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The Collation

Sonnets by Shakespeare...'s spirit?

As the common saying goes, only death and taxes are certain. However, consider the uncertainties that can accompany any tax season: missing W-2s, e-file services incompatible with your browser, shifting standards, mathematical errors…

  1. This is indeed an official name heading in the LC Name Authority File, established by yours truly. Cataloging standards make provisions for establishing name headings for spirits, legendary characters, mythological characters, pseudonyms, fictional characters, and animals. The cataloging community has gone back and forth on whether these various entities can take authorial responsibility for a book or other published item, though.
  2. Unlike Shakespeare’s earlier poetry, these verses were not terribly well received; journalist Heywood Broun commented in a review for the New York Tribune that “Three hundred years of idleness have dulled the imagination of [the] master poet,” and requested that Shatford “be kind enough to transmit to him a suggestion” and “advise him earnestly to look up Keats and take a lesson in verse forms.”
  3. Phifer, Lincoln & William Shakespeare. Hamlet in Heaven. Girard, Kansas: Lincoln Phifer, 1916, page 4.

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