When we study Shakespeare on the page, for academic purposes, we may require all kinds of help. Generally, we read him in modern spelling and with modern punctuation, and with notes. But any poetry that is performed - from song lyric to tragic speech - must make its point, as it were, without reference back.
James Fenton0
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James Fenton:
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In song the same rule applies as in dramatic verse: the meaning must yield itself, or yield itselfJames Fenton:
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Metrics are not a device for restraining the mad, any more than 'open form' or free verse is a prai