Average customer rating:
- If you love Shakespeare....
- Carelessness
- "The shock of pleasure"
- Fascinating, inspiring... but oh, SO irritating
- Get Excited about Shakespeare...that's the Message.
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The Shakespeare Wars: Clashing Scholars, Public Fiascoes, Palace Coups
Ron Rosenbaum
Manufacturer: Random House
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ASIN: 0375503390
Release Date: 2006-09-19 |
Book Description
“[Ron Rosenbaum] is one of the most original journalists and writers of our time.”
–David Remnick
In The Shakespeare Wars, Ron Rosenbaum gives readers an unforgettable way of rethinking the greatest works of the human imagination. As he did in his groundbreaking Explaining Hitler, he shakes up much that we thought we understood about a vital subject and renews our sense of excitement and urgency. He gives us a Shakespeare book like no other. Rather than raking over worn-out fragments of biography, Rosenbaum focuses on cutting-edge controversies about the true source of Shakespeare’s enchantment and illumination–the astonishing language itself. How best to unlock the secrets of its spell?
With quicksilver wit and provocative insight, Rosenbaum takes readers into the midst of fierce battles among the most brilliant Shakespearean scholars and directors over just how to delve deeper into the Shakespearean experience–deeper into the mind of Shakespeare.
Was Shakespeare the one-draft wonder of Shakespeare in Love? Or was he rather–as an embattled faction of textual scholars now argues–a different kind of writer entirely: a conscientious reviser of his greatest plays? Must we then revise our way of reading, staging, and interpreting such works as Hamlet and King Lear?
Rosenbaum pursues key partisans in these debates from the high tables of Oxford to a Krispy Kreme doughnut shop in a strip mall in the Deep South. He makes ostensibly arcane textual scholarship intensely seductive–and sometimes even explicitly sexual. At an academic “Pleasure Seminar” in Bermuda, for instance, he examines one scholar’s quest to find an orgasm in Romeo and Juliet. Rosenbaum shows us great directors as Shakespearean scholars in their own right: We hear Peter Brook–perhaps the most influential Shakespearean director of the past century–disclose his quest for a “secret play” hidden within the Bard’s comedies and dramas. We listen to Sir Peter Hall, founder of the Royal Shakespeare Company, as he launches into an impassioned, table-pounding fury while discussing how the means of unleashing the full intensity of Shakespeare’s language has been lost–and how to restore it. Rosenbaum’s hilarious inside account of “the Great Shakespeare ‘Funeral Elegy’ Fiasco,” a man-versus-computer clash, illustrates the iconic struggle to define what is and isn’t “Shakespearean.” And he demonstrates the way Shakespearean scholars such as Harold Bloom can become great Shakespearean characters in their own right.
The Shakespeare Wars offers a thrilling opportunity to engage with Shakespeare’s work at its deepest levels. Like Explaining Hitler, this book is destined to revolutionize the way we think about one of the overwhelming obsessions of our time.
Customer Reviews:
If you love Shakespeare...........2007-07-17
... then buy this book.
That's all I can really say.
Carelessness.......2007-06-17
At first, I was annoyed by the lack of citations Rosenbaum gives to Shakespeare's text but now my annoyance goes beyond that. For an example of the kind of carelessness that put me off the book turn to page 269. Here, Rosenbaum, in a discussion of lineation, quotes lines from Richard II, and states that they are from "the unmodernized FOLIO version" of the play but does not say which act and scene they are from. One has to hunt around for them. When I found them on page 353 of Hinman's Facsimile, (Page 31, second column, of the Histories), I saw that Rosenbaum does not quote the text of the Folio accurately. Rosenbaum has a comma after "too" but the 1623 Folio has a colon. He should have:
I should to Plashy too: but time will not permit,
All is uneven, and everything is left at six and seven.
He then gives the same lines as given in the Riverside edition.
I should to Plashy too,
But time will not permit. All is uneven,
And everything is left at six and seven.
He seems to have given these accurately, but again there was no citation of the act and scene where the lines come from.
On the next page, Rosenbaum writes "Not only is it an instance of the jeweled clockwork of Shakespearean verse, not only is it another instance, he [John Andrews] suggests, in which one imagines that Shakespeare may have overseen the printing in order to ensure that the expressive irregularity of the meter was persevered in the lineation...." Since Shakespeare was buried in April 1616 and the Folio was not published until 1623, the Bard must have overseen the printing in Jaggard's printing house from beyond the grave.
Perhaps Rosenbaum meant to write "Quarto" where he wrote "Folio." But even if he meant "Quarto" he still does not quote the First Quarto of Richard II (published in 1597) correctly.
"The shock of pleasure".......2007-04-24
In studying and teaching the Bard, I always wonder if I am over-praising or under-estimating Shakespeare's achievement. "Is it him or is it we who are not making sense?" (524) Rosenbaum replies we are at fault. But this is a "felix culpa," a happy fault. He energetically plows through dozens of topics revolving around reactions of critics and directors of Shakespeare. This is not a biography; Rosenbaum has choice words for Stephen Greenblatt's recent "Will in the World." Rosenbaum's dogged pace shows his journalistic knack for standing outside the "public fiascos, palace coups" of his book's subtitle, the better to examine "clashing scholars." Digging in, he holds his ground against formidable experts.
He's able to summarize Stephen Bloom's rhetorical application of antanaclasis in Sonnet 40: "like pulsating alliteration, evokes a sense of insecurity, of flux, of motion..." (471) This whole book, in fact, is Rosenbaum's effort to come to grips with a day as a grad student at Yale when he first realized this disassociation, this suspension between meanings, this either-and-or-plus-more capability that he argues Shakespeare, more than any other writer ever, at his best conveys to us. Still, this "exegetical despair" at never having enough time to get to the bottom of Shakespeare's "floating signifiers" persists.
In fact, Rosenbaum's status as a drop-out from an Ivy League doctoral program in English enables him to return to textual studies, critical debates, academic cogitation, and performance anxieties with aplomb-- and perhaps a wish to settle scores with fusty scholars and fussy thespians.
I found myself certainly eager to return to my student seminar on Lear, to pick up for the first time since college Antony & Cleopatra, or to re-discover the overlooked Troilus & Cressida. But, admittedly, the amount of detail, the intricacy of the arguments, and the rapidity with which parts of this study move too quickly all present any prospective reader of "The Shakespeare Wars" (not the best title, either) with reason to reflect. This book took me over two weeks on and off, and it demands-- as is only fair given its subject-- close attention and unwavering recall.
Often Rosenbaum sets up a point that he may not return to for hundreds of pages; he takes up as an aside concerns that far ago at a later stage in his quest to uncover Shakespeare's spell. He expects more than that elusive "generally educated reader" for you need to have read the plays he talks about. No plot summaries here; he takes what is odd for a mass-market account of the drama in that he writes at a level thankfully more accessible than the usual critic (which isn't hard these days, admittedly) but nonetheless a tone that implies on every page you need to have done as nearly an intensive scrutiny of the plays as he has had the stamina, the intellect, and the passion to pursue over thirty-five years.
The high points for me were his treatment of Shylock as performed too genteely by actors today afraid to admit that Shakespeare may have been one of his time and not above it in some universalist humanism in presenting a Jewish villain. Rosenbaum confronts Steven Berkoff and Henry Goodman, both British Jewish actors who in Rosenbaum's estimation have with varying degrees of success tried to make this play and its main character still worthy of a post-1945 performance of a drama more controversial now perhaps than it presumably in Shakespeare's London. Rosenbaum's own determination to argue for the play's antisemitism as its central and essential core despite "universalist" efforts to soften its edge make for stimulating reading.
He follows with a suitable interlude showing that Shakespeare on film for us can outshine its theatrical productions today-- by virtue of close-ups, subtle vocal expression, voiceover of soliloquys, and crafting of scenes without the stage's necessity to thunder out and soldier on for hours more. He recommends Welles' Falstaff, Burton's Hamlet, Olivier's Richard III, and Brook's Lear above all else. To his credit, he gives fair space to Harold Perrineau's stunning Mercutio in Luhrmann's Romeo; on the other hand he barely mentions Taymor's Titus, Parker's Othello, Branagh's Hamlet & Henry or Almeyredra's Hamlet although he seems to like much in them at their best. Not to mention his lack of explanation of what's good and bad in the 1980s BBC TV series that filmed for the first time the entire set of plays. Much more is needed than what his film chapter gives.
Too often, Rosenbaum mentions asides that to me proved more appealing than his main examples. I never figured out what adds up from Brook's "Secret Play" concept or the cumulative effect on stage of Cic Berry's vocal experiments in rehearsals. The Socinian heresy may have much to suggest about Merchant and Empson in "Milton's God" had much to provide about the Doctrine of Christian Satisfaction, but Rosenbaum raises such points only to then rush past them in his determination to transcribe yet another interview with an actor or director. These conversations are often enlightening, but there lurks an understandable if still awkward tendency of the journalist to put himself too forward as the antagonist, the devil's advocate, the naysayer.
There are places, as with his demolishment of Harold Bloom's ridiculous claims for Falstaff as the epitome of Shakespeare's "invention of the human" as we have inherited his conceptual paradigm, where he seems to have that personal agenda come out too much. Revenge for those Yale sherry parties when he witnessed his classmates fawning over Bloom is understandable. But it does undermine the intellectual rigor of his critique of that orotund mandarin.
Unfortunately, this hefty and handsomely designed book lacks any way to track down quotations from his sources. Bibliographic endnotes are engrossing, but the lack of specific citations for hundreds of quotes is disappointing in a book that tries to connect a wider audience to insider debates. Despite an imperfect result, this is one of the rare books that bridges the gap between the ranks of (in the phrase of one of them, Linda Charnes) "yuppie guerrilla academics" and the rest of us. Rosenbaum, for all this book's unevenness and exhausting mass of half-digested material, cares about getting us to share his enthusiasm. Pleasure-- how rarely do we find this concept at the heart of a critic's search for aesthetic wonder? Grace, infinitude, love, sea change, the abyss, forgiveness, transport outside of ourselves: Rosenbaum seeks the source of his "reader reception" by hunting down everyone he can who may guide him to the elusive source of Shakespeare's power and control over him-- and, he urges, if we wish to follow him, Shakespeare's trail blazed for us.
I don't understand, apropos, why Rosenbaum agrees with an assertion that we are the last generation who will be able to comprehend Shakespeare's language before it becomes as antiquated and inaccessible as is Chaucer's Middle English to non-specialists. He raises this point, typically, but never elaborates on it. He raves about Kevin Kline's Falstaff but skims over how Kline's acting in part 2 of Henry IV alters from part 1: a topic that previously Rosenbaum insists upon for many detailed pages. Too often, Rosenbaum seems so excited about his adventure that he forgets we have a hard time keeping up with his dash.
He's no Bardolator. Rather, he wishes us to uncover the intensity of what we read and witness as "the language of thought" as it emerges onto paper or into the spotlights. He argues for what matters in Shakespeare as an aesthetic achievement-- in fact one more apparent to those of us outside today's academy. We may be mocked by those claiming "the institutionalist debunking of the bourgeois subject" from ivory towers to speak rather for the oppressed. I teach some of these less- privileged, literarily-challenged students every day, far from the Ivy League. I'd ask Charnes: how should I teach them Shakespeare? How explain his appeal to the person next to me on the bus? Getting "ordinary folks" to understand a bit of Shakespeare's art brings the original aim of the playwright home. As one critic mentions, anyone can experience the complex reactions Rosenbaum or critics or directors know. The only difference is that the professionals know how to articulate it, and can re-experience it with increasingly adept awareness. What Wordsworth labelled as simultaneous dissassociation and association: this quality marks Shakespeare's inexhaustible, endlessly renewable "moral complexity" as well as artistic achievement.
The inexhaustability of good art may sound old-fashioned, but Rosenbaum near the opening of his book shows how Shakespeare rewards our investment-- with compound interest. For many people today, accustomed to obvious presentation of vapid messages, Shakespeare may nudge them out of their shell. They are often scared of him. Rosenbaum likewise demystifies Shakespeare for a wider audience. He understands the academic arguments and translates their findings to those of us whom scholarly articles and learned books may rarely reach: the common reader.
Fascinating, inspiring... but oh, SO irritating.......2007-03-25
Absolutely great, stimulating material. Rosenbaum has both thought deeply about Shakespeare and had the contact with leading critics and directors to make this a compelling intellectual journey that anyone with a deep interest in Shakespeare should read. In fact, I know of no similar book, one that so carefully and successfully treads the narrow line between scholarship and journalism.
All that said, the incomplete sentences irritated me increasingly as I got deeper into the book. They make the reader stumble, and they're unnecessary. Interestingly, they don't seem to be a hallmark of this writer's other work, at least judging from his compendium of essays published as The Secret Parts of Fortune. Why here, then? I have no idea, but they detracted seriously from what would otherwise be one of the best books I've read in quite a while.
Get Excited about Shakespeare...that's the Message........2007-03-23
With so many excellent books about Shakespeare, where do you start...with Harold Bloom or Ron Rosenbaum? What book would you give to the teenager who is afraid of the Bard. I would select this book, not because it contains the best analysis of the plays, but because it imparts an infectious enthusiasm that is irrepressible. Over and over again, the author talks about how HE reacts to a performance or a line or a film of the Bard...and that is good. He starts with his overwhelming experience of seeing (Peter Brook's) Midsummer Night's Dream in Britain, an experience perhaps similar to the ecstasy of St. Theresa in brushing close to God. (I never saw that performance but I was impressed with Max Reinhardt's black and white film of the DREAM produced in 1935)
Let's take an example of how he approaches Shakespeare. He rails against the recent attempts to soften Shylock and the anti-semitism of the Merchant of Venice. In response, I believe that Shylock is a deeply complex character and that the recent attempts such as Al Pacino's film performance are valid. The point is not the argument but that the author forces us to think about the issue. Again, that is good. Thus, I wholeheartedly recommend the volume to get excited about the meanings of the plays.
Ron Rosenbaum deliberately avoids discussing the biography of Shakespeare and indeed argues that much of the biographical work is counterproductive. To him what matters are Shakespeare's words, not Shakespeare's bed partners. The argument against the biographies is a point well taken. To quote the author, we don't know much about Homer yet we can still read and appreciate his Illiad and Odyssey just the same. Indeed.
Book Description
"So engrossing, clearheaded, and lucid that its arrival is not just welcome but cause for celebration."—Dan Cryer, Newsday
Stephen Greenblatt, the charismatic Harvard professor who "knows more about Shakespeare than Ben Jonson or the Dark Lady did" (John Leonard, Harper's), has written a biography that enables us to see, hear, and feel how an acutely sensitive and talented boy, surrounded by the rich tapestry of Elizabethan life—full of drama and pageantry, and also cruelty and danger—could have become the world's greatest playwright.
Bringing together little-known historical facts and little-noticed elements of Shakespeare's plays, Greenblatt makes inspired connections between the life and the works and delivers "a dazzling and subtle biography" (Richard Lacayo, Time). Readers will experience Shakespeare's vital plays again as if for the first time, but with greater understanding and appreciation of their extraordinary depth and humanity.
A best book of the year: The New York Times 10 Best Books of 2004 • Time magazine's #1 Best Nonfiction Book • A Washington Post Book World Rave • An Economist Best Book • A San Francisco Chronicle Best Book • A Christian Science Monitor Best Book • A Chicago Tribune Best Book • A Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Best Book • NPR's Maureen Corrigan's Best
Customer Reviews:
What You Will.......2007-06-23
After reading "Will in the World," Stephen Greenblatt's wonderful meditation on the life of William Shakespeare, I did something that I'd previously never done after reading a book purely for pleasure: I turned the volume over and started to re-read it -- almost all the way through. I think that says something about how riveting "Will in the World" is.
Of course, Shakespeare's life remains something of a speculative detective story, and Greenblatt keeps the reader intrigued by layering the large gaps in the playwright's personal record with what is known about his era, and then making plausible, reasonable conjectures about how the missing pieces could fit together.
But more importantly, Greenblatt's writing shares Shakespeare's zestful fascination with the English language, and it demonstrates this in ways both lucid and unpretentious. While his writing is never less than clear, Greenblatt will occasionally, and unexpectedly, thrown in an uncommon word or two that either evokes Elizabethan England or reminds the reader of the infinite treasures of written English. Also, Greenblatt discretely gives into his own way with wordplay. For example, describing the young rustic Shakespeare settling into urban London, Greenblatt writes, "He discovered what it was to pine for open country" -- "pine" not only meaning "yearn" but also evoking the rural sensation of a fresh-scented tree.
As all Shakespeare enthusiasts know, the fact that one of the world's most celebrated authors -- perhaps *the* most celebrated -- left so small a written record, outside his published works, remains one of history's great ironies. Consequently, several cottage industries have sprung up dedicated to the idea that this bumpkin businessman from backwater England, this yokel with little evidence of formal education, could not have written his language's most glorious works. Such searing insights into the human psyche and its political machinations, such a resplendent command of the English language, had to have been written by a nobleman, a university wit, a philosopher-scientist, or even Queen Elizabeth herself, anyone -- just not the land-owner from Stratford who willed his wife the second-best bed. Or so the doubters say.
I disagree. The doubters' arguments sound elitist to me. You might as well say that a boy born to a middle-class widow in Hope, Arkansas, couldn't possibly grow up to become President of the United States. Anyone as intellectually driven and self-motivated as the author of "Hamlet" and "Othello" clearly was could have honed his talents regardless of circumstances. Doubters point to the gaps in Shakespeare's historical record as "proof" that William of Stratford was not the playwright. I think those gaps are adequately explained by Shakespeare being a Catholic in a country where Protestantism was compulsory. Why should he put his innermost thoughts down on precious paper if the authorities could use those thoughts against him? Why write love letters to a wife who couldn't read, and whom he possibly didn't love? Why would Warwickshire regionalisms pop up in the poetry of a playwright born and raised elsewhere? To the Stratfordian school of authorship, the answers are obvious. The doubters respond with grandiose conspiracy theories -- ripping yarns, but about as substantial as ripped yarn.
True, Shakespeare's life-story can never be completely told, and on occasion, Greenblatt has to extrapolate enormously upon the documentary record. But his guesses are educated ones. I can imagine a new scrap of evidence complicating the picture he draws, but not erasing it entirely. And maybe new evidence will indeed emerge saying that the plays of Shakespeare are more collaborative than we now think. But "Will in the World" is more about Will's world than about the man himself. As such, the book won't be discredited anytime soon.
"Will in the World" is the kind of book that you don't want to stop reading. For me, its worst moment came when I turned the last page and Greenblatt's revels were ended.
Humble praise for a stunning book.......2007-04-12
I'm not familiar with the bard--
my reading doesn't tend that way.
Here and there I've read a word
of sonnet brief or some long play.
Awhile back, though, a book review
in the New Yorker mentioned that
a biography of sorts was new
and deserved praise for S. Greenblatt.
A Common Reader, I was piqued
with curiosity so the book I bought
and feverish page turning had me hooked
by the picture Greenblatt's pen has wrought.
Will in the World gives us all a feel
for the inner space of the World in Will.
Okay, I'm not a poet either, but this book is amazing and I'm sorry to be done with it!
saucy doubts and fears.......2007-01-08
When an historian treats a great figure of the past or touches upon the canon of literature, his or her speculative choices gain credibility to the degree that he or she controls the data.
Stephen Greenblatt's intensely speculative exploration of William Shakespeare is data-driven and anchored in a stupendous familiarity with the poet's historical moment and the documentary fund that allows us access to the time and place in which the Bard strode large across the land. Or at least across London, where his profession was and his family was not.
This is an intriguing, maddening, and informative work. Yet it's chief virtue is that it is utterly absorbing for anyone who knows Shakespeare's plays or has vowed once again this January 1st to read them.
Greenblatt's methodology is to inform himself of the minutae of Shakespeare's environs and then to canvass his works for evidence of alignment with those details. In this way, the author believes he can ferret out the influences, references, allusions, obligations, and opportunities to which 'Will' was responding with his unequalled artistry.
The result is maddening in those moments where the 'could haves' and 'might have beens' metamorphise into 'must have beens', but profoundly suggestive if one allows for a significant margin of error between Greenblatt's speculative insight and what we can actually *know*.
A lesser scholar would be entombed by the cumulative weight of his guesses. Greenblatt is elevated by them.
One glimpses through his daring and thorough scholarship possibilities for understanding this Moses of the English language that otherwise--alone and novitiate that we are--might never, must never have occurred.
What I Wish to Believe.......2006-11-21
I simply could not put this book down. I wished it would last for 1,000 pages. But, both during and after, I thought to myself, can it be really true? How much of it is fabrication based upon just minimal evidence? Well, it seems that in Shakespeare scholarship, minimal evidence defines the elusive terrain. I accept that there will always be an element of subjectivity.
In this context, to me the first test is the test of reasonable plausability. I had known some of the facts of Shakespeare's life. I knew that his dad was Bailiff of Stratford-on-Avon. But I did not know that it entailed contracting bands of players to perform morality plays...plays which were the media events of their era. To me, it is plausable that the young Will would have been exposed through them to the experience of theater....and plausable also, their effect on a highly attentive young mind.
The aesthetic evolution of Will was a second plausability test. In his plays, he was fully able to poke fun at the common people, while also displaying a kind of duality towards them from the sophisticated perpective of nobility. Greenblatt employs the plays themseves to sift attitudes. The key attitude here, as in "A Mid-Summer Night's Dream", is that Will skillfully finds a way to give a subtle preferential affirmation to the former, even over the latter. He exposes the special charm of the play's whole conceit.
How could this extraordinary ability have evolved? From the rote learning of his schoolboy Latin immersion, to the crude directness of the morality plays, to the traditional nature festivals, Will's exposure to the lively imagination of his commoner culture, in all its joys and foibles, is convincing.
Less provable, was his proposed exposure to higher education and theater, through his mother's noble Arden relatives.....and a sparse written clue of inheritance of the actor's costume, upon which Greenblatt's thesis hangs. All I can say is that, as ablely presented, it seems quite believeable. The fact that Greenblatt is laboring a bit here, did not disturb me, for I fully expected any thesis would have its challenges.
And finally, the wonderful chapter on the "Dream of Resotration", a key theme in many of Will's plays, has very clear parallels to the precipitous decline of his father's fortunes.....a documented truth, that must have had signficant impact on Will's life view. Will's dad, a Greenblatt elicited Fallstaffian character, falls from grace; falls from prominence in real life, with real consequences for the young Shakespeare.
Throughout, Greenblatt employs the scant facts we know, and the expressions Will artfully presented, with his own kind of mature humanist imagination, to precipitate the emotions that plausably might have driven the actions and decisions of Shakespeare and the real people in his life. That Shakespeare of all people, would have been keeenly rooted to these, to me, is absolutely beyond doubt.
Greenblatt's assumption of this vision is certainly not flawless, as it is subject to its own contemporary set of values and assumptions, but as a comprehensive logical construction, it's the most compelling vision of the person of Shakespeare, that I have so far read.
Where's a will...........2006-11-10
This is an excellent book, well written and full of facts. Not facts about the plays, but about Shakespeare's England. It follows the course of Shakespeare's life, what was going on around him and the plays he wrote at the time.
Average customer rating:
- Watch for this Author she's a Gem!
- Diane Stanley Is The Queen Of Longer Picturebook Biographies
- Excellent children's biography
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Bard of Avon: The Story of William Shakespeare
Peter Vennema
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ASIN: 0688162940
Release Date: 1998-08-27 |
Book Description
William Shakespeare was the son of a glovemaker, a small-town boy with a grammar school education. Yet he grew up to become the greatest English-speaking playwright in the world. Bard of Avon: The Story of William Shakespeare is both his story and that of a great art rediscovered in the modern world.
Drama had been forgotten since the days of ancient Greece, but it reemerged in Elizabethan London with the building of the first modern theater. Its impact can still be imagined today. There were the theaters, open to the weather and featuring neither sets nor curtains, but equipped with dramatic special effects. There were the companies of actors--the leading men, the comedians, the boys who played women's roles--and the playwrights who gave them all lines to say.
Best of all, there was William Shakespeare, who rubbed shoulders with noblemen and royalty as well as with the rowdy crowds at the foot of the stage. He was suspected of involvement in a treasonous rebellion, and his last play literally brought down the house when cannon effects set fire to the famous Globe theater and it burned to the ground.
Award-winning collaborators Diane Stanley and Peter Vennema have once again created a feast of words and pictures to celebrate the life of a remarkable person from the pages of history: William Shakespeare, a man for all time."
Customer Reviews:
Watch for this Author she's a Gem!.......2003-08-23
This author was new to us and we will be looking for her from now on. The pictures are sooo wonderful they transport you. The information is well done and clear, yet not watered done. This is someone that REALLY understands writing books for children that adults can enjoy using as teachers or parents. I recently bought alot of books on Shakespeare, for use in the school room this year and we have found 4 authors that made the grade on this subject! This is a keeper!
Diane Stanley Is The Queen Of Longer Picturebook Biographies.......2000-06-21
Stanley is a masterful writer/illustrator when it comes to creating longer picturebook biographies (with heavier text). Her bios on da Vinci, Cleopatra and Shakespeare are fabulous. It amazes me that she has not won a Caldecott Honor yet! I can't wait to see her bio about Michelangelo!
Excellent children's biography.......2000-06-01
Our family has recently discovered the wonderful Peter Vennema/Diane Stanley biographies. They are vivid, engaging, and thorough, yet short enough for younger readers to sit through (my daughters are 4 and 6). Bard of Avon and Good Queen Bess are our favorites so far, and they go very well together since neither Shakespeare nor Queen Elizabeth would have been the same without the other. Unlike other histories or biographies for children, this book makes a destinction between what we know about Shakespeare's life and times and what are only guesses. It is nice for children to see that the study of history is not just memorizing facts and dates, but piecing together clues in the context of what is known about a time period. As a former high school English teacher, I wish that I had had this book when I was teaching Shakespeare plays because it would have been a wonderful introduction.
Book Description
1599 was an epochal year for Shakespeare and England
Shakespeare wrote four of his most famous plays: Henry the Fifth, Julius Caesar, As You Like It, and, most remarkably, Hamlet; Elizabethans sent off an army to crush an Irish rebellion, weathered an Armada threat from Spain, gambled on a fledgling East India Company, and waited to see who would succeed their aging and childless queen.
James Shapiro illuminates both Shakespeare's staggering achievement and what Elizabethans experienced in the course of 1599, bringing together the news and the intrigue of the times with a wonderful evocation of how Shakespeare worked as an actor, businessman, and playwright. The result is an exceptionally immediate and gripping account of an inspiring moment in history.
Download Description
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An intimate history of Shakespeare, following him through a single year -- 1599 -- that changed not only his fortunes but the course of literature
How was Shakespeare transformed from being a talented poet and playwright to become one of the greatest writers who ever lived? In this one exhilarating year we follow what he reads and writes, what he sees, and whom he works with as he invests in the new Globe Theatre and creates four of his most famous plays --
Henry the Fifth,
Julius Caesar,
As You Like It, and, most remarkably,
Hamlet.
James Shapiro illuminates both Shakespeare's staggering achievement and what Elizabethans experienced in the course of 1599: sending off an army to crush an Irish rebellion, weathering an Armada threat from Spain, gambling on the fledgling East India Company, and waiting to see who would succeed their aging and childless queen.
This book brings the news and intrigue of the times together with a wonderful evocation of how Shakespeare worked as an actor, businessman, and playwright. The result is an exceptionally immediate and gripping account of an inspiring moment in history.
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Customer Reviews:
A Magnficent Account Of Shakespeare's Annus Mirabilis.......2007-08-04
While we have his magnificent plays and poetry, we know little about Shakespeare the man. We have the dry details of his birth, marriage, and death, the birth and death of his children, his education at Stratford Grammar School, his will, and some business and legal records. We can infer a little from what others wrote about him, especially in the 1623 First Folio; and we can extrapolate a bit more from what we know of the London theater scene and its denizens during the Elizabethan period. But the stuff of a real biography -- what Shakespeare was thinking, feeling, and experiencing during his life -- perforce are matters only for speculation.
It is truly remarkable, therefore, that Professor Shapiro uses this small heap of facts to bring Shakespeare brilliantly to life. Shapiro focuses on Shakespeare's life during 1599, which Shapiro forcefully argues was the year Shakespeare began his transformation into one of the greatest dramatists of all time. It was a year in which Shakespeare and his partners built the Globe Theatre where the Chamberlains Men / Kings Men would perform for the rest of his career. It was also the year in which Shakespeare ground out masterpieces in all three of his genres of history, comedy, and tragedy: Henry V, Julius Caesar, As You Like It, and Hamlet. Linking his sensitive and erudite explications of these plays to contemporary political developments (such as the bogged-down English invasion of Ireland and the threat of Spanish invasion), occurrences in the rapidly changing Elizabethan theater world (e.g., the diminishing roles of clowns like Shakespeare's partners Will Kemp and Robert Armin), literary trends (such as the development of self-expository monologue in Montaigne's essays and Shakespeare's soliloquies) and events in Shakespeare's own life (e.g., his quest for middle-class status as evidenced by his application for a coat of arms), Professor Shapiro paints a colorfully vibrant portrait of Shakespeare and the competitive theater business in which Shakespeare became so prominent as both a creator and an entrepreneur.
I don't know enough about Shakespeare to have an independent opinion about whether Shapiro overstates the case for the crucial nature of the year 1599. However, I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Although a product of deep learning, it is beautifully written and compellingly readable, and makes Shakespearean scholarship accessible even to a general reader like me. It also made me want to read many of the plays again, which I haven't since school days. Whether you love the Bard, or haven't thought much about him since you were forced to read the plays in school, this book is a wonderful and essential companion to Shakespeare's works.
a magnificent book; clear, detailed and lucid........2007-07-12
A joy to read.
This is a magnificent book; clear, detailed and lucid.
Much has been said already about this book. It gives a very clear insight into Elizabethan London towards the end of Elizabeth's reign. As a student of the Bard, Shapiro performs well in widening the discussion to mention the theatre-going habits of plebs and aristocracy alike; how Shakespeare and his players would have attended palaces which informed his works. Shapiro notes the echoes of Catholicism, the threat of another Spanish invasion, the deeply unsettling rebellion in Ireland, even the confusion over the calendar and holy/national days. Given the difficulties and expense of publishing in the 1600's, I suppose it is possible to read every individual item published in 1599, and the comprehensiveness of the author's grasp of Elizabethan London, makes me believe he may have done so.
All told extremely well, he plots Shakespeare's emergence as a serious playwright, who eschews the popular trivialities and takes on large questions of politics and personality.
I was less impressed with the later discussions of Shakespere's rewrites of the great plays of 1599, however it is a work of great learning, synopsized very well and told in an engaging style.
1599 - it was "a very good year" .......2007-03-23
In this insightful and innovative book, Shapiro adopts the reverse approach to the usual. Instead of analysing the plays to find the man, he explores the life to illuminate the plays. The result is a revelation of both.
A Prologue describes the building of the Globe from timbers secretly transported across the Thames by Shakespeare and Co. from The Theatre (on which the lease had expired). Then Shapiro trains his lens on 1599, dividing it into its four "seasons". Maintaining dynamic readability throughout, each season deals with a set of preoccupations at national, professional, and personal levels:
1. Winter - Shakespeare's artistic differences with his comic star, Will Kemp; the run-up to Essex's Ireland campaign, with mobilisation and departure - as well as pacifism.
2. Spring - logistics of building the Globe; censorship, book-burning and history; the appropriation of religious holidays for politcal purposes.
3. Summer - paranoia in London with rumours of a second Armada invasion); Shakespeare's anguish at an unauthorised, cobbled-together edition of his poems; sincerity, fakery, and learning the true nature of love.
4. Autumn - the decline of chivalric values and rise of empire via merchant-adventurers and the East India Company; the impact of Montaigne's essays on soliloquies; and finally, an elucidation of how the various versions of "Hamlet" reveal Shakespeare's changing view of this most problematic play.
Shapiro correlates these topics with the themes and language of Henry V, Julius Caesar, As You Like It, and Hamlet (the four dramas Shakespeare wrote in 1599). He also provides us with details so unexpected as to be poignant - for example, Shakespeare changing horses while riding home to Stratford. These touches reveal what critics formerly called "Shakespeare the Man" - but there's minimal speculation here, with skilful deployment of primary sources. Also the texture of Elizabethan court and civic life is stunningly evoked.
So we have the feeling of moving through the year "in real time" with Shakespeare. Daringly illuminating, this will make you critically re-evaluate not only Shakespeare, but other biographies and criticism. Well done indeed.
"Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose" and Other Lessons.......2007-01-16
"No," I tell my students, "Shakespeare did not write in Old English. Beowulf was written in Old English. Chaucer wrote the Canterbury Tales in Middle English. Shakespeare's language was firmly in the Modern English linguistic period." I then confess the obvious, that the language has indeed changed in the four centuries since Shakespeare wrote, but, as Shapiro's book clearly demonstrates, much else in society has not. Such demonstrations, while not Shapiro's goal, are, to me, among the strong points of his book, so let's take a peek at those first, shall we?
Looking at the year 1599 in Elizabethan England, we are struck by more than a few parallels with contemporary world affairs. We see a national leader intent on invading another country, Ireland in the earlier case. We observe ill-starred Essex leading an invading army which utterly fails to subdue the Irish. We look on in astonishment as the English quake in fear of a reported Spanish invasion and as they block the streets of London with chains and illuminate the night with burning lamps to thwart enemy infiltration under cover of darkness. Potentially, of course, that may have been somewhat more pragmatic than creating a new government department and a rainbow-hued series of "threat levels." One can only recall the French axiom "Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose," or "The more things change, the more they stay the same." Little in human nature, it seems, has changed in the past four hundred years.
Shapiro's book also helps pierce the mask of literary demigod behind which Shakespeare has been hidden by generations of admiring teachers and bewildered students. We see a man who produced plays through hard labor and laborious revision. We come to appreciate that Shakespeare was a businessman with an eye toward profitability, even when such was perhaps not completely legal or ethical. In this, he was certainly a man of his time, for the proto-capitalist British West Indies Company also got its start during this period.. With another eye toward profit, he and his fellow investors literally made off with the timbers from another theater to build the Globe that has become synonymous with his plays, although of course many other plays were enacted there as well. And speaking of enactments, Shapiro reminds us that Shakespeare was an actor as well as an investor and a playwright, and suggests some of the parts that the author very likely reserved for himself.
Reading Shapiro, one comes to appreciate the political realities of late 16th century England as well. In an era when writing that was perceived to be critical of the monarchy or to justify assassination or usurpation was banned and when books were burned, one simply did not publish Julius Caesar in Elizabeth's realm. Writing that portrayed the rise of republicanism at the expense of monarchical rule simply did not appear without retribution. Such insights as these make Shapiro's book a rewarding experience for those seeking to understand the social, economic, political, and intellectual milieu which formed both Shakespeare and his dramatic creations.
The book, however, is not an unmitigated joy to read. I found my interest in Shapiro's text waxing and waning, being the strongest when he delves into historical events such as the invasion of Ireland, Essex's failed leadership of the military and his devolution from trusted general to seditious and condemned prisoner, the panic among both government and citizenry over the reported Spanish invasion with its "Invisible Armada," and other facts, such as the common practice of plagiarism among authors of the day, including Shakespeare himself, the "inconvenient" fact that copyrights were owned by publishers, not by authors, and the annoyance that Shakespeare surely felt when he discovered some of his sonnets, which he circulated only privately among a few friends, featured in a book along with others of various quality but all attributed to him! My interest does tend to wane when Shapiro departs from his historical writing to immerse us with his qualitative descriptions of the plays whose compositions he ascribes to 1599: Henry the Fifth, Julius Caesar, As You Like It, and Hamlet; his vocabulary and syntax become somewhat dense and obfuscated when he lapses into literary analysis; moreover, that aspect of the book does not appear to be delivering what the title has promised.
My other disappointment lies in the "bibliographical essay" that consumes forty-one pages of the book. Entries are arranged by chapter and discussion topic within each chapter and are hidden within a structure of sentences and paragraphs. A simple alphabetical bibliography would have been far more usable and beneficial for the reader interested in Shapiro's sources and related works.
As far as a recommendation is concerned, I would truly regret seeing this book become assigned reading for high school or university students whose interest in Shakespearean drama and in 16th century England in general is tenuous at best. While informative for them, the writing is not sufficiently captivating to ensnare their attention and appreciation, and is likely to be considered another bit of drudgery foisted upon them by an educational system out of touch with reality. Moreover, for the well-read Shakespearean scholar and Elizabethan historian, I doubt that the book contains any revelations that have not been encountered in other sources. However, for the general reader and for the student who enjoys filling in all of the massive gaps in understanding that persist despite high school diplomas and university degrees, Shapiro's book does give a most helpful, interesting, and usually readable overview of the society that formed Shakespeare and that determined the style and tenor of his long-lived literary creations. If one is at all curious about the "life and times" of William Shakespeare, then the book is certainly worth its purchase price and, more importantly, it is worth the time and effort expended in reading it.
shakespeare in 1599.......2007-01-03
Superb look at the bard in one of his most productive years. Places Shakespeare firmly in his times. Highly recommended.
Book Description
Wandering through Paris's Left Bank one day, poor and unemployed, Canadian reporter Jeremy Mercer ducked into a little bookstore called Shakespeare Co. Mercer bought a book, and the staff invited him up for tea. Within weeks, he was living above the store, working for the proprietor, George Whitman, patron saint of the city's down-and-out writers, and immersing himself in the love affairs and low-down watering holes of the shop's makeshift staff. Time Was Soft There is the story of a journey down a literary rabbit hole in the shadow of Notre Dame, to a place where a hidden bohemia still thrives.
Customer Reviews:
Welcome to Bohemia.......2007-07-17
I happened on this book in an English-language bookstore in Paris during a recent trip (not Shakespeare & Co., if they had it, I didn't see it), and I'm glad I did. It was the perfect read for my journey. I've been to S & Co many times, but had no idea there was a whole down-the-rabbit-hole bohemian lifestyle associated with the place (complete with mad tea parties). Mercer's book brings that little world to life and leaves you thinking that bohemia sounds magical--but you just don't know if you could do without a daily shower. A must-read for lovers of Paris and books.
Just okay.......2007-07-03
I was excited to get my teeth into this memoir but found it ultimately a little disappointing. There are some nice passages describing Whitman and his crazy personality, but I finished 'Time Was Soft There' with the feeling that Mercer had filled it out in order to have enough material for a book. Considering the literary culture of the shop, and the legacy of the authors that passed through it, there is something off-putting about this.
Great character study of both Store and Store Proprietor.......2007-05-07
I've had the pleasure of visiting Shakespeare & Co. on my many visits to Paris in the last decade. George was always in place at the front desk, waiting (if you can call it that) on the store's patrons. He was delightful, if you were respectful of the books and the other people in the store.
But he could also exhibit a certain crankiness and excentricity. I once saw a young customer ask how much a particular book was, and George opened the book, saw no price tag anywhere, and answered, "oh, about 35 francs." The young man then looked aghast at that price (which was about 7 bucks at the time), and replied, "What?! That much?" To which George snatched the book out of this guy's hand and tossed it over his shoulder. He spat at the would-be customer, "Forget it. You can't have it. You don't deserve to read it." The guy was then unceremoniously shown the door.
This personal antedote pretty much sums up George and the bookstore planted on the lovely Left Bank of the Seine.
Jeremy Mercer captures much of the feeling and tone of Shakespere & Co. during that time, while also writing a lovely - yet unvarished - portrait of owner, George Whitman.
A good read, whether you've visited the Paris location or not.
A Novel Novel.......2007-02-07
Escaping circumstances stemming from position life as an Ottawa crime reporter which have endangered his life, 28 year old Mercer runs to Paris. Broke, he is invited to tea at Shakespeare and Co., the small Left Bank bookstore which "is a socialist utopia masquerading as a bookstore". In exchange for unpaid labor, Whitman, the owner, allows struggling writers to live in the bookstore. Mercer takes up residence in the upstairs library, and experiences modern-day Bohemian Paris, "drunk on alcohol, drunk on Paris, drunk on our sudden new lives, we felt for all the world like the best of friends" (p. 161).
This book is a must for anyone who loves books, writing, independent bookstores, and Paris after the liberation-the Paris of romance, intrigue, freedom and creativity.
The one major flaw with the book is that it is hard to like Mercer, the narrator. Mercer begins his story by describing how he betrayed one of his friends, spent all his money on alcohol, drugs, and a BMW. And Mercer isn't in Paris to redeem himself. Mercer has a convenient way of painting his story around his personal acts of heroism instead of the heroics of the store. Mercer paints George Whitman as an eccentric who needs to be saved-by Mercer of course. The poet living in the antiquarian room is saved by Mercer. Fires are put out by Mercer. Passports are found by Mercer. Daughters are found by Mercer. Drunken brawls are broken up by Mercer. Mercer takes a punch in the face. The store is going to be saved by Mercer via Oprah. In this story, everyone is a big mess and Mercer is mana from heaven. Accordingly, some of the writing feels a bit affected. Mercer is trying way too hard to find the story here. Just having lived through something doesn't make a writer. It's similar to the people who think they've got a story to tell because they ran with the bulls in Spain like Hemingway.
Mercer's writing and psychology are heavily influenced by his crime reporting days. The first line of the book is "It was a grey winter's Sunday when I came into the bookstore." That kind of line seems extremely passe to me-the beginning of airport crime fiction, not a story about one of the greatest bookstores in the world. You get the feeling Mercer became a crime reporter to be a savior-it's the same mentality that his brought him to Shakespeare and Company and it dictates this story. Nurses tend to develop a sort of munchausen syndrome. After reading this book I tend to think that crime reporters have a similar sort of affliction. They place themselves in situations and places where they can play hero. I think the story of Shakespeare and Company is amazing, but I am not sure Mercer delivers it well.
Still, the story is a unique and quick read.
Stepping Back in Time...........2007-01-14
Reading Mercer's memoir was like stepping back in time for me. I've been to George's book store many times, but it's been a few years. So reading his accurate account was a wonderful return back to a special place.
I came across George and his book store in the early 90's and when I questioned if he had a book about Kiki and her memoirs, the answer I got from George was, "Come to the tea party Sunday afternoon." It was an experience I'll never forget and Mercer described that tea party perfectly....sitting there wide-eyed, trying to figure out what it was all about.
I enjoyed his book tremendously and my only regret was that it had to end. I also wanted to give Mercer credit for "tying up loose ends" in regard to George, the book store and George's daughter, Sylvia. It was a great ending with good information. I'll be back in Paris in 9 weeks and very much look forward to a return visit to the book shop with Sylvia now in charge.
If you love Paris or are planning a trip there....you won't be disappointed in this piece of history. It's the first book I've come across with so much detail and info on George Whitman.....who just happened to be raised in my hometown, Salem, Mass.
Book Description
John Wilders - literary advisor to the BBC TV Shakespeare series - brings thorough scholarship and a practical understanding of performance needs to this new edition. Clarity, accessibility and rigour are the hallmarks of an edition which will provide invaluable guidance for all its readers. "This edition has a very helpful introduction and good clear text, as well as the exceptionally excellent and detailed notes." Dr Michael Herbert, St Andrews University 'Â…a useful treatment of a complex play' Barry Gaines, University of New Mexico, Shakespeare Quarterly
Customer Reviews:
A readable and helpful edition of this amazing play.......2004-06-07
This is a play full of fascinating characters who are themselves full of pride, avarice, lust, and lies. Octavian, the youngest of the triumvirate with Lepidus and Antony, proves out why he is Caesar with a cold efficiency that makes all tyrants proud. Antony, Herculean character though he claims to be, plays the fool for Cleopatra, and Cleopatra plays the role of Cleopatra with smoke and mirrors. Her famous suicide is actually her triumph and apotheosis of the character she created.
Poor Pompey refused to seize the reins of power through dishonorable murder, and yet receives the same from those he spared. And how many of the attendants to the principles themselves die in this play? We have poisonings, beatings, and death from shame.
This edition is quite fine as we expect from Arden. The notes are extremely helpful to understand the locations and context of this play with its wide-ranging locales and dozens of scenes that fly from place to place. Of course, the notes that help with the language and text emendations are wonderfully done. The longer notes are put in the back.
The first quarter of the book is an extended essay on various aspects of this play that ranges from its origin, performance issues and how they were handled over the centuries, and problems of the text. It is a wonderfully useful essay that added a lot to my enjoyment of reading the play.
This is part of the third Arden series of the Shakespeare plays and is very readable and I enjoyed it a great deal.
Amazon.com
"Personality, in our sense, is a Shakespearean invention, and is not only Shakespeare's greatest originality but also the authentic cause of his perpetual pervasiveness." So Harold Bloom opines in his outrageously ambitious Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human. This is a titanic claim. But then this is a titanic book, wrought by a latter-day critical colossus--and before Bloom is done with us, he has made us wonder whether his vision of Shakespeare's influence on the whole of our lives might not be simply the sober truth. Shakespeare is a feast of arguments and insights, written with engaging frankness and affecting immediacy. Bloom ranges through the Bard's plays in the probable order of their composition, relating play to play and character to character, maintaining all the while a shrewd grasp of Shakespeare's own burgeoning sensibility.
It is a long and fascinating itinerary, and one littered with thousands of sharp insights. Listen to Bloom on Romeo and Juliet: "The Nurse and Mercutio, both of them audience favorites, are nevertheless bad news, in different but complementary ways." On The Merchant of Venice: "To reduce him to contemporary theatrical terms, Shylock would be an Arthur Miller protagonist displaced into a Cole Porter musical, Willy Loman wandering about in Kiss Me Kate." On As You Like It: "Rosalind is unique in Shakespeare, perhaps indeed in Western drama, because it is so difficult to achieve a perspective upon her that she herself does not anticipate and share." Bloom even offers some belated vocational counseling to Falstaff, identifying him as an Elizabethan Mr. Chips: "Falstaff is more than skeptical, but he is too much of a teacher (his true vocation, more than highwayman) to follow skepticism out to its nihilistic borders, as Hamlet does."
In the end, it doesn't matter very much whether we agree with all or any of these ideas. What does matter is that Bloom's capacious book sends us hurrying back to some of the central texts of our civilization. "The ultimate use of Shakespeare," the author asserts, "is to let him teach you to think too well, to whatever truth you can sustain without perishing." Bloom himself has made excellent use of his hero's instruction, and now he teaches us all to do the same. --Daniel Hintzsche
Book Description
The New York Times bestseller from Harold Bloom...
A National Book Award Finalist, National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, and a Publishers Weekly best book of the year.
"The indispensable critic on the indispensable writer."--Geoffrey O'Brien, New York Review of Books
A landmark achievement as expansive, erudite, and passionate as its renowned author, Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human is the culmination of a lifetime of reading, writing about, and teaching Shakespeare. Preeminent literary critic Harold Bloom leads us through a comprehensive reading of every one of the dramatist's plays, brilliantly illuminating each work with unrivaled warmth, wit and insight. At the same time, Bloom presents one of the boldest theses of Shakespearean scholarships--that Shakespeare not only invented the English language, but also created human nature as we know it today.
* A New York Times bestseller
* A National Book Award Finalist
* A National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist
* A New York Times Notable Book
* One of Publishers Weekly's Best Books of the Year
* A Main Selection of the Book-of-the-Month Club
* An ALA Booklist Editors Choice for 1998
* The culmination of Bloom's celebrated career--a long-awaited, complete assessment of his most beloved subject
* Includes in-depth readings of every Shakespeare play
* An essential reference volume for every home and school library
"A huge cloak-bag of ideas...It is a feast."--Wall Street Journal
"An enraptured, incantatory epic...dazzling...You could hardly ask for a more capacious and beneficent work than Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human."--The New Yorker
"A fiercely argued exegesis of Shakespeare's plays in the tradition of Samuel Johnson, Hazlitt, and A.C. Bradley, a study that is as passionate as it is erudite." --Michiko Kakutani, New York Times
"Bloom has given us the crowning achievement of his career...If any piece of literary criticism can have a practical effect--on our stage and imaginations--this is the one."--Salon
"Should this be the one book you read if you're going to read one book about Shakespeare? Yes."--The New York Observer
"Bloom...is a master entertainer." --Newsweek
"Very nearly perfect."--Kirkus
Customer Reviews:
Inspiring .He teaches us the love of great literature .......2007-08-08
Bloom is the great literary critic of our day, the master reader of our greatest literature. Shakespeare has always been for him the central figure of our literary tradition, the one who by far created the most. In his play by play analysis of Shakespeare Bloom argues that Shakespeare invented our present day conception of the human. He is the one who allowed our own inner minds to speak on the page. He is the one who created characters of flexibility and breadth beyond those we had known before. Bloom writes with inspiration as he exalts Rosalind, Falstaff, Hamlet, his major favorites and hosts of others. Bloom does what a great critic is supposed to do he gives us a far richer and greater sense of the work than we had before. He makes us eager to know it more.
Ah, Professor Bloom..........2007-01-29
I have to admit up front that I like reading Harold Bloom. I don't always agree with him and I often find his pronouncements on this, that and the other quite arrogant and short-sighted. On the other hand, his opinions often challenge me to consider my own and I respect his decades of grappling with the Bard and the history of Shakespearean criticism. As a fellow sufferer of Bardolatry, I feel I can sympathize with the man.
And what of this book? Well, it is quite the tome. Containing analysis of each of Shakespeare's plays, it's a test of endurance. Anyone who isn't familiar with the vast majority of Shakespeare's plays would be advised, perhaps, to read the introductory essays and dip into those chapters on the plays he knows.
As for myself, having read and seen most of the plays in the canon, I read the book through. In every chapter I found something valuable and I wouldn't have missed reading it for the world. When he feels a character is interesting or important--Iago, Cleopatra, Rosalind, Lear to name a few--he can wax practically poetic in his insight. The things that don't interest him he dismisses out of hand with a cutting remark or ignores entirely.
Still, to be frank, reading too much of this at once can be tiresome. In large doses it is like listening to the grumblings of an old man who feels his time is past and he doesn't get the respect he deserves anymore. He hasn't seen a performance of Shakespeare he's liked in thirty or more years. He rejects all modern forms of criticism and interpretation. His obsession with Hamlet and, in particular, Falstaff, finds its way into the discussion of practically every play. I love Hamlet almost as much as Bloom but even I got tired of him as he appeared time and again. As for Falstaff: there can be no doubt he is a great character; however I think it takes a man of Bloom's age to rate him so far above many of the other Shakespearean characters.
And as for Bloom's assertion that Shakespeare invented the human as we know it? Well, that may be pushing it a bit far for my taste but I take his point. The introspective nature and universality of Shakespeare's greatest characters was revolutionary. Certainly many important thinkers after him have found in Shakespeare the inspiration for ideas that have impacted our world. Our world--and most definitely our theater--would be different had Shakespeare never written. Still, would the nature of human beings be so very different? I remain unconvinced.
Ah, but Bloom makes it easy to argue with him. He invites it. And I enjoy the debate. If one can ignore the provocative prose and rake for the gems, these are pages worth mining. I, for one, am glad I did.
great, but not your only book on Shakespeare.......2006-12-16
I teach Shakespeare despite not having studied literature or English in college. I find several books very useful to me, this one among them. If you're reading Shakespeare for pleasure, you've almost got to use this as a companion to the plays. Bloom is a critic and commentator you should not miss, perhaps destined to be remembered in the same class as Samuel Johnson. His take on the plays is generally idiosyncratic and always thought-provoking and insightful.
On the other hand, this should not be your only companion to Shakespeare. If you're only going to have one--and why would you?--I think you'd have to choose Marjorie Garber's "Shakespeare After All." I always consult that one before Bloom, because she offers a more fundamental analysis, while Bloom jumps right into his opinions. It is almost true to say that Bloom's book is as much about Bloom as it is about Shakespeare, and if that sounds critical, then for the record Bloom is one who can pull that off.
If you are an undergraduate and especially if you are a high school student, you won't go wrong with Garber, though Bloom alone might lead you astray. If you can read both, great; if not, Garber. I also commend Cliffs Notes to any student who struggles with line-by-line comprehension. (I know that other teachers don't do that, and I think they're really just being snobs. Really, Shakespeare is great fun if you understand, and if not, then you've got to do something, haven't you?)
Finally, if you want a deeper discussion of various issues (history, religion, interpretation, staging etc...), the Cambridge Companions are excellent.
Incidently, the subtitle is misleading. Bloom's "invention" thesis is hardly the subject matter of the book. He spends maybe 3 pages on it, not doing the historical analysis such a thesis would require, but merely heaping hyperbole upon hyperbole in praise of Shakespeare. We don't read Shakespeare, Shakespeare reads us... and so on. It's simply an excuse, as if he needed one, to publish his thoughts on all of Shakespeare's plays.
Erudite and satisfying.......2006-12-07
For what it's worth, I love this book. It's my first choice for another point of view of the Bard. As a burgeoning Bardolator, it's wonderful to hear such an enthusiastic perspective on any and every play. The book is ambitious, erudite, and satisfying. There are, of course, occasional moments of bombast, but this is an immense book--both in scope as well as subject. The pretentious title is explained in pieces throughout every essay, though never as succinctly as "Shakespeare invented the human because..." Still, I readily and heartily recommend this book for anyone who is interested in another view of Shakespeare. It is not a simple read, but it should fit in for any well informed reader or college student. I would only recommend it to highly ambitious high school aged kids who aren't afraid of looking up words in the dictioary (e.g. propleptic).
Lit Crit for Lit Crits.......2006-10-21
Now don't get me wrong: I'm all in favor of Bloom's now-unfashionable liberal-humanist method of interpretation arising, as it must, from balancing wide experience with close reading. In fact, I'm in favor of any critical approach that illuminates, appreciates, elucidates, and speculates, as long as it's coherent and interesting to read. I agree with Bloom that contemporary criticism has become mostly an unreadable, hidebound, tendentious parody of itself written, primarily to earn tenure, written largely by embittered academics who are mad as hell that they have so little influence on the ways of the world.
Others may disagree.
Yet, for all Bloom's specialized knowledge and obvious passion for Shakespeare, his magnum opus poorly serves the purposes of good criticism. Who is he writing for? Other critics, it would seem. To appreciate Bloom's book, unlike the work of, say, Harold Goddard, whose name Bloom invokes as a model, you have to know plenty about Shakespeare already. Thhis isn't a book for beginners.
You also need to overlook Bloom's tendency toward vagueness and lack of cohesiveness. Granted, there's so much even one writer can say about Shakespeare that it's difficult to write tightly and concisely, but Bloom's commentaries do seem to ramble with insufficient emphases and rather hazy direction. I felt a less than agreeable mixture of tedium, annoyance, and uncertainty as I read Bloom's "Shakespeare." It's hard to believe he's writing about the Western world's most read, most honored, most brilliant, most resourceful author. The excitement that Bloom felt as a youngster reading the plays and the poems for the first time just doesn't come through. His initial enthusiasm has morphed into deep and abstract thought that only another literary critic will appreciate. And, of course, not all of them.
This would have been a great book if somebody else had written it. Somebody like the now-derided but wonderfully readable A.C. Bradley, whose work on Shakespearean tragedy is still in print and still great after one hundred years. (When Bradley wastes your time - an exaggeration, really - by speculating, for example, on how many children Lady Macbeth really had, he has the courtesy to do so in an appendix.) It seems symptomatic of their approaches that Bradley, also a liberal critic, was overwhelmed by how closely Shakespeare got his characters to resemble us. For Bloom, it's vice versa. If you think that's an interesting idea (and it is), don't get your hopes too high: it gets submerged, like most of Bloom's interesting ideas, in the enclosing sea of rumination.
Book Description
In a magnificent feat of re-creating sixteenth-century London and Stratford, bestselling biographer and novelist Peter Ackroyd brings William Shakespeare to life in the manner of a contemporary rather than a biographer. Following his magisterial and ingenious re-creations of the lives of Chaucer, Dickens, T. S. Eliot, William Blake, and Sir Thomas More, Ackroyd delivers his crowning achievement with this definitive and imaginative biographical masterpiece.
Thousands of books have been written about the playwright, but none has borne Ackroyd’s unique and accessible stamp. His method is to position the playwright in the context of his world, exploring everything from Stratford’s humble town to its fields of wildflowers; discerning influences on the plays from unexpected quarters; and entering London with the playwright as modern theatre, as we know it, is just beginning to emerge.
Writing as though we are observing Shakespeare and his circle of friends, patrons, managers, and fellow actors and writers, Ackroyd is able to see Shakespeare's genius from within, so we feel that Ackroyd the writer merges with Shakespeare the writer, the poet, the man; and thus with great sympathy and clarity we experience the way in which Shakespeare worked.
Shakespeare: The Biography is quite unlike other more analytic biographies that have been written. Rather, Peter Ackroyd has used his skill, his extraordinary knowledge, and his historical intuition to craft this major full-scale book on one of the most towering figures of the English language.
Customer Reviews:
Superb.......2007-10-14
The following is a review of the Audiobook version of Peter Ackroyd's "Shakespeare: The Biography" read by Simon Vance.
The hallmark of a good biography is the author's ability to breathe life into both his subject and the time and place his subject lived. It isn't enough to tell the story of a man if you fail to put that man in his proper context Peter Ackroyd has a gift for bringing both his subject (for example, see The Life of Thomas More) and a time and place (for example, see London: The Biography) alive.
In "Shakespeare: The Biography" Ackroyd brilliant re-creates the milieu of both Stratford-on-Avon and London by culling a great deal of source material. Ackroyd captures both the startling seditious plots against Elizabeth I as well as the mundane land transfers and legal court cases of the day.
In rendering Shakespeare, Ackroyd makes amply sure the reader is aware that there is not much material (other than his collected works) to which to draw from. When Ackroyd is positing a hypothesis about the whereabouts or the attitudes of Shakespeare, he alerts the reader that he is doing so. He provides the evidence for which he posits his hypothesis and even offers alternatives and allows the reader to choose.
"Shakespeare: The Biography" turns out to be just as much a "biography" of the collected works of Shakespeare as it is a biography of the man. All of Shakespeare's "accepted" works are represented and some it is speculated that he wrote.
The narration by Simon Vance is phenomenal. By the end, I easily concluded that if Simon Vance were to read the local phone book, I would probably listen to it. Vance's voice is clear and distinct. His diction is spot on.
All in all, I would highly recommend "Shakespeare: The Biography" in any format you could get your hands on.
shakespeare in historical and literary context.......2007-08-06
A very readable book that perhaps repeats what thewriter believed to be shakespeare's many facets and qualities. Chapters are very short and invite the reader to carry on reading. It is an easy read book, filled with lots of fascinating information and one that i would recommend to someone wanting not just to find out a lot about Shakespeare but someone who wanted him set into his slot in history.
"To fill the world with words...".......2007-04-23
Peter Ackroyd begins Chapter 42 of "Shakespeare: The Biography" with this quote, and indeed this book is an involving and believable tale demonstrating precisely how Shakespeare accomplished that task. By taking the notoriously scanty biographical facts about Shakespeare, and interpolating them with the historical record of Elizabethan English society, theater and politics, Ackroyd makes a cogent, enthralling argument for William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon being the true author (or, in some cases, co-author) of the plays attributed to him. The argument is not quite airtight, for the simple reason that so little is known about Shakespeare's life. (Aside: why don't Derek Jacobi and Jeremy Irons call themselves "Oxfordian" actors?) But through a mostly unimpeachable combination of scholarship and imagination, Ackroyd provides convincing explanations for everything from how Shakespeare got from Stratford to London, to the provenance of "Macbeth," to the meaning of Shakespeare leaving Anne Hathaway "the second-best bed" in his will. On this 443rd anniversary of the Bard's birth, buying Ackroyd's book is a fitting way to honor his memory.
A fine work on the Bard.......2007-01-08
ckroyd has both a scholar's hand at research and a skilled novelist's voice. The former skill-set in particular must have been taxed in writing this book- Shakespeare left frustratingly few direct records behind him, and much of his life needs to be reconstructed from context and circumstantial evidence, with a judicious amount of extrapolation.
The latter facet is one of the few areas in which I have any quibbles. Ackroyd sometimes goes a bit too far in my book, especially in divining Shakespeare's motivations and personality in ways that don't seem far different from wild speculation. However, this doesn't happen often enough to ruin the portrait he paints. Speaking of portraits, Ackroyd seems to somewhat arbitrarily decide which of several possible Shakespeare portraits are genuine (or not), seemingly mostly on the basis of how well they support his image of the man. I also find his reasons for using original spelling in his quotes to be less than compelling- it smacked of pretence rather than of authenticity. But once again, hardly a great fault.
I'm sure this one will annoy the anti-Stratfordians- although Ackroyd hardly mentions the controversy directly, he handily demolishes a number of the elitist arguments against the Stratfordian position, and convincingly demonstrates that Shakespeare had access to all of the source material he needed (and the knowledge to use it) in order to write his plays. No smoking gun- and there may never be one- but still solid, in my book.
But no matter who wrote the plays, Ackroyd paints a compelling picture of the world in which they were performed. England in those days was a place of great energy and enthusiasm, but also of paranoia. Crypto-Catholic plotting, political maneuvering, the burgeoining frontiers of the New World and the unrest in Europe... he shows the reader a marvellous and convoluted world, fascinating and dangerous. One can easily see how this energy (both dark and light) entered into the plays.
I can wholeheartedly recommend this book for anyone who is interested either in William Shakespeare or the world of Elizabethan England.
Delightful and Informative.......2006-11-10
Do you think little is known about Shakespeare? I was under that impression until I read Peter Ackroyd's brilliant study. I will go back to reading my Shakespeare with greater perception and enjoyment. As in "Sir Thomas More" the author takes you right into the streets of Shakespeare's London and gives you the sights and smells of Elizabethan
playhouses. A wonderful, delightful, informative book. Highly recommended.
Amazon.com
There's no shortage of good Shakespearean biographies. But Stephen Greenblatt, brilliant scholar and author of Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare, reminds us that the "surviving traces" are "abundant but thin" as to known facts. He acknowledges the paradox of the many biographies spun out of conjecture but then produces a book so persuasive and breathtakingly enjoyable that one wonders what he could have done if the usual stuff of biographical inquiry--memoirs, interviews, manuscripts, and drafts--had been at his disposal. Greenblatt uses the "verbal traces" in Shakespeare's work to take us "back into the life he lived and into the world to which he was so open." Whenever possible, he also ushers us from the extraordinary life into the luminous work. The result is a marvelous blend of scholarship, insight, observation, and, yes, conjecture--but conjecture always based on the most convincing and inspired reasoning and evidence. Particularly compelling are Greenblatt's discussions of the playwright's relationship with the university wit Robert Greene (discussed as a chief source for the character of Falstaff) and of Hamlet in relation to the death of Shakespeare's son Hamnet, his aging father, and the "world of damaged rituals" that England's Catholics were forced to endure. Will in the World is not just the life story of the world's most revered writer. It is the story, too, of 16th- and 17th-century England writ large, the story of religious upheaval and political intrigue, of country festivals and brutal public executions, of the court and the theater, of Stratford and London, of martyrdom and recusancy, of witchcraft and magic, of love and death: in short, of the private but engaged William Shakespeare in his remarkable world. Throughout the book, Greenblatt's style is breezy and familiar. He often refers to the poet simply as Will. Yet for all his alacrity of style and the book's accessibility, Will in the World is profoundly erudite, an enormous contribution to the world of Shakespearean letters. --Silvana Tropea
Interview with Stephen Greenblatt
Stephen Greenblatt shares his thoughts about what make Shakespeare Shakespeare and why the Bard continues to fascinate us endlessly.
Book Description
A brilliant reading of Shakespeare's world yields a new understanding of the man and his genius.
A young man from the provinces—a man without wealth, connections, or university education—moves to London. In a remarkably short time he becomes the greatest playwright not just of his age but of all time. His works appeal to urban sophisticates and first-time theatergoers; he turns politics into poetry; he recklessly mingles vulgar clowning and philosophical subtlety. How is such an achievement to be explained?
Will in the World interweaves a searching account of Elizabethan England with a vivid narrative of the playwright's life. We see Shakespeare learning his craft, starting a family, and forging a career for himself in the wildly competitive London theater world, while at the same time grappling with dangerous religious and political forces that took less-agile figures to the scaffold. Above all, we never lose sight of the great works—A Midsummer Night's Dream, Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, Macbeth, and more—that continue after four hundred years to delight and haunt audiences everywhere. The basic biographical facts of Shakespeare's life have been known for over a century, but now Stephen Greenblatt shows how this particular life history gave rise to the world's greatest writer. 16 pages of color illustrations.
Customer Reviews:
I loved it!.......2007-07-25
Not much is known about the life of William Shakespeare. Even though by the seventeenth century England was a record keeping nation, gaps remain in even the most basic reconstructions of Shakespeare's life. The surviving traces of his life are abundant but thin. The decade or more after he presumably finished school, and before he left Stratford for London, are known as the "lost years" because we know virtually nothing about this period of his life. We have no surviving account of the details of his last days, final illness and passing. All points in between, too, are matters of hypothesis and speculation. We have none of his personal letters, none of the books he surely owned. The author, Stephen Greenblatt, a Harvard professor and Shakespeare historian, thus asks us to imagine certain aspects of Shakespeare's life. The book is thus more assumptions about Shakespeare's life than a true biography.
The author succeeds in taking the reader back into the Elizabethan world in which Shakespeare lived. One needed to obtain a coat of arms from inheritance or university education (Oxford or Cambridge) to become a gentleman, which was almost impossible without money. It was a world where the Queen was ex-communicated by the roman Pope, where the Jews were unjustly kicked out of England (by the end of the 13th Century all Jews had been deported from England), where Catholics were publicly and brutally executed, where people died of the bubonic plague, and where women were burnt for the crime of witchcraft and magic. It is a great introduction to that era for those not familiar with it.
There were some amusing parts I really enjoyed. For example, I found myself laughing at the playwright's relationship with Robert Greene (discussed as a chief source for the character of Falstaff). Those passages were really entertaining.
For a man who succeeded in writing such beautiful love prose, it seemed that his life was lacking of love. Shakespeare (1564-1616) was 18 and his wife, Anne Hathaway, 26 when they got married in November of 1582. By the time he was twenty-one he had three children. He married her because she was pregnant. For the times, he was considered to be underage. In most likelihood Shakespeare did not love his wife. He bequeathed her only his "second best bed" in his will, after more than thirty years of marriage!
Were his sonnets written to a male lover? Homosexuality was accepted at the time. Since man was considered superior to women it was not surprising to anyone if men fell in love with each other. It was also the custom at the time that no writer ever wrote love sonnets to his wife. Most writers wrote of the hellish enterprise of marriage. Some, like Francis Bacon, refused to marry.
We learn much about his father. The author analyzes Shakespeare's father's rise and fall as a public figure in Stratford. At one point his father went bankrupt, and his dreams of ever getting the `coat of arms' vanished. However, with Shakespeare's success and fortune, the `coat of arms' was bought.
We learn about Christopher Marlowe, the most prominent playwright of the time, who died in a bar fight at age 30. Some say he might have been a spy. Shakespeare was inspired by his play Tamberlane, and wanted to equal or surpass him. Marlowe was thus an inspiration to Shakespeare.
Surprisingly, actors were seen as whores and vagabonds. Shakespeare wanted to be a gentleman. He paid later for the coat of arms with money earned from his theatre in order to gain the status of gentleman. Costumes were very important and very expensive, and the playwright's mo
