Some of those described in these pages correspond directly to rites practiced by tribes or sects that have received extensive scrutiny by social scientists, while others may seem less broadly based, more specific to their Shakespearean context. The Shakespearean novice, like his or her counterpart in society, must be separated from a former self before he or she can be integrated into a new social role. That is, indeed, one of the questions this book is about. I hurried away once more, but only to arrive yet a third time by devious paths in the same place. If Judas go forth tonight it is to Judas his steps will tend.
Every life is many days, day after day.
Freud says of the transference-love between patient and analyst that once it is acknowledged and brought out into the open it cannot be suppressed or denied. These essays are about ghosts, and about writing. The act of writing is a sleight of hand through which the dead hand of the past reaches over to our side of the border. What is uncanny is not that the moving finger writes but that the writing finger moves. What this book attempts to explore, then, is the uncanny connection between Shakespeare's propensity to write ghosts and his continuing capacity to write us .