Hughes, Ted
Hughes, Ted (Edward James) (1930–98),English Poet Laureate, 1984–98. Hughes once chided his first wife, the poet Sylvia Plath, with knowing only thirteen of Shakespeare's plays, and in both his reading and writing he returned always to Shakespeare. His poetic preoccupation with birds, animals, and the English countryside (even in their more savage and destructive aspects) does seem to suggest Shakespearian affinities. Shakespeare and the Goddess of Complete Being (1992) attempted, without convincing all readers, to identify his own mythic and mystic obsessions in the works of Shakespeare, focusing particularly on Venus and Adonis and King Lear. Tales from Ovid (1998) vividly translates the mythic murders, rapes, and mutilations of Shakespeare's favourite author for a modern audience, and was itself dramatized for the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1999. The final moving moment of Hughes's thanksgiving service in...
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