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OK, no offense taken. And if you ever do read the book (maybe you'll have to teach it for a Gay Studies course), I'll be curious to know what you think. After all, here's this middle-aged guy following a beautiful young man around, trying to get him to swear off women. Ernest has powerful sexual desires, and sees two options, prostitutes and marriage. He tries picking up a prostitute and does hard time; so he tries marrying, and finds out his wife is a bigamist and a drunk. The elder man is delighted. (The chapter begins: "I do not think Ernest himself was much more pleased at finding that he had never been married than I was.") Do you think Mr. Overton can have motives we have not touched upon? Can you think of anything that "an inveterate bachelor" might be, let us say, a euphemism for? How would that square with the Encyclopaedia Britannica’s ‘Guide to Shakespeare’? How about the fact that Overton cheerfully opens his wallet to provide bribe money to keep the poor woman away from Ernest ("Ernest did not see where the pound a week was to come from, so I eased his mind by saying I would pay it myself.") Would you continue to view Overton's remarks as something akin to the lyrics from the Mary Poppins songbook? Would it give you an inkling of why Butler chose not to publish the book during his own lifetime?
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