ABSTRACT
The pages of the Times Literary Supplement have recently occasioned an instance of intertextuality that bears a considerable ideological charge. The pages in question are part of a single edition but also partake of a debate that began in an earlier issue and has since been continued in later editions. This debate turns on the question of whether or not to attribute the text called ‘A Funeral Elegy For William Peter’ to Shakespeare. Initially provoked by Donald Foster’s effort to make this ascription in his book Elegy by W.S.: A Study in Attribution,1 this debate exploded into the TLS in the form of Stanley Wells’ attempt to refute Foster’s argument.2 As an early instalment of this debate was being conducted in the TLS of 9 February 1996, two elegies of a sort, commemorating Joseph Brodsky, were published in this same issue.3 One was written by Seamus Heaney and the other by Paul Muldoon. Either this concatenation of elegies for Joseph Brodsky and William Peter is pure coincidence, or it is a more determined juxtaposition. I would propose the latter.
