G[eorge Richard] Wilson Knight (1898-1985), Emeritus Professor of English Literature at the University of Leeds, the eminent Shakespeare critic (although he preferred the word, interpreter) and author of over 40 books mainly on Shakespeare, at the top of which is the 1930 THE WHEEL OF FIRE the manuscript of which he himself carried and took to TS Eliot's office at Faber Publishers, London, where Eliot sent for sandwiches for lunch, and later Eliot wrote a Preface to the book, and whom I visited in Exeter, England when he was living in Caroline House (Caroline is mom's name) which he inherited from his elder brother Frank Jackson Knight himself Emeritus Professor of Classical Literature, University of Exeter and translator from the original Greek into English of the first Penguin Classic Virgil's THE AENEID and both brothers died at late ages confirmed bachelors, told me one day that Oedipus, the greatest tragic person, met the end of an extremely happy man, as the gods in the end call him to join them. Dick, as G Wilson Knight preferred to be addressed when intimacy came in, told me that in Shakespeare's tragedies--even in KING LEAR--there is triumph, and he also told me that he was willing to forgive and laugh with anyone even an enemy, but when he mentioned Hitler, he excepted him saying,"I can laugh with Macbeth, but not with Hitler". And he added that he was a great believer in and practicer of masturbation because masturbation made the person inflict the harm on himself/herself, and so it is cruelty against onself rather than on the others, and that the Marquis de Sade became an amiable nice person during his long imprisonment when he practiced masturbation and not sex which included hurting the others, and G Wilson Knight also told me that if the Israelis and the Arabs sat together and masturbated they would resolve their conflicts and live in peace with each other. Otherwise, he said to me,(and that was shortly after I had recited to him Shylock's speech, If you tickle us, don't we laugh, if you pinch us, dont we cry and if you hurt us don't we revenge), "Let Israel write in big letters on it borders Shylock's words, 'If you tickle us don't we laugh, if you pinch us don't we cry, and if you hurt us don't we revenge.'" He concluded saying, " I am myself one-eighth Jewish."


In Spring 1972 in the University of Leeds, I heard Knight lecturing and his topic was "Masturbation and Mysticism" which he later included as a chapter in a book he published entitled, NEGLECTED POWERS.

What made me think of G Wilson Knight today was your mentioning KRAPP as part of a double bill with THE NEW TENANT, plus I had already read an essay yesterday on Krapp (and Beckett himself) as masturbator