Yeats’s Shakespeare: ‘There is a Good Deal of my Father in it’

Abstract

I The word ‘Shakespeare’ does not appear in any of Yeats’s poems or plays, but ‘Shakespearean’ does, in ‘Three Movements’, a poem included in Words for Music Perhaps and Other Poems (Dublin, 1932) and The Winding Stair and Other Poems (New York, 1933 and London, 1934). It consists of three lines: Shakespearean fish swam the sea, far away from land;Romantic fish swam in nets coming to the hand;What are all those fish that lie gasping on the strand? (VP 485) Most readers probably find the poem ..