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2 - The Spanish Tragedy: a letter
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 February 2010
Summary
Derek Roper, a colleague in the Department of English Literature at Sheffield University, took issue with a number of points in the preceding essay on The Spanish Tragedy. Empson responded with the following letter, which ends by adumbrating the theory of censorship expounded in the next piece.
13th October 1958Dear Roper,
I have been mulling over the play and your comments on my theory. None of your objections seem to me decisive except one, a rather important one. You are probably right in thinking
To thrust Horatio forth my father's way.
(III. X. 59)means ‘out of his way’; it is forth b. 2. in the OED, from out of, e.g. ‘He went forth his desk.’ Lorenzo has just been telling Bel-imperia that the king and their father were coming privately to consult with Hieronymo, and that he had come first to arrange the meeting; so it is just his style of pride to say ‘I murdered Horatio to remove a disgusting object from my father's path’ – except that now he doesn't even literally admit the murder of Horatio. There is now no approach to admitting the murder of Andrea, and we need not even be sure that the ghost of Andrea guesses it before the end. I still think this must be the point of the presence of the ghost, even granting that he and Revenge are only a ‘frame’; but the point just gets taken for granted.
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- William Empson: Essays on Renaissance Literature , pp. 38 - 40Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1994