Rating: 
Summary: This book covers a lot of territory
Review: This gigantic book summarizing a lifetime of teaching Shakespeare would not seem so familiar to me if the shocks of recognition were not always so close to the truths that I value most highly. My knowledge of Shakespeare is not much, but the information this book contains about plays that loomed large in Walter Kaufmann's books FROM SHAKESPEARE TO EXISTENTIALISM and TRAGEDY AND PHILOSOPHY largely supports a bracing view of the worst things that Shakespeare could find to say about people. A few years ago, at a performance of the play "Cymbeline," I seemed to be much more disturbed than other members of the audience, seeing it in an intimate setting that put people on folding chairs close enough to feel that we were all taking part in what was going on. Harold Bloom adds to that feeling of intimacy by declaring:"Iago, like Hamlet and Macbeth, is beyond us, but we are Iachimo. Our bravado, malice, fearfulness, confusion are all in Iachimo, who is not much worse than we are, and whom Shakespeare intends to spare." (p. 637). I have a DVD collection (3 discs), LIVE DEAD, THE GRATEFUL DEAD IN CONCERT, which has an interview with the band, probably the special Dead Facts fan quiz on the GRATEFUL DEAD: TICKET TO NEW YEAR'S recorded at the Oakland Coliseum on December 31, 1987, in which some fan wants to know what they think the words of the song, "Iko Iko" mean: "Jockamo fee na - ne'." It sounds like Iachimo to me, and the attitude that the band adopts to come up with a reasonable explanation which will not produce any more questions is worthy of a truly comic society. The song has been around since 1964, and one verse is like a Shakespeare play: "Look at my king all dressed in red.
Iko. Iko, unday.
I betcha five dollars he'll kill you dead.
Jockamo fee na - ne'." Incidentally, there is a version of "Iko-Iko" on the Warren Zevon CD "Wanted Dead or Alive," which also has his song "She Quit Me" which was used in the movie "Midnight Cowboy," which is pretty good if you want to see Dustin Hoffman playing a character called Ratso. Bloom dates "Cymbeline" to 1609-10, with Shakespeare returning to Stratford in 1610 for semi-retirement (p. xiv), which allowed him to turn on his work with what Bloom regards as "unmistakable overtones of his personal distaste for the London of 1609-10." (p. 615). The larger question is "the question of Shakespeare himself. What was he trying to do for himself as a maker of plays by the heap of self-parodies that constitute `Cymbeline'?" (p. 621). Obviously, "Shakespeare is his own worst enemy in `Cymbeline': he is weary of making plays." (p. 621). Bloom still finds some good poetry: "Golden lads and girls all must,
As chimney-sweepers, come to dust." (p. 629). The six lines of [V.iv. 146-51] are so good that they show up on page 634 and 635 as "Compulsive self-parody" which leads to "It is another of those uncanny recognitions in which Shakespeare is already beyond Nietzsche." (p. 636). It is easy for me to look up plays that other people might think are awful. Bloom thinks that "Troilus and Cressida" was never staged at the Globe because it "might seem too lively a satire upon the fallen Earl of Essex, who may be the model for the play's outrageous Achilles," (p. 327). Thersites denies having any honour: "no, no: I am a rascal, a scurvy railing knave: a very filthy rogue." (p. 329). Margarelon told him, "The devil take thee, coward." (p. 329). Bloom is sympathetic. "If we can trust anyone in the play, then it must be Thersites, deranged as doubtless he is." (p. 332). "Timon of Athens" is considered unfinished. "Shakespeare appears to have to have abandoned `Timon of Athens,' for reasons still unclear. He never staged it, and parts of it are less finished than others." (p. 588). There are a few examples of "venereal invective" (p. 596) that were ultimately dismissed as unworthy of himself. "This hymn to syphilis is unmatched and unmatchable." (p. 597). There are topics which are far more worthy of poetry in this book, and the book makes every effort to present explanations which make the poetry worth understanding. Not every reader in our society will make the effort to find what they want in Shakespeare. This book will make sense to people who would want to know all this, whether it will do them any good or not. This is April. "Shakespeare was christened on April 26, 1564, at Stratford-on-Avon, and died there on April 23, 1616." (p. xiii). He only lived to the age of 52, more or less. Many of his plays were so popular that Bloom can keep talking about characters throughout the book as if readers who have not encountered them already will know who they are someday. They should, too.
Rating: 
Summary: An 800-page tomb that loses its way completely
Review: While Harold Bloom's high state of art and his throne at the top of the critic's pile are unassailable, his "Shakespeare: the invention of the human," is a disaster of probabilities and possibilities (if a graduate student had written this he/she would fail miserably for pouring opinion upon unrelated and unsubstantiated opinion): The "early" Hamlet - which he admits was never found - becomes a metaphor for the failure of this book; Bloom refers to this play so often "in absentia" (it would have....it might have....) that it becomes an imagined cornerstone for too much of his musing. The truth is that in this book Bloom tries to create his own reality, so that the years of one-on-one discussion between himself and Shakespears characters are not seen as madness but as some kind of ongoing dinner discussion each evening at home. The (real or wished for) similarity between Bloom and Sir John Falstaff is striking, and by the end of this book my response to Bloom is much like that of Henry V to Sir John: "I know thee not old man"!
Rating: 
Summary: The Ivory Tower was never taller
Review: With all the love Harold Bloom expresses for Shakespeare's work, he really gives a shallow exploration of the Bard's work in this book. Each play receives a couple of pages here, but I found many of them too brief and uninformative. This book is based on a faulty premise: Bloom seems to believe that Shakespeare 'invented' the modern man. No. Shakespeare reflects the modern man. This is the reason we still read Will. If Shakespeare were alive today, I tend to think that this idolizing account would have him shaking his head. Bloom elevates Shakespeare to the level of near-mythical proportions instead of as a human being who accepted and loved humanity, warts and all. As I understand it, Shakespeare was accessible to even the most uneducated people of his time. This book unconsciously dehumanized Shakespeare and tries to put the man in an ivory tower, where wit isn't shared - it's delegated.
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