Nice Work If You Can Get It

The Guardian excerpts Dylan's Visions of Sin, the book that may or may not have clinched Christopher Ricks' recent elevation to the post of professor of poetry at Oxford. Here he considers the "comedy of command and demand" and Billboard's 67th biggest hit of 1969, "Lay Lady Lay":

How much longer? The old question in many a Dylan song is how long you can go on urging. Don't Think Twice, It's All Right. Here it's how long you can go on asking somebody to lay across your big brass bed. Or, Anglicè, lie across it. Everyday American English, with its established divergences from the old-country matters, is what enforces this way of putting it to her. Still, lay across my bed? Yet if you were to say, with Queen's English correctitude, "Lie, lady, lie", this would open up an ungentlemanly possibility: "Lie, lady, lie - you usually do on these occasions." And so on. Men accusing of mendacity the fair sex. It is true that the American usage might permit of its own ludicrous train of thought ("Lady, lady, lay the table - or, if you prefer, an egg"), but at least there wouldn't be the casting of aspersions.

It's that "Anglicè" that really clinches it, don't you think?