Whose Shakespeare?
The best … of this year's books on Shakespeare is D. J. Enright's Shakespeare and the Students…. It is relaxed and non-theoretical. It arises not only from teaching Shakespeare (as its author explains) but from an experience of life and poetry. There is no mystical pursuit of Shakespeare, no embarrassing attempt to expose a Christian or neo-Platonic "pattern": the approach is in the essentially human terms of psychology and poetry. It is truly eclectic (not in the now pejorative bibliographical sense), and almost unerring in its selection of what is most moving; its explanations stimulate where they provoke disagreement. There have been few commentaries so full of new insights. Perhaps this is because Mr. Enright is modest, has no theories, has not made up his mind about Shakespeare—is, in short, a true sceptic. (p. 63)
Martin Seymour-Smith, "Whose Shakespeare?" in Encounter, Vol. XXXIV, No. 6, June, 1970, pp. 56-8, 60-1, 63.∗
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