SOURCE: "The Crow of Avon? Shakespeare, Sex and Ted Hughes," in Cambridge Quarterly, Vol. 15, No. 1, 1986, pp. 1-12.

[In the following essay, Holbrook traces some of Hughes's theories about Shakespeare and strongly disagrees with the poet's interpretation.]

Obviously, Shakespeare had problems with sexuality, and we encounter these over the Sonnets, over King Lear's outburst about the sulphurous pit. Hamlet's feelings about his mother, and in Timon. The intensity of the emotions isn't always modified within the overall meaning of the play—as the treatment of sexuality is perhaps absorbed in Antony and Cleopatra, even in its unresolved ambiguity.

A student recently thought he had found clues to these problems in an essay by Ted Hughes, in the Introductory Note to his Selection from Shakespeare. This selection is no doubt used in schools, and so the Note is worth examining. In discussing it we found with dismay that Hughes seeks...