My father said I should introduce myself and the thesis I hope to write.  Way back when I thought I'd do one on Moby Dick and find a topic conventionally, exploring the book and its critics and finding some untilled bit of the field.  I'd do it that way still except that meanwhile a thesis in the full sense ambushed and captivated me.

I was managing an office building in St. Paul which housed a free paper living on ad revenues but aiming higher.  The editor knew I wrote some and when Derek Chapman, a young Irish director, came to town to do a festival production of The Winter's Tale, she asked me to interview him.  I hadn't read the play, so I did and was dumbfounded.  My reaction (and what it seemed to be a response to) is the thesis, a subtle set of notions not easily summarized.

When Shakespeare's characters speak I know who they are.  Claudius, Iago, Cordelia--they all talk just like themselves and I'd had the same feeling in The Winter's Tale but the characters I'd heard (mainly the "pair of kings") I could find no reference to in the criticism.  I asked Chapman about it and told him what I thought it all meant, but he couldn't see it.  This was some years ago and I'm still not sure I could persuade anyone, but I find it more convincing as time passes and I'd like to try.

Perdita's personality is the key.  I suspect she was real, or more precisely that there was a real young woman who formed the basis for her and for the similar characters in the other three of the 'last plays'--Pericles, Cymbeline and The Tempest.  Perdita (her portrait is most complete in The Winter's Tale) worked the transformation on Shakespeare which we see reflected in those plays.  She did so by representing, in the flesh, 'original good,' utter grace blooming full-blown without benefit of any of society's mechanisms of civility.

Presented that baldly and briefly it sounds wooden if not wholly goofy, and I'm familiar enough with Shakespearean criticism to know what I'm up against if I claim to have solved the mystery of the shift from tragedy to romance.  My ear and my expertise both fall short and that makes the prospect more appealing.  The challenge will be to cover ground swiftly, densely, allusively, to produce a text that resonates in all directions.

Fairly soon, if you like, I can send you a longer account and updates along the way but I'm not sure how this should work--how long the thesis should be, for instance, and I'll need a copy of the style sheet.  I don't want to take up too much of your time, but I'll appreciate whatever advice you can give me.

Thank you.