In the 18th Century, this book, or one like it, could have been published; in the Victorian period, not; up till (say) 1930, it would have been deprecated; nowadays, it will-as it should-be taken very much as a matter of course. (The apparently provocative title is merely a convenient abridgement of 'Sexuality, Homosexuality, and Bawdiness in the Works of William Shakespeare'.)
If Shakespearean criticism had not so largely been in the hands of academics and cranks, a study of Shakespeare's attitude towards sex and his use of the broad jest would probably have appeared at any time since 1918. 'Pederasts and pedants have been the curse of Shakespearean biography and criticism' (Hesketh Pearson, 1942): the academic critics (except Professors Dover Wilson and G. Wilson Knight) have, in the main and for most of the time, ignored the questions of homosexuality, sex, bawdiness: with one or two notable exceptions, they have been pitiably inadequate. The non-academic critics have done better on the homosexuality, but none of them has dealt fully, or even satisfactorily, with the normal sexuality and the bawdiness. As I am neither pederast nor pedant, I may be able to throw some light upon a neglected, yet very important, aspect of Shakespeare's character and art.
In order to avoid a too tedious catalogue-effect in the Essay, I have compiled a Glossary of such terms as fall 'within the meaning of the Act'. This Glossary will, I hope, have a value beyond that of a list, however comprehensive; even a value beyond that of the usual conscientious glossary.
The verse-numbering is that of The Shakespeare Head edition, which possesses the merit of presenting the plays in their chronological order.
SOME DAY a doctorate will justly be awarded to a scholar brave enough to write a history of the theory and practice of British and American punctuation, from the time when there certainly was none until the time when there will perhaps be none.
I have aimed at something much less ambitious. Eschewing all but the most recent history-except, here and there, for the sake of an example-I deal only with the theory and especially the practice of punctuation as we know it today and knew it yesterday; and with such allies or accessories as capitals, italics, quotation marks, hyphens, paragraphs.
Acquainted with ‘the literature of the subject’, I recognize the merits, both of such books as that of T.F. and M.F.A.Husband, that of Mr G.V.Carey and that of Mr Reginald Skelton, and of the chapters or entries in such works as the Fowler brothers’ The King’s English, H.W.Fowler’s Modern English Usage and G.H. Vallins’s Good English.
This recognition and that knowledge strongly confirm me in a determination (publicly stated in the article on punctuation in Usage and Abusage, 1942 in U.S.A., 1947 in Britain) to write a comprehensive guide to punctuation and its concomitants. Such a guide is very badly needed, especially in what I have called ‘orchestration’: and orchestration forms the subject of the quite painfully practical Book III.
Except for those persons who already know something useful about punctuation, all the works I have examined (nor are they few) exhibit at least one very grave fault. Whether they start with the full stop, as logically they should, or, as most of them do, despite the inescapable presence of a full stop, with the comma, they adduce examples containing either one or more stops of which the learner presumably knows nothing at this stage. There is only one logical, only one sensible, only one practical, only one easy way in which a beginner can learn punctuation: and that is, progressively. The examples in the opening chapter, The Full Stop, will contain only the full stop. The ensuing chapter, The Comma, has examples in which only full stops and commas are used. If the next chapter is The Semicolon, the examples will or may contain also the full stop and the comma. The next would then be The Colon, and here the examples can exhibit all the four main stops: full stop, comma, semi colon, colon. The two minor stops (dash and parentheses) can then be treated; but if we begin with the dash, the relevant chapter or section should, in its examples, contain no parentheses, although they will, or may, containing the four main stops. Having disposed of all six true stops (full stop, comma, semicolon, colon, dash, parentheses), we can pass to the two signs, ? and !, which, so far from being stops, are mere indications of tone: or, as we say, ‘marks’-the question mark and the exclamation mark. Such subtleties as the relationship of stops and marks to either parentheses or quotation marks, or indeed both, cannot safely be treated until the ground has been entirely cleared.
Book IV deals with some differences in American practice, a chapter generously contributed, with some valuable comments, by a former collaborator, John W. Clark of the University of Minnesota. The emphasis rests upon ‘differences’, for, in general, American practice is identical with British. It would be absurd for either Professor Clark or myself to catalogue the identities,which outnumber the differences by at least ten to one, British and American opinion being in entire accord on literally all major, and on very nearly all minor, topics.
