Emily Dickinson's Shakespeare

Introduction : "Whose pencil

here and there

/ Had notched the place that pleased him

There's nothing wicked in Shakespeare, and if there is I don't want to know it" : advising women readers, Amherst's Shakespeare's Club, and Richard Henry Dana Sr.

"I read a few words since I came home

John Talbot's parting with his son, and Margaret's with Suffolk" : reading and performing Shakespeare, Fanny Kemble, and the Astor Place riot

"Shakespeare was never accused of writing Bacon's works" : American Shakespeare criticism, Delia Bacon, James Russell Lowell, and Richard Grant White

"He has had his future who has found Shakespeare" : American nationalism and the English dramatist

"Pity me, however, I have finished Ramona. Would that like Shakespeare, it were just published!" : Shakespeare and women writers

"Shakespeare always and forever" : Dickinson's circulation of the Bard

"Then I settled down to a willingness for all the rest to go but William Shakespeare. Why need we Joseph read anything else but him" : Dickinson reading Antony and Cleopatra

"Heard Othello at museum" : Junius Brutus Booth, Tommaso Salvini, and the performance of race

"Hamlet wavered for all of us" : Dickinson and Shakespearean tragedy

Conclusion : "Touch Shakespeare for me."