THE COWARDICE OF SMALL MINDS

I was pleased and then somewhat alarmed and, following that, extremely suspicious, to see a comment posted in response to my posting about the unfortunate incident at the reception, and then to see that the comment had been "removed by the author" before I had a chance to examine it. It does not take a particularly large mind to imagine the small mind that posted this comment only so furtively to remove it; it is almost certainly the nemesis I mentioned in my second posting, a rival from many years back whom I will refer (for reasons of tact) to simply and pseudonymously as "D. Cruz." Prof. Cruz makes quite a spectacle of himself at the Shakespeare Association meeting, if what I saw in San Diego is any indication. I wonder if readers of this page (if such there be) can offer any good reasons to attend next year's rendezvous in DALLAS over and above the privilege of seeing Prof. Cruz "in action." Were it not the case that my companion is currently beckoning me to join her for the drive into town where we will take advantage of lunch special Chinese food, I would elaborate upon one or more of the sources of this rivalry between myself and Prof. Cruz. Suffice to say that we shared, and indeed continue to share (however SURREPTITIOUSLY) the same research interest (of which more in a future posting) and that a too-precise overlap in our work, to say nothing of the indifference of the academy, has caused each of us to adopt a secondary interest for the sake of our public academic personae: mine, that of a scholar of W. Rowley; his, that of a squalid book historian. Reply if you dare, Prof. D. Cruz.