«Of course not. You identify yourself with Hamlet. Everyone does.»
«I suppose one always identifies with the hero.»
«Not in great works of literature. Do you identify with Macbeth or Lear?»
«No, well, not like that-«Or with Achilles or Agamemnon or Aeneas or Raskolnikov or Madame Bovary or Marcel or Fanny Price or-«Wait a moment. I haven't heard of some of these people. And I think I do identify with Achilles.»
«Tell me about him.»
«Oh Bradley-I can't think-Didn't he kill Hector?»
«Never mind. Have I made my point?»
«I'm not sure what it is.»
«Hamlet is unusual because it is a great work of literature in which everyone identifies with the hero.»
«I see. Does that make it less good than Shakespeare's other plays, I mean the good ones?»
«No. It is the greatest of Shakespeare's plays.»
«Then something funny has happened.»
«Correct.»
«I forbid you to take notes. You may not open the window. You may take off your boots.»
«For this relief much thanks.» She unzipped the boots and revealed, in pink tights, the legs. She admired the legs, waggled the toes, undid another button at her neck, then giggled.
I said, «Do you mind if I take off my jacket?»
«Of course not.»
«You'll see my braces.»
«How exciting. You must be the last man in London who wears any. They're getting as rare and thrilling as suspenders.»
I took off my jacket, revealing grey army-surplus braces over a grey shirt with a black stripe. «Not exciting, I'm afraid. I would have put on my red ones if I'd known.»
«So you weren't expecting me?»
«Don't be silly. Do you mind if I take off my tie?»
«Don't be silly.»
I took off my tie and undid the top two buttons of my shirt. Then I did one of them up again. The hair on my chest is copious but grizzled. (Or, if you prefer, a sable silvered.) I could feel the perspiration trickling down my temples, down the back of my neck, and winding its way through the forest on my diaphragm.
«You aren't sweating,» I said to Julian. «How do you manage it?»
«I am. Look.» She thrust her fingers in under her hair and then stretched her hands towards me across the table. The fingers were long but not unduly slim. They were faintly dewy. «Now, Bradley, where were we. You were saying Hamlet was the only-«Let's fold up this conversation shall we?»
«Oh Bradley, I knew I'd just bore you! And now I won't see you again for months, I know you!»
«Shut up. That dreary stuff about Hamlet and his ma and pa you can get out of a book. I'll tell you which one.»
«So it's not true?»
«It is true, but it doesn't matter. A sophisticated reader takes such things in his stride. You are a sophisticated reader in ovo.»
«In what?»
«Of course Hamlet is Shakespeare.»
«Whereas Lear and Macbeth and Othello are-«Aren't.»
«Bradley, was Shakespeare homosexual?»
«Of course.»
«Oh I see. So Hamlet's really in love with Horatio-«Be quiet, girl. In mediocre works the hero is the author.»
«My father is the hero of all his novels.»
«It is this that induces the reader to identify. Now if the greatest of all geniuses permits himself to be the hero of one of his plays, has this happened by accident?»
«No.»
«Is he unconscious of it?»
«No.»
«Correct. So this must be what the play is about.»
«Oh. What?»
«About Shakespeare's own identity. About his urge to externalize himself as the most romantic of all romantic heroes. When is Shakespeare at his most cryptic?»
«How do you mean?»
«What is the most mysterious and endlessly debated part of his ceuvre?»
«The sonnets?»
«Correct.»
«Bradley, I read such an extraordinary theory about the sonnets-«Be silent. So Shakespeare is at his most cryptic when he is talking about himself. How is it that Hamlet is the most famous and accessible of his plays?»