Arnold has a happy life. He is a university lecturer and poet and is married to Polly who owns a shop where she makes paper and they run a small poetry press together. They have a lovely daughter Evelyn and everything seems to ring with domestic bliss. Continue reading The Paper Lovers by Gerard Woodward
Literature is full of ‘doubles’: characters who seem to move in tandem; or twins, whose familial bond and similarities are frequently employed for farcical effect. In Shakespeare’s ‘Twelfth Night’, for example, the sense of a clear identity becomes a tangled mess as Viola, in disguise as a boy called Cesario, falls in love with Duke Orsino, who loves Olivia; Viola has to deliver Orsino’s love letters to Olivia, who quickly falls in love with her as Cesario. Sebastian, Viola’s twin brother who she thought had died, enters on stage, and Olivia is soon smitten with him.
Where was I?