John Haffenden
DRINK AS DISEASE: JOHN BERRYMAN,
Ela ted by what he thought was hi s redemption from alcohol
achieved a t Hazelden , Berryman ended
1969
in hopes tha t the tide
would run and run . " I am extremely happy," he reported to his fri ends,
"working very hard on
H amlet
fo r a course on it I'm giving this winter
for the English Dept. But I'm nearl y done and am branching out back
into comprehensive biographical
&
critical Shakespearian studi es. A
few months ought to see my biography a t
500-600
pages, when I'll cut
it back to some
450
and give it to my amazed
&
delighted publisher. "
T he criti cal biography of Shakespeare h ad first been drafted in
195 1-52.
Now, within a month of starting afresh-without looking a t
the draft-he spoke of being almost through Chap ter III. He had also
sketched seventy lin es of a poem to be call ed "Washington in Love," of
which thirty lines were an "impressive" rendering "of hi s accepting, a t
the insistence of John Adams, the continental command." Berryman
claimed to have put together a coll ection of three of his stories and
twenty-fi ve essays ready fo r publication . For reading, he had under–
taken Trollope's
L ast Chronicle of Barset, Genesis
in dail y doses, and
Vaillant 's
The Aztecs
with a view to a summer trip to Mexico.
Still , for all tha t the work was prancing, there was a new element
of hes itancy in his a ttitude towards it. He now asked for reassu rance
and opinion . He was to send the first three chapters of the biography
(covering the eight plays of Shakespeare's earl y period, and the
Sonnets )
to Willi am Meredith for "suggestion s." Sir Walter Greg, who
had given hi s imprima tur twenty-five years earli er to certain of
Berryman 's suggestions about the editing o f
King L ear,
was now dead,
and his pass ing left Berryman doubtful about hi s credibility as a
modern Shakespearian scho la r. The times were fluid , research and
discovery bounding: "Off here in the Middl e West I suffer a little from
the feeling tha t I am working in a void. "
A further fresh sta rt thi January was a p roject to write what he
ca ll ed
A New L ife of Christ.
He sketched the contents:
Preface
I
T he Marean Outline
II
Chri st's Ethical Teaching
