Thank you for this, Alexey. (It’s always better to call people ‘Professor’, because they usually are, especially in America. Then they can only be flattered, rather than offended, I hope.) re ‘dever’: should we connect it with ‘De Vere’? Edward de Vere, the earl of Oxford, was involved in a fracas with Philip Sidney – the ‘Tennis Court quarrel’ – and (like Nabokov, I think, who understood Philip’s incestuous feelings for his sister Mary) I have often speculated this was a love quarrel, not about precedence, as it appeared. When Van beets up rival Percy, Nabokov says ‘though that Vere de Vere was three years older [than Van]’. Philip cast himself as a phoenix, and Mary too: that is how they were commonly known. In the MLR article, I list numerous allusions to the worlds of ‘Arcadia’ and ‘Astrophel and Stella’, works by Sidney. I could send you an offprint, or paste a copy into an e-mail direct to you, if you wanted.

Best wishes, Penny. (Dr.! not Prof. An independent scholar.)