Molly Mahood obituary
The work of the scholar and teacher Molly Mahood, who has died aged 97, engaged with a wide range of literary and geographical areas. Her book Shakespeare's Wordplay (1957), a study of the playwright's ambiguities and puns, is still essential reading for students and fellow academics. She was also among the first to appreciate and give serious attention to the surge of African, Caribbean and Indian writing published in the 1950s and 60s.
Written while Molly was a fellow of St Hugh's College, Oxford (1947-54), Shakespeare's Wordplay combined her keenly perceptive close reading of poetry, manifested in her first book, Poetry and Humanism (1950), with her interest in drama. In her characteristically diffident manner, she later wrote: "I have never thought of myself as a real Shakespearean of the kind who could never rest with an unresolved crux under all those mattresses. From time to time I have been struck, even a bit hypnotised, by one or other aspect of Shakespeare's art and have tried to share that fascination with other playgoers and readers."
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