Solomon Pottesman—book dealer as metaphysician

Solomon Pottesman ( 1904 – 78) was one of the best known ‘ characters’ in London’s  post-war world of antiquarian book dealing. Socially awkward, often exasperating in the eyes of auction staff, such as O.F.Snelling, who paints a rather uncharitable picture of him in his Rare Books and Rare People, he was more appreciated by fellow bibliophiles like Alan Thomas, who not only enjoyed his company, but like so many other dealers and collectors, thoroughly respected his encyclopaedic knowledge of incunabula. Indeed, so expert in his field, was Solomon, that he was almost universally known as ‘Inky’.

So, in 1960, when Pottesman announced that he had just published a book, everyone assumed that this would be a wonderfully scholarly work on pre-1500 printing and publishing. Imagine the disappointment when those few friends and colleagues who Pottesman  honoured with a complimentary copy of the book in question received a slim unpaginated pamphlet in blue card covers, and printed at his own expense,  entitled Time and the Playground Phenomenon.

Hallucinations of Shakespeare

When English tourists abroad are accosted by foreigners on trains it is now more likely to be about Manchester United or Downton Abbey. According to the writer Maurice Baring, in his time it was often about Shakespeare, as in this intriguing account in his Lost Lectures (London, 1932):

Over and over again it has been my fortune to be told about English literature by foreign high-brows in trains, and to be initiated in the secrets of the literature of my country. I once met a Serbian professor who told me that he had written a book about Shakespeare. He spoke French (not Shakespeare—the Serb). Shakespeare was a well known case, he said, of self-hallucination. He knew, because he was a mind doctor. Hamlet was a well-known case of a man who thinks he sees ghosts.
“But”, I said, “the other people in the play saw the ghost.” “They caught his infection,” he said.
“But they saw it first,” I objected.
“It was Suggestion,” he said; “it often happens. The infection comes from the brain of the man who thinks he sees a ghost before he has seen the ghost, and his coming hallucination infects other brains. Shakespeare hallucinated, or he could not have described the case so accurately. All his characters hallucinated—Macbeth, King Lear, Brutus (he saw a ghost).”
I said enough things had happened to King Lear to make him go mad. “Not in that way,” he said. “Ophelia is mad; Lady Macbeth is mad; Othello is mad; Shylock is mad; Timon of Athens is very mad; Antonio is mad; Romeo is mad. The cases are all accurately described by one who has the illness himself.”
“Was Falstaff mad?” I asked.
“Falstaff,” said the doctor, “is a case of what we call metaphenomania.

This England

                    

Found -- This England, a patriotic pamphlet from the late 1920s in the Golden Thoughts series. "A Pictorial Memento of the scenic loveliness that lies within the land which the King calls 'our own dear home' as described by the poet Allan Junior."

The four images on the cover show England as an island of lakes and seas - 'this island race.'  A jingoistic magazine of the same name has carried on publishing into this century. The title comes from Shakespeare's King Richard II: "This royal throne of kings, this sceptred isle... This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England."

Books in Shakespeare's plays

Browsing Ayscough's An Index to the Remarkable Passages and Words made use of by Shakspeare ; Calculated to Point Out the Different Meanings to Which the Words are Applied (Thomas Tegg, London 1827) I checked out its dozen or so entries under 'books'. It is fairly comprehensive (Samuel Ayscough was known as 'The Prince of Indexers') but at about 500 pages is not  a 'concordance' and  its intention was somewhat different, as stated in the title. Henry IV (Part 2) seems to be the play with the most bookish references

Books 

Burn but his books. Tempest, Act 3, Scene 2.
Drown my books.  Ibid, Act 5, Scene 1.
The gentleman is not in your books. Much Ado About Nothing, Act 1, Scene 1. 
Tire the hearer with a book of words. Ibid, Act 1, Scene 1. 
These trees shall be my books. As You Like It, Act 3, Scene 2.
I have unclasp'd to thee the book of my secret soul. Twelfth Night, Act 1, Scene 4.
By what time shall our book, I think be drawn. 1 Henry IV, Act 3, Scene 1.
By this our book is drawn; we will but seal and then to horse immediately. Ibid, Act 3, Scene 1.
Turning your books to graves, your ink to blood, your pens to lances. 1 Henry IV, Act 4, Scene 1.
Blotting your names from books of history.  2 Henry IV, Act 1, Scene 1.
Our fore-fathers had no other books, but the score and the tally. Ibid, Act 4, Scene 7.
Made him my book, wherein my soul recorded the history of all her secret thoughts. Richard III, Act 3, Scene 5.
I have been the book of his good acts. Coriolanus, Act 5, Scene 2.
A book! O rare one! be not as is our fangled world, nobler than that it covers. Cymbeline, Act 5, Scene 4.
That book in many's eyes doth share the glory, that in gold clasps locks in the golden story. Romeo and Juliet, Act 1, Scene 3.
Was ever book, containing such vile matter, so fairly bound. Ibid, Act 3, Scene 2.

Booked

Let it be booked with the rest of the day's deeds - 2 Henry IV, Act 4, Scene 3.

Bookish

Though I am not bookish, yet I can read waiting-gentlewoman in the scape. Winter's Tale, Act 3, Scene 3.
I'll make him yield the crown, whose bookish rule hath pull'd fair England down. 2 Henry IV, Act 1, Scene 1.

Book-Mates

One that makes sport to the prince, and his book-mates.  Love's Labour Lost, Act 4, Scene 1.

Book-Oath

I put thee now to thy book-oath; dry it if thou canst. 2 Henry IV, Act 2, Scene 1.

Book of Sport

Or like a book of sport thou'lt read me o'er. Troilus and Cressida, Act 4, Scene 5. 

And from The Tempest these fine lines - 'My library was dukedom large enough'...