloging Shakespeare's works, not Swift's, but it's not doing any good ...

Comments

[nebroadwe.livejournal.com]

Ha! I begin to suspect that many critical essayists don't re-read their works with an eye to how readers might perceive their use of language and--in this case--abbreviation.

Well, to give Mr. Jaggard his due, he originally published his bibliography in the early twentieth century, a much less profane age than our own. [snort]

By the bye, are we sure there are no Swift works named A Poem; with an Ode to Sh--?

The discovery thereof I leave as an exercise for the reader. Mind you, if there isn't one, there probably should be, given the man's rather, um, concave view of the human person.