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The Shakespeare Wars: Clashing Scholars, Public Fiascoes, Palace Coups
“[Ron Rosenbaum] is one of the most original journalists and writers of our time.”–David RemnickIn 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 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 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.
624 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 2006
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October 6, 2014
This book is good at what it does -- namely, being a breezy, very entertaining, and sometimes interesting narrative account of a whole bunch of (mostly) academic disputes about Shakespeare. 550 pages of that is a bit much, though, and the book fails at being anything more.
The book presents itself as "not your ordinary Shakespeare book," mostly because it ignores biographical issues almost entirely. Except for one short chapter, there is essentially nothing in here about "who Shakespeare really was" and how that might or might not reflect on the work (or vice versa). Instead, it's about what Rosenbaum says is the kind of stuff Shakespeareans really care about -- stuff that largely seems terribly nerdy and undramatic and boring at first glance, like "can we identify the individual people who composed the printed texts of Shakespeare's plays by looking at their punctuation habits?", or "do we gain anything from reading Shakespeare without modernized spelling?", or "is it really important to pause noticeably at the end of an iambic line?" But, Rosenbaum says, these issues aren't as trivial as they seem. In fact (he contends) Shakespeareans are having passionate debates about this stuff not because they are trivia-obsessed pedants, or because they have run out of other things to do, but because these issues bear importantly on the question of what it means to be "Shakespearean."
One thing that can be said for Rosenbaum is that he does a stunning job making these "boring" debates entertaining. To some extent this is because the debates are more pyrotechnic than you might imagine given the subject matter. There are towering egos and deeply felt opinions involved here, and in most cases Rosenbaum has a good human story to tell even if he doesn't necessarily have a good case that the reader should care which side is right. (More on that later.) The other reason the book is entertaining is that Rosenbaum has a very fun, jokey, casual, pun-filled writing style. This might seem like faint praise (and I guess it is) but this is the easiest, most frictionless book I have read in a long time, one I could rely on even when I was too tired (or whatever) to read anything else, because it's just so instantly engaging and chatty. It feels like reading 550 pages of blog posts -- it has that combination of elevated subject matter, casual tone, and fondness for cheesy jokes that is more often seen on blogs than in printed books, in my experience anyway.
The downside is that none of this really adds up to anything more than a big collection of stories about scholars and directors yelling at one another, and I found it difficult to have the same enthusiasm for the 13th or 14th such story that I did for the first few. Rosenbaum is a journalist, and his tellings of these stories are journalistic in nature -- he mostly just tells you who did what in what order, and while he provides a bit of interpretive gloss, it's rarely very detailed or deep, and feels almost perfunctory, as if he feels he has to convince us these stories are "important" when he's really telling them as a sort of highbrow gossip about exciting, (slightly) famous people.
For instance, one chapter is about the debate over whether a bad, tedious poem called the "Funeral Elegy" was in fact by Shakespeare -- as someone at one point claimed he had proven using computerized textual analysis. In the hands of some authors this would have been the pretext for a thoughtful investigation of what it would mean to learn that Shakespeare had written something almost universally viewed as "bad," and whether it's actually true that the large corpus of "known" Shakespearean writing is really all so invariably good. Or about how the computer analysis in question worked and what it did and didn't take into account, and about the role of computers in textual scholarship more generally. Or something. In Rosenbaum's hands it is mostly a dramatic human interest story about the hubris of Don Foster, the computer analyst -- portrayed as a bombastic prick whose own confidence comes back to bite him in the end -- and about Rosenbaum's own battles with Foster and his joyous vindication at Foster's eventual downfall. (The chapter opens with an account of how Foster once told Rosenbaum "I could destroy you" -- talk about drama!) In fact much of the book is somewhat autobiographical, with Rosenbaum continually drawing things back to particular conversations he had with eminent Shakespeareans and how they made him feel. (One gets a very clear sense that Rosenbaum -- as a journalist rather than an actor, director or academic -- can't help but feel marginal to the Shakespearean community, and feels an anxious need to remind you that he was somehow involved, Forrest Gump-like, in every one of the battles he chronicles.) At points this gets pretty weird -- e.g. he begins a chapter about Peter Brook, a famous director he loves, with an embarrassing personal anecdote about how he acted like a boor while attending a public discussion with Brook, and even includes the full text of the apology letter he sent to Brook the next day. I wanted to say: Ron, please, is this really going to help me understand Shakespeare?
Which is the central problem with this book: Rosenbaum claims that all of these stories can be mined for insight about the nature of Shakespeare's work and what it means to be Shakespearean, but the analysis just isn't there. In many cases the debates involve the notion of what it means to be Shakespearan, but that isn't the same thing. For instance, the various chapters about attribution (such as the Funeral Elegy chapter) involve various people making claims about whether a given work "feels like Shakespeare," but it isn't surprising or especially interesting that people have such intuitions, or that the intuitions don't always agree. What would be interesting would be an analysis of what these intuitions are based on, and whether they can be boiled down to anything that can be simply stated. Instead of which Rosenbaum just gives us more gossip and drama and "let me spend three pages recounting this funny remark a famous Shakespearean made to me while we were having lunch together one day in 1998 . . . "
Well, okay: to Rosenbaum's credit, he does have a sort of unified theory of Shakespeare that, to him, justifies the reason the book is the way it is. Rosenbaum feels that Shakespeare's defining quality is his "bottomlessness," the way his writing can generate endless interpretations without ever leading one to feel that one has fully understood it -- a quality that comes across directly as a sort of mental vertigo felt while watching especially good performances. (He describes this feeling in detail in an introductory chapter in which -- I'm not sure if this was the intended effect -- he comes across almost exactly like someone enthusing about their LSD experiences.) He uses the word "bottomlessness" again and again as a quick, easy explanation of why this or that debate was important -- what it means to be Shakespearean is to be the kind of thing that people can have these endless arguments about.
Here is why I don't find this convincing. When I was in my mid-teens, I spent a lot of time on online forums devoted to video games. (Shut up, it's not like you were doing anything more worthwhile at that age. I mean, uh, unless you were.) One of these forums was dedicated to a specific set of games developed by the same group of people. One game was called "Xenogears," and it had a series of successors that went under the series title "Xenosaga." We had endless debates about the relative quality of these games, about various ambiguities in their storylines, and -- this was the big one -- about whether the Xenosaga series was a prequel to Xenogears that would eventually lead into a remake of Xenogears, or whether it was just telling an unrelated story that happened to have some odd similarities to the Xenogears backstory. This debate grew very complicated, involved a number of big forum personalities who became known for their distinctive personality quirks and arguing styles, and involved all sorts of nitpicking about frustratingly incomplete sources -- for instance a set of interviews, translated (perhaps poorly?) from Japanese, in which the director of the "Xeno" games made a set of maddeningly contradictory statements about their relation to one another. In short, although it was about low culture rather than high culture, this debate had all the qualities of the debates retold by Rosenbaum -- big personalities with longstanding feuds, complicated and nitpicky arguments, ambiguous sources, neverending disagreement. And it was "bottomless" enough for me to sink countless hours of my adolescence into.
In other words, there is little about the debates retold in this book that really separates them from the similarly endless debates held among Trekkies, or "Xeno" fans, or Civil War re-enactors, or model train kit collectors, or whatever. The simple fact is, nerds will have endless nitpicky debates about just about anything, and so it isn't surprising that there are people having these kinds of debates about Shakespeare. Surely the thing that makes Shakespeare special can't be that he has his own set of argumentative fans, because everything has those! The "bottomlessness" idea just doesn't work, and the more stories Rosenbaum tells, the more clear it becomes that it doesn't work. Shakespeare nerds are just nerds, when you get down to it.
That was a lot of carping for a book that I enjoyed as much as I enjoyed this one. I think ultimately it is just too long and too ambitious, and Rosenbaum overstays his welcome. The breezy style and lack of interpretive substance aren't fit for the size of the book -- after the halfway point it's hard not to keep asking "this is it?" as Rosenbaum keeps on doing the same old stuff. But if you like reading about literary scholarship, or about nerds having dramatic arguments, it's a very fun book. Just too long for its own good.
The book presents itself as "not your ordinary Shakespeare book," mostly because it ignores biographical issues almost entirely. Except for one short chapter, there is essentially nothing in here about "who Shakespeare really was" and how that might or might not reflect on the work (or vice versa). Instead, it's about what Rosenbaum says is the kind of stuff Shakespeareans really care about -- stuff that largely seems terribly nerdy and undramatic and boring at first glance, like "can we identify the individual people who composed the printed texts of Shakespeare's plays by looking at their punctuation habits?", or "do we gain anything from reading Shakespeare without modernized spelling?", or "is it really important to pause noticeably at the end of an iambic line?" But, Rosenbaum says, these issues aren't as trivial as they seem. In fact (he contends) Shakespeareans are having passionate debates about this stuff not because they are trivia-obsessed pedants, or because they have run out of other things to do, but because these issues bear importantly on the question of what it means to be "Shakespearean."
One thing that can be said for Rosenbaum is that he does a stunning job making these "boring" debates entertaining. To some extent this is because the debates are more pyrotechnic than you might imagine given the subject matter. There are towering egos and deeply felt opinions involved here, and in most cases Rosenbaum has a good human story to tell even if he doesn't necessarily have a good case that the reader should care which side is right. (More on that later.) The other reason the book is entertaining is that Rosenbaum has a very fun, jokey, casual, pun-filled writing style. This might seem like faint praise (and I guess it is) but this is the easiest, most frictionless book I have read in a long time, one I could rely on even when I was too tired (or whatever) to read anything else, because it's just so instantly engaging and chatty. It feels like reading 550 pages of blog posts -- it has that combination of elevated subject matter, casual tone, and fondness for cheesy jokes that is more often seen on blogs than in printed books, in my experience anyway.
The downside is that none of this really adds up to anything more than a big collection of stories about scholars and directors yelling at one another, and I found it difficult to have the same enthusiasm for the 13th or 14th such story that I did for the first few. Rosenbaum is a journalist, and his tellings of these stories are journalistic in nature -- he mostly just tells you who did what in what order, and while he provides a bit of interpretive gloss, it's rarely very detailed or deep, and feels almost perfunctory, as if he feels he has to convince us these stories are "important" when he's really telling them as a sort of highbrow gossip about exciting, (slightly) famous people.
For instance, one chapter is about the debate over whether a bad, tedious poem called the "Funeral Elegy" was in fact by Shakespeare -- as someone at one point claimed he had proven using computerized textual analysis. In the hands of some authors this would have been the pretext for a thoughtful investigation of what it would mean to learn that Shakespeare had written something almost universally viewed as "bad," and whether it's actually true that the large corpus of "known" Shakespearean writing is really all so invariably good. Or about how the computer analysis in question worked and what it did and didn't take into account, and about the role of computers in textual scholarship more generally. Or something. In Rosenbaum's hands it is mostly a dramatic human interest story about the hubris of Don Foster, the computer analyst -- portrayed as a bombastic prick whose own confidence comes back to bite him in the end -- and about Rosenbaum's own battles with Foster and his joyous vindication at Foster's eventual downfall. (The chapter opens with an account of how Foster once told Rosenbaum "I could destroy you" -- talk about drama!) In fact much of the book is somewhat autobiographical, with Rosenbaum continually drawing things back to particular conversations he had with eminent Shakespeareans and how they made him feel. (One gets a very clear sense that Rosenbaum -- as a journalist rather than an actor, director or academic -- can't help but feel marginal to the Shakespearean community, and feels an anxious need to remind you that he was somehow involved, Forrest Gump-like, in every one of the battles he chronicles.) At points this gets pretty weird -- e.g. he begins a chapter about Peter Brook, a famous director he loves, with an embarrassing personal anecdote about how he acted like a boor while attending a public discussion with Brook, and even includes the full text of the apology letter he sent to Brook the next day. I wanted to say: Ron, please, is this really going to help me understand Shakespeare?
Which is the central problem with this book: Rosenbaum claims that all of these stories can be mined for insight about the nature of Shakespeare's work and what it means to be Shakespearean, but the analysis just isn't there. In many cases the debates involve the notion of what it means to be Shakespearan, but that isn't the same thing. For instance, the various chapters about attribution (such as the Funeral Elegy chapter) involve various people making claims about whether a given work "feels like Shakespeare," but it isn't surprising or especially interesting that people have such intuitions, or that the intuitions don't always agree. What would be interesting would be an analysis of what these intuitions are based on, and whether they can be boiled down to anything that can be simply stated. Instead of which Rosenbaum just gives us more gossip and drama and "let me spend three pages recounting this funny remark a famous Shakespearean made to me while we were having lunch together one day in 1998 . . . "
Well, okay: to Rosenbaum's credit, he does have a sort of unified theory of Shakespeare that, to him, justifies the reason the book is the way it is. Rosenbaum feels that Shakespeare's defining quality is his "bottomlessness," the way his writing can generate endless interpretations without ever leading one to feel that one has fully understood it -- a quality that comes across directly as a sort of mental vertigo felt while watching especially good performances. (He describes this feeling in detail in an introductory chapter in which -- I'm not sure if this was the intended effect -- he comes across almost exactly like someone enthusing about their LSD experiences.) He uses the word "bottomlessness" again and again as a quick, easy explanation of why this or that debate was important -- what it means to be Shakespearean is to be the kind of thing that people can have these endless arguments about.
Here is why I don't find this convincing. When I was in my mid-teens, I spent a lot of time on online forums devoted to video games. (Shut up, it's not like you were doing anything more worthwhile at that age. I mean, uh, unless you were.) One of these forums was dedicated to a specific set of games developed by the same group of people. One game was called "Xenogears," and it had a series of successors that went under the series title "Xenosaga." We had endless debates about the relative quality of these games, about various ambiguities in their storylines, and -- this was the big one -- about whether the Xenosaga series was a prequel to Xenogears that would eventually lead into a remake of Xenogears, or whether it was just telling an unrelated story that happened to have some odd similarities to the Xenogears backstory. This debate grew very complicated, involved a number of big forum personalities who became known for their distinctive personality quirks and arguing styles, and involved all sorts of nitpicking about frustratingly incomplete sources -- for instance a set of interviews, translated (perhaps poorly?) from Japanese, in which the director of the "Xeno" games made a set of maddeningly contradictory statements about their relation to one another. In short, although it was about low culture rather than high culture, this debate had all the qualities of the debates retold by Rosenbaum -- big personalities with longstanding feuds, complicated and nitpicky arguments, ambiguous sources, neverending disagreement. And it was "bottomless" enough for me to sink countless hours of my adolescence into.
In other words, there is little about the debates retold in this book that really separates them from the similarly endless debates held among Trekkies, or "Xeno" fans, or Civil War re-enactors, or model train kit collectors, or whatever. The simple fact is, nerds will have endless nitpicky debates about just about anything, and so it isn't surprising that there are people having these kinds of debates about Shakespeare. Surely the thing that makes Shakespeare special can't be that he has his own set of argumentative fans, because everything has those! The "bottomlessness" idea just doesn't work, and the more stories Rosenbaum tells, the more clear it becomes that it doesn't work. Shakespeare nerds are just nerds, when you get down to it.
That was a lot of carping for a book that I enjoyed as much as I enjoyed this one. I think ultimately it is just too long and too ambitious, and Rosenbaum overstays his welcome. The breezy style and lack of interpretive substance aren't fit for the size of the book -- after the halfway point it's hard not to keep asking "this is it?" as Rosenbaum keeps on doing the same old stuff. But if you like reading about literary scholarship, or about nerds having dramatic arguments, it's a very fun book. Just too long for its own good.
September 29, 2007
This book was pure joy from start to finish. Do NOT be intimidated by the title or the topic. I hadn't read Shakespeare since high school (though I have read many more plays since reading this book) and savoured every word. Rosenbaum (who is now one of my favorite living writers) is a savvy, chatty, often hilarious guide through the twists and turns of Shakespeare scholarship now and down the centuries. Anyone familiar with Biblical exegesis will recognize elements in the debates among academics and amateurs about what Shakespeare's "true" intentions were as his plays evolved from Quatro to Folio or what distinguishes an "authentic" edit from a printer's error. I kept thinking: WWSD? (What Would Shakespeare Do?) There are also a fascinating chapter on how film has changed Shakespearean acting and staging. If you don't want to run out and read/re-read "The Tempest," "Twelfth Night" or "A Midsummer Night's Dream" after reading this book, you haven't read it well enough. The footnotes alone are worth the price.
March 2, 2008
If you want to know why Ron Rosenbaum thinks he knows more about Shakespeare than you do, maybe you'll enjoy this. Otherwise, look forward to occasional insights about the plays, Greenblat bashing, Bloom bashing, and a lot of reminders about how long it took Rosenbaum to write this book.
May 3, 2020
This book is definitely not for everyone however for the people interested in the debates of Shakespearean scholars I think it is a great read.
I'm definitely not a Shakespeare scholar but I have a huge interest in everything Shakespeare and so I appreciate Rosenbaum writing this book in a way that people like me can appreciate. He interviews and talks about many of the great thinkers surrounding WS and shares with the reader both or multiple sides to many hot topics surrounding Shakespeare.
Rosenbaum states early in the book that he is not as interested in studying the life of Shakespeare and whether he was gay/bi/straight for example or a secretive Catholic. He believes that the focus should be on the texts themselves and what he calls close reading.
One brief passage that went right over my head frankly,
"He argued the ideal beauty as it was commonly described and produced in the Renaissance involved a kind of "featureless," an abstractedness from individuality , a proportionality, a harmony that subsisted in the relationship of perfectly formed, virtually interchangeable parts rather than in the particular features themselves." I have no idea what the heck that means but the overwhelming majority of the book presents scholarly topics in a way any Shakespeare enthusiast could understand.
I saw some reviews attack him for promoting himself in this book and frankly I think its the opposite. I think Rosenbaum spends most of the book showering praise on other writers, scholars and directors. He does go after Harold Bloom some which I agree with and enjoyed to be honest. I find Bloom's takes on Shakespeare to be absurd and over the top.
I don't agree with every take in the book but it is full of very interesting opinions that I believe have broadened my understanding of Shakespeare and for that I say thank you Mr. Rosenbaum.
I finish with this.
One of my favorite lines from the book-
"And then there is that moment I'd never thought deeply about before until reading Peter Brook's Berlin lecture, the one where he talks about splitting open any line of Shakespeare and in doing so, releasing infinite energies."
This sums of Shakespeare for me. Reading it is certainly more challenging than reading current literature or novels but I think ultimately its worth it because of the endless discoveries you can make.
I'm definitely not a Shakespeare scholar but I have a huge interest in everything Shakespeare and so I appreciate Rosenbaum writing this book in a way that people like me can appreciate. He interviews and talks about many of the great thinkers surrounding WS and shares with the reader both or multiple sides to many hot topics surrounding Shakespeare.
Rosenbaum states early in the book that he is not as interested in studying the life of Shakespeare and whether he was gay/bi/straight for example or a secretive Catholic. He believes that the focus should be on the texts themselves and what he calls close reading.
One brief passage that went right over my head frankly,
"He argued the ideal beauty as it was commonly described and produced in the Renaissance involved a kind of "featureless," an abstractedness from individuality , a proportionality, a harmony that subsisted in the relationship of perfectly formed, virtually interchangeable parts rather than in the particular features themselves." I have no idea what the heck that means but the overwhelming majority of the book presents scholarly topics in a way any Shakespeare enthusiast could understand.
I saw some reviews attack him for promoting himself in this book and frankly I think its the opposite. I think Rosenbaum spends most of the book showering praise on other writers, scholars and directors. He does go after Harold Bloom some which I agree with and enjoyed to be honest. I find Bloom's takes on Shakespeare to be absurd and over the top.
I don't agree with every take in the book but it is full of very interesting opinions that I believe have broadened my understanding of Shakespeare and for that I say thank you Mr. Rosenbaum.
I finish with this.
One of my favorite lines from the book-
"And then there is that moment I'd never thought deeply about before until reading Peter Brook's Berlin lecture, the one where he talks about splitting open any line of Shakespeare and in doing so, releasing infinite energies."
This sums of Shakespeare for me. Reading it is certainly more challenging than reading current literature or novels but I think ultimately its worth it because of the endless discoveries you can make.
August 30, 2009
This book is on the cusp of brilliance. What does slow my unabashed enthusiasm for the work is the needless repetition of many of the books points. Rosenbaum's passion gets muddled through repeating many identical points back to back. But putting that aside, the book opens up a window to the raging world of debate in current Shakespearean criticism. This book is a good primer for the would-be expert; a wading pool.
Read
February 5, 2009Ron Rosenbaum, whose analysis in Explaining Hitler: The Search for the Origins of Evil (1998) was well received, is a journalist by trade and a Shakespeare enthusiast by calling. In The Shakespeare Wars, the author articulates to a well-read lay audience his passion for the work and describes the internecine squabbling that often characterizes Shakespeare studies. In so doing, Rosenbaum comes up against a few obstacles, not the least his lengthy meditations on issues that may strike the reader as unworthy of the space devoted to them. Even the critics who admire the author's passion and his knowledge of the subject agree that the book is longer than it needs to be. If you are as captivated by Shakespeare as the author, however, join a kindred spirit in celebrating the Bard
This is an excerpt from a review published in Bookmarks magazine.
February 26, 2023
My take on the 2004 film version of "The Merchant of Venice," starring Al Pacino and Jeremy Irons. It is directed by Michael Radford. Ron Rosenbaum's book is mentioned in the review.
Some other opinions first...
“Shylock is an intense, passionate character in a great play, and Radford's film does them justice.” Roger Ebert
“Shakespeare's most problematic play at least with respect to modern sensitivities receives an intelligent interpretation from Michael Radford and a superb cast.” A. O. Scott
“This is one of the best adaptations of Shakespeare I’ve ever seen. Pacino’s amazing.”
Richard Roeper
And boasting a strong performance by Hollywood legend Al Pacino and bringing a successful adaptation to theaters a Shakespeare play that had never been put successfully onto the big screen before was quite an accomplishment, right? Of course you should see it, right? I guess that’s it. Nothing more to say. Time to move on to another Hitchcock movie, RIGHT? Or some Czech Republic movie about World War II occupation by Nazis. Or some underground fetish documentary from the 60’s. Lots of movies to see. Time to move on. Time to move on…
Wait, a minute.
If these opinions are allowed to go unchecked…then something really wrong is going on here!
These opinions are out of order!
The whole trial is out of order!
Roger Ebert is out of order!
A. O. Scott is out of order!
Richard Roeper is out of order!
The whole critical establishment is out of order!
(Sorry, wrong Pacino movie.)
Maybe the most important aspect of viewing The Merchant of Venice is how one feels about the character of Shylock, the Jewish moneylender who gives a loan to his enemy Antonio, which if forfeited, will constitute a pound coming out of Antonio’s hide.
Is Shylock just an evil snarling Semite who will use the law to gouge out a chunk of the chest of the Christ-like Antonio? (Picture Jeremy Irons praying, looking resigned and accepting of his fate.)
Or is Shylock a victim of the Anti-Semitism of his day, who we should view through a sympathetic modern day lens of tolerance?
_____________________________
Anyway, we offer as the chief dissenter: Ron Rosenbaum
Rosenbaum strongly takes issue with this film in his informative book The Shakespeare Wars: Clashing Scholars, Public Fiascoes, Palace Coups. In fact, he dedicates a whole chapter to the Radford/Pacino Merchant.
Here are some of Rosenbaums’ criticisms of the film.
Rosenbaum-If one had to devise a production that incorporated just about every technique of evasion, every effort to sanitize the anti-Semitism, it would look something like this film.
Many lines that would cast Shylock in a less favorable light are deleted, such as “I hate him because he is a Christian." Rosenbaum-he edits and invents at will. At Will’s expense, one might say.
Also edited is the scene where Shylock is yelling in the streets and Radford eliminates the dialogue of Shylock lamenting the loss of his ducats in equal measure to the loss of his daughter (Jessica).
Also cut is the line where Shylock wishes his daughter dead and the ducats were in her coffin.
Rosenbaum also talks about Radford’s attempt to contextualize the play at the end. He shows Shylock, after being forced to convert to Christianity, being barred from the synagogue. And we see Jessica gazing off and thinking about the turquoise ring she took from her father Shylock. Trevor Nunn’s version of Merchant has Jessica wailing a Jewish ditty at the end, so contextualizing the ending of this play is not unique to Radford.* (Which Rosenbaum acknowledges). The actual text of the play ends with banter between Antonio, Bassanio, Portia, Nerissa, Gratiano, Lorenzo, and Jessica, but with no mention of Shylock
Rosenbaum also refers to Phillip Roth’s novel Operation Shylock in Roth’s description of Shylock’s first words in Merchant, which, if delivered a certain way, can dig Shylock a hole of unsympathy that he can’t crawl out of.
Roth-Three thousand ducats, Five blunt, unbeautiful English syllables and the stage Jew is elevated to its apogee by a genius (Shakespeare), catapulted into eternal notoriety by “THREE THOUSAND DUCATS.”
Rosenbaum-focusing on those three sibilant words intuitively draws our attention to the unmistakable hiss of the serpent in them.
Rosenbaum- Pacino plays Shylock as a harassed Jewish father worried about his daughter, almost like Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof. I suggested they retitle Radford’s film The Usurer on the Roof.The Usurer on the Roof quote is pretty funny. And I agree with many of Rosenbaum’s points. It’s clear that Michael Radford wanted to wipe away much of the anti-Semitic dialogue from the film and make Shylock more sympathetic. Radford even begins the film with the opening title cards stating how Jews in 1596 Venice were abused, discriminated against, and forced to become usurers. We even see a usurer thrown over a bridge. When Shylock tries to say something about this, I assume in protest to Antonio, Antonio spits in his face and moves on. (More about Antonio, this model version of Christian sympathy and sacrifice in a moment)
Since I’ve read the play and know what was cut, I’m imagining the dropped lines put back in. I’m imagining Radford’s opening about the persecution of the Jews dropped. I’m imagining spittle coming out of Pacino’s mouth when he says “Three thousand ducats!” I can even imagine Shylock with a pitchfork and cloven hooves if that would help balance the equation. I can look at Shylock as unsympathetic as he could possibly be portrayed…and he’s still preferable to his nemesis Antonio!
First of all, the play does not begin with Antonio spitting in Shylock’s face. However, Shylock’s later dialogue does allude to Antonio’s past abuse, “You call me misbeliever, cutthroat dog, And spit upon my Jewish gabardine.” Antonio doesn’t deny it, in fact he says, “I am as like to call thee so again, To spit on thee again, to spurn thee too.”
The only reason Antonio is talking to Shylock in the first place is because he needs three thousand ducats to pimp off his friend Bassanio to the heiress Portia. (A friend he seems to be a bit overly smitten with…Come on out of the closet already, Antonio! Maybe then you see how you like being a member of an abused minority group of your own!) Now, when Shylock asks for a pound of flesh out of Antonio if the bond is broken, Antonio could have stated the absurdity of such an agreement and walked out the door as Bassanio suggested he do. But the arrogant Antonio immediately agrees, rationalizing he expects to be able to pay the bond three times over.
Moving along, Bassanio wins Portia with the help of the loan. But Antonio’s ships unexpectedly go down and he has to forfeit the bond. Time to pay up! (This is why I never liked Rumpelstiltskin. The dwarf was just coming back for what the Miller’s daughter agreed to. For this he has to literally tear himself in two?)
At Antonio’s hearing over the payment of the bond, Bassanio returns and offers twice the sum of the bond. Too late for Shylock, he wants his pound of flesh. Portia disguised as a doctor (Shakespeare and his cross-dressing!) tries to reason with Shylock with one of Shakespeare’s most memorable speeches:
The quality of mercy is not strained,
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven.
Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest;
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.
But Shylock won’t be swayed away from his bond, until Portia points out to him another legality that says he can’t shed Christian blood or take more than exactly a pound of flesh.
The bond is forfeit. Antonio, now is in control, has a chance to redeem himself.
He gives Shylock part of his principal income back. (Maybe he’s not so bad after all.)
But with the stipulation that he gives after his death it to Jessica and the Christain thug that swiped her away from her father in the middle of the night (Hey, wait a minute!).
Oh, and one more thing Shylock, says Antonio. You must “presently become a Christian.” (Antonio, you’re just a prick! Did you even hear the quality of mercy is not strained speech?)
So what’s the final verdict?
See the film, decide for yourself.
Read Rosenbaum’s book, but only if you're a Shakespeare geek.
Read Roth’s Operation Shylock, an emotionally draining but excellent work.
* My favorite Shakespeare screen adaptation ending might be from Roman Polanski’s Macbeth, which ends with Donaldbain entering the witch’s lair, a scene nowhere to be found in the text.
Some other opinions first...
“Shylock is an intense, passionate character in a great play, and Radford's film does them justice.” Roger Ebert
“Shakespeare's most problematic play at least with respect to modern sensitivities receives an intelligent interpretation from Michael Radford and a superb cast.” A. O. Scott
“This is one of the best adaptations of Shakespeare I’ve ever seen. Pacino’s amazing.”
Richard Roeper
And boasting a strong performance by Hollywood legend Al Pacino and bringing a successful adaptation to theaters a Shakespeare play that had never been put successfully onto the big screen before was quite an accomplishment, right? Of course you should see it, right? I guess that’s it. Nothing more to say. Time to move on to another Hitchcock movie, RIGHT? Or some Czech Republic movie about World War II occupation by Nazis. Or some underground fetish documentary from the 60’s. Lots of movies to see. Time to move on. Time to move on…
Wait, a minute.
If these opinions are allowed to go unchecked…then something really wrong is going on here!
These opinions are out of order!
The whole trial is out of order!
Roger Ebert is out of order!
A. O. Scott is out of order!
Richard Roeper is out of order!
The whole critical establishment is out of order!
(Sorry, wrong Pacino movie.)
Maybe the most important aspect of viewing The Merchant of Venice is how one feels about the character of Shylock, the Jewish moneylender who gives a loan to his enemy Antonio, which if forfeited, will constitute a pound coming out of Antonio’s hide.
Is Shylock just an evil snarling Semite who will use the law to gouge out a chunk of the chest of the Christ-like Antonio? (Picture Jeremy Irons praying, looking resigned and accepting of his fate.)
Or is Shylock a victim of the Anti-Semitism of his day, who we should view through a sympathetic modern day lens of tolerance?
_____________________________
Anyway, we offer as the chief dissenter: Ron Rosenbaum
Rosenbaum strongly takes issue with this film in his informative book The Shakespeare Wars: Clashing Scholars, Public Fiascoes, Palace Coups. In fact, he dedicates a whole chapter to the Radford/Pacino Merchant.
Here are some of Rosenbaums’ criticisms of the film.
Rosenbaum-If one had to devise a production that incorporated just about every technique of evasion, every effort to sanitize the anti-Semitism, it would look something like this film.
Many lines that would cast Shylock in a less favorable light are deleted, such as “I hate him because he is a Christian." Rosenbaum-he edits and invents at will. At Will’s expense, one might say.
Also edited is the scene where Shylock is yelling in the streets and Radford eliminates the dialogue of Shylock lamenting the loss of his ducats in equal measure to the loss of his daughter (Jessica).
Also cut is the line where Shylock wishes his daughter dead and the ducats were in her coffin.
Rosenbaum also talks about Radford’s attempt to contextualize the play at the end. He shows Shylock, after being forced to convert to Christianity, being barred from the synagogue. And we see Jessica gazing off and thinking about the turquoise ring she took from her father Shylock. Trevor Nunn’s version of Merchant has Jessica wailing a Jewish ditty at the end, so contextualizing the ending of this play is not unique to Radford.* (Which Rosenbaum acknowledges). The actual text of the play ends with banter between Antonio, Bassanio, Portia, Nerissa, Gratiano, Lorenzo, and Jessica, but with no mention of Shylock
Rosenbaum also refers to Phillip Roth’s novel Operation Shylock in Roth’s description of Shylock’s first words in Merchant, which, if delivered a certain way, can dig Shylock a hole of unsympathy that he can’t crawl out of.
Roth-Three thousand ducats, Five blunt, unbeautiful English syllables and the stage Jew is elevated to its apogee by a genius (Shakespeare), catapulted into eternal notoriety by “THREE THOUSAND DUCATS.”
Rosenbaum-focusing on those three sibilant words intuitively draws our attention to the unmistakable hiss of the serpent in them.
Rosenbaum- Pacino plays Shylock as a harassed Jewish father worried about his daughter, almost like Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof. I suggested they retitle Radford’s film The Usurer on the Roof.The Usurer on the Roof quote is pretty funny. And I agree with many of Rosenbaum’s points. It’s clear that Michael Radford wanted to wipe away much of the anti-Semitic dialogue from the film and make Shylock more sympathetic. Radford even begins the film with the opening title cards stating how Jews in 1596 Venice were abused, discriminated against, and forced to become usurers. We even see a usurer thrown over a bridge. When Shylock tries to say something about this, I assume in protest to Antonio, Antonio spits in his face and moves on. (More about Antonio, this model version of Christian sympathy and sacrifice in a moment)
Since I’ve read the play and know what was cut, I’m imagining the dropped lines put back in. I’m imagining Radford’s opening about the persecution of the Jews dropped. I’m imagining spittle coming out of Pacino’s mouth when he says “Three thousand ducats!” I can even imagine Shylock with a pitchfork and cloven hooves if that would help balance the equation. I can look at Shylock as unsympathetic as he could possibly be portrayed…and he’s still preferable to his nemesis Antonio!
First of all, the play does not begin with Antonio spitting in Shylock’s face. However, Shylock’s later dialogue does allude to Antonio’s past abuse, “You call me misbeliever, cutthroat dog, And spit upon my Jewish gabardine.” Antonio doesn’t deny it, in fact he says, “I am as like to call thee so again, To spit on thee again, to spurn thee too.”
The only reason Antonio is talking to Shylock in the first place is because he needs three thousand ducats to pimp off his friend Bassanio to the heiress Portia. (A friend he seems to be a bit overly smitten with…Come on out of the closet already, Antonio! Maybe then you see how you like being a member of an abused minority group of your own!) Now, when Shylock asks for a pound of flesh out of Antonio if the bond is broken, Antonio could have stated the absurdity of such an agreement and walked out the door as Bassanio suggested he do. But the arrogant Antonio immediately agrees, rationalizing he expects to be able to pay the bond three times over.
Moving along, Bassanio wins Portia with the help of the loan. But Antonio’s ships unexpectedly go down and he has to forfeit the bond. Time to pay up! (This is why I never liked Rumpelstiltskin. The dwarf was just coming back for what the Miller’s daughter agreed to. For this he has to literally tear himself in two?)
At Antonio’s hearing over the payment of the bond, Bassanio returns and offers twice the sum of the bond. Too late for Shylock, he wants his pound of flesh. Portia disguised as a doctor (Shakespeare and his cross-dressing!) tries to reason with Shylock with one of Shakespeare’s most memorable speeches:
The quality of mercy is not strained,
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven.
Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest;
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.
But Shylock won’t be swayed away from his bond, until Portia points out to him another legality that says he can’t shed Christian blood or take more than exactly a pound of flesh.
The bond is forfeit. Antonio, now is in control, has a chance to redeem himself.
He gives Shylock part of his principal income back. (Maybe he’s not so bad after all.)
But with the stipulation that he gives after his death it to Jessica and the Christain thug that swiped her away from her father in the middle of the night (Hey, wait a minute!).
Oh, and one more thing Shylock, says Antonio. You must “presently become a Christian.” (Antonio, you’re just a prick! Did you even hear the quality of mercy is not strained speech?)
So what’s the final verdict?
See the film, decide for yourself.
Read Rosenbaum’s book, but only if you're a Shakespeare geek.
Read Roth’s Operation Shylock, an emotionally draining but excellent work.
* My favorite Shakespeare screen adaptation ending might be from Roman Polanski’s Macbeth, which ends with Donaldbain entering the witch’s lair, a scene nowhere to be found in the text.
March 31, 2020
What a splendid coverage of the “Shakespeare wars” - a learned, highly sensible, excellent coverage of Shakespearean trends, Shakespeare himself, and Shakespeare scholarship.
His analysis of the Merchant of Venice, of the three-text Hamlet situation, of the endings of King Lear, of the late Shakespeare, of Shakespearean film, are all excellent.
I personally like Harold Bloom (and Percy Shelley) more than Rosenbaum does, and I am a fan of The Merchant of Venice as a work of art. And yet even where I don’t find myself agreeing with Rosenbaum, I always enjoy reading this book. It’s a work I highly recommend.
His analysis of the Merchant of Venice, of the three-text Hamlet situation, of the endings of King Lear, of the late Shakespeare, of Shakespearean film, are all excellent.
I personally like Harold Bloom (and Percy Shelley) more than Rosenbaum does, and I am a fan of The Merchant of Venice as a work of art. And yet even where I don’t find myself agreeing with Rosenbaum, I always enjoy reading this book. It’s a work I highly recommend.
February 7, 2022
I enjoyed this book. Rosenbaum’s enthusiasm for Shakespeare comes through brightly, and there is a certain sense of joy and wonder about the miracles of language contained in the plays and poems. This book is one writer’s journey into Shakespeare by way of the scholars who study the playwright. I found it at times too verbose and believe some editing would have improved the chapters. But, in the end, the book works. It is about what Shakespeare means today and why we enjoy his plays and the singular beauty of their words.
November 8, 2018
I'm a fan of Rosenbaum's writing and every chapter has a good premise and interesting ideas, but they go on and on and I always found my attention wandering. Probably will be a good book to dip into every now and then but I think sustained cover-to-cover reading was a mistake for me and by the end I was perilously close to skimming.
Or am I just getting too old for digressions?
Or am I just getting too old for digressions?
April 10, 2017
Good stuff. Even where I disagree, I'm usefully polarized.
March 28, 2011
This is one of the best books on Shakespeare that I've read yet. With a title like "The Shakespeare Wars", I expected it to be much concerned with biographical/historical controversies about Shakespeare, but it's actually a much more interesting look at the clashes and controversies of people responding to Shakespeare's text. This book asks the questions: how do we read and interpret Shakespeare, both academically and dramatically? And what do these readings and interpretations tell us about why we respond to Shakespeare the way we do? In other words, what makes Shakespeare Shakespeare?
Rosenbaum is probably the ideal person to write this book. His background in English literature allows him to understand some pretty arcane academic controversies, while his training as a journalist helps him make these accessible to the general reader. And he is passionate about Shakespeare. Before I read this book, I would not necessarily have expected a detailed discussion of Shakespeare's spelling or a close reading of a particular sonnet to be so compelling. This book makes them so.
Rosenbaum does make it pretty clear that, in his mind, there are right ways of studying Shakespeare and wrong ways of studying Shakespeare. The wrong ways include excessive obsession with Shakespeare's biography, excessive reliance on Literary Theory, and virtually everything ever written by Harold Bloom. The right ways mostly include various kinds of close textual analysis. I'm new enough to Shakespeare studies that I don't have a Shakespearean ideology, so I mostly find Rosenbaum's occasional dogmatism amusing. If I had more fixed opinions of my own, I imagine it might grate occasionally.
Still, I have yet to read any other work on Shakespeare whose sheer enthusiasm was so infectious. Do be warned, this is a book that will leave you with a long list of other works you need to read or reread, starting, of course, with the works of Shakespeare himself.
Rosenbaum is probably the ideal person to write this book. His background in English literature allows him to understand some pretty arcane academic controversies, while his training as a journalist helps him make these accessible to the general reader. And he is passionate about Shakespeare. Before I read this book, I would not necessarily have expected a detailed discussion of Shakespeare's spelling or a close reading of a particular sonnet to be so compelling. This book makes them so.
Rosenbaum does make it pretty clear that, in his mind, there are right ways of studying Shakespeare and wrong ways of studying Shakespeare. The wrong ways include excessive obsession with Shakespeare's biography, excessive reliance on Literary Theory, and virtually everything ever written by Harold Bloom. The right ways mostly include various kinds of close textual analysis. I'm new enough to Shakespeare studies that I don't have a Shakespearean ideology, so I mostly find Rosenbaum's occasional dogmatism amusing. If I had more fixed opinions of my own, I imagine it might grate occasionally.
Still, I have yet to read any other work on Shakespeare whose sheer enthusiasm was so infectious. Do be warned, this is a book that will leave you with a long list of other works you need to read or reread, starting, of course, with the works of Shakespeare himself.
July 16, 2009
From the beginning, Mr. Rosenbaum reminds us that the constant biographical fascination with Shakespeare's life is simply a red herring; unless someone finds a heretofore undiscovered collection of diaries written by Will himself, we are simply never going to know all that much about his life. The true focus of our investigations should be the works he left behind, works that contain glorious and almost limitless paths of discovery. Rosenbaum takes us through the academic battles that rarely make papers: how many Hamlets are there, the Hand D controversy, reviser vs write-em-and-leave-em, etc. This is the perfect introduction to Shakespearean scholarship for those with no experience in that department. For those with some experience with Shakespeare, it provides a delightful starting point interesting topics of study. Highly recommended!
January 16, 2009
Single best book I've read about Shakespearean scholarship (that's not geared towards mere close readings, literary criticism or 'how to teach' Shakespeare...for that I'd see An Oxford Guide to Shakespeare). This book dabbles in close reading of some Shakespearean verse as well as the world of scholarship, but it's told in way that is half one man's love relationship with Shakespeare (specifically A Misdummer Night's Dream) and half interviews/research involving really, really smart (and a couple of dumb) people discussing cool stuff about Shakespeares' life and verse.
This book isn't for the causal Shakespearen reader--those of us who already enjoy his work (come on, be honest ADORE his work) will read this book more than once.
This book isn't for the causal Shakespearen reader--those of us who already enjoy his work (come on, be honest ADORE his work) will read this book more than once.
August 28, 2008
Really enjoyed this, despite his bizarre personal enmity towards Harold Bloom (really a painful blemish on the book. Very strange.) I had no idea about the problems of Shakespearean texts, and the battles between ideological editors was really amusing. The chapters on stage/screen actors was really interesting. Overall, a fun look at the whole Shakespeare industry.
May 17, 2017
Rosenbaum refights the battles over interpretation, sources and attribution in too finely wrought details. It is difficult to make academic conflicts seem exciting to anyone not involved in them and the author doesn't quite do it here. A noble failure.
August 26, 2016
Words on Paper
Barquentine, his review, part the first
I found the textual issues about which Rosenbaum interviews numerous academics and editors the most interesting part of this book. In these chapters Rosenbaum is outstanding when he chooses to act solely as a reporter – he talks to the right people, asks the right questions, and explains things in a clear and thorough manner. On most of the topics he covers he has views as to the right and wrong sides, but he is open about these and I never felt that he was shortchanging or misrepresenting the opposing side of an argument.
I come to this issue as an amateur seriously interested in music and the types of issues discussed here are very familiar to me from the world of opera, but the way they are presented to the public are very different between the two disciplines. In the world of opera, it is no longer any secret, if it ever was, that there are two versions of Don Giovanni and Boris Godounov, both entirely the creation of the composer. Indeed, the recording industry has in some way embraced the fact, with Roger Norrington’s Don Giovanni recording allowing the listener to program either the Prague or Vienna version and Valery Gergiev’s recording of Boris including both of Mussorgsky’s versions. In Shakespeare publications, by contrast, it was evidently an issue of some controversy and concern that the Oxford Shakespeare printed the Quarto and Folio versions of King Lear as two separate plays (as well as a third, traditional combined text) and that the Arden Shakespeare’s text of Hamlet was published as three separate texts, from the 1603 and 1604 Quartos and the 1623 Folio.
What is different in the operatic cases is that there is no doubt that the various versions come from the composer’s hand and the circumstances which produced a second version are well known. In the case of Shakespeare, all is conjecture. Do the Folio versions represent Shakespeare’s revisions made after the publication of the Quarto versions? Or are both versions derived from the same manuscript, changed radically from each other due to playhouse emendations, editors’ decisions and printers’ errors? It is here that “Bardolatry” enters the picture. I am not sure if this is a genuine concern of the academics interviewed or largely a projection by Rosenbaum of his own concerns, but much of the discussion involved concerns about what texts are really “Shakespearean” and which may represent the additions or emendations of other hands. While I found the detailed discussions of textual differences quite interesting, I thought that the whole question of which particular speeches, changes, and even punctuation Shakespeare himself was responsible for rather pointless. We have these separate texts and I think it would be most beneficial if they were available to the general reader in at least one accessible edition without the practice of editorial conflation.
Another issue Rosenbaum presents is whether Shakespeare’s works should be printed with the “original spelling”, so that Hamlet’s “The air bites shrewdly; it is very cold.” is printed “The ayre bites shroudly, it is very colde.” As the imbedded “shroud” in that line shows, this practice can introduce certain resonances unsuspected using standard spelling; whether these are intentional or accidental is a question, but one that I think should be available for the reader to decide, rather than the decision to standardize spelling always being made by an editor. I would appreciate it if, among all the editions of Shakespeare’s works currently available, at least one affordable edition took this approach. Again, a musical parallel comes to my mind: the “authentic instruments” movement’s interest in trying to reproduce the sounds composers of the past actually heard seems similar to the idea of “original spelling” presenting readers with the words as Shakespeare, his players, and his contemporaries actually wrote and read them.
Words Spoken
Being the second part of Barquentine, his review
For the most part I was not enthusiastic about Rosenbaum’s chapters on Shakespeare in performance. I did not find his interviews with actors and directors as interesting as those with textual scholars. Nor were his descriptions of stage performances very evocative.
A chapter featuring Peter Hall’s theories on how the iambic pentameter verse in Shakespeare should be spoken in performance was interesting, but a chapter profiling the director Peter Brook was a total waste. Rosenbaum and, by his account, many others had a transformative experience seeing Brook’s production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, but the author does almost nothing to help the reader conceive what the experience of that production must have been, though he goes on at length with maddeningly non-specific praise throughout the book. Brook may be a terrific director, but I’ve seen nothing of his work and Rosenbaum’s descriptions of the preparations that go into his productions is just so much sausage-making to me.
A chapter on Shylock consisted mainly of an interview with actor Steven Berkoff, who has done a one-man show of Shakespeare’s Villains, and an extended attack by Rosenbaum on Michael Radford’s film The Merchant of Venice with Al Pacino. In these later parts of the book concerning Shakespeare performance and criticism, Rosenbaum gives less consideration to opinions that differ from his own; he considers Merchant an anti-Semitic play and introduces opinions that would counter this view only in order to undercut them. The fact that it was by a vast margin the most frequently produced play of Shakespeare in Nazi Germany is all the evidence the author of Explaining Hitler feels he needs to seal his argument.
Nor was a chapter on Shakespeare on Film as interesting as I had hoped. Though he briefly touches on many different films including a comparison of Welles’ and Olivier’s Othellos, Rosenbaum concentrates on four films which, according to him, offer some the best experiences of Shakespeare in performance: Olivier’s Richard III, Peter Brook’s King Lear with Paul Scofield, Orson Welles’ Chimes at Midnight and a videotaped Hamlet with Richard Burton. As with the stage performances, the accounts of the films have little evocative power if you haven’t seen them, or, perhaps, even if you have. I have seen only the Olivier, and Rosenbaum’s account awoke no memories for me; what I remember best about it is the score by William Walton. I’m not sure that I would put it above other Shakespeare films I’ve seen, such as Branagh’s Henry V or Polanski’s Macbeth, both of which stick more strongly in my memory.
RazorGirl’s point about the popularity of Shakespeare in his own day and the appeal his plays had for even the lower levels of society was much on my mind when reading the second half of this book. I want to give it some consideration in the next, and last, part of my review.
Words Under the Microscope
Barquentine, his review, the third and latest part
Early in this book Rosenbaum evokes the late 16th century conflict between the largely self-educated playwrights of the popular London stage and the “university wits”, Oxford and Cambridge scholars who wrote plays and poems primarily for the amusement of the educated upper classes. In the later part of this book the author spends much of his time interviewing and attending conferences with modern day “university wits”, literary scholars whose theories and analyses of Shakespeare are, at least as Rosenbaum presents them, largely incomprehensible to me. In his descriptions of various papers on Shakespeare I was reminded of Jim Dixon’s article in Lucky Jim, “the article’s niggling mindlessness, its funereal parade of yawn-enforcing facts, the pseudo-light it threw upon non-problems.”
In discussing literary theory, Rosenbaum criticizes “deconstructionism” and makes it sound absolutely ridiculous, for example substituting talk of an “author function” for any discussion of a flesh-and-blood author. But, alas, he makes the approach of “close reading”, his alternative to deconstructionism, appear equally airy and out-of-touch by the extremes to which he allows it to take him. No depth of meaning is too obscure, no possible connection too unlikely for Shakespeare not to have planted it in his writing.
One of the prime practitioners of the close reading advocated here is scholar Stephen Booth. In the direct quotes Rosenbaum provides, Booth sounds like an interesting guy. He emphasizes that reading and viewing Shakespeare is primarily about “pleasure” and he even brings in a touch of the groundling with his recollection of a young actor, playing Lear with powder-whitened hair, being suddenly lost in a fog of cornstarch when the fool behind him, standing a head taller, sneezes. However when the worshipful Rosenbaum attempts to summarize or paraphrase Booth’s achievements in Shakespeare studies, he makes his work sound like something I would never consider picking up, a far too detailed and esoteric dismantling of the Bard’s apparently almost infinite possible meanings.
Nominally writing for a general audience, Rosenbaum is very enthusiastic about the work of academics like Booth, although it seems to me they are writing almost exclusively for other academics, not for a general reader like me who, while not quite a groundling, reads and views Shakespeare in order to enjoy an intelligent entertainment and is not conversant with fashions in literary theory or the minutiae of recent historical research. I have not read Harold Bloom, but he does seem to be writing with a reader like me in mind, as a result of which he is the bestselling writer about Shakespeare in the US and has earned the resentment and envy of the academics Rosenbaum writes about. A chapter on Bloom promises to provide some fireworks as Rosenbaum takes on Bloom’s “inventor of the human” image of Shakespeare. But most of the take-downs of Bloom’s “bardolatry” apply equally well to Rosenbaum himself who is inclined to put Shakespeare’s works on a literary plane transcending the capability of mortals to fully understand let alone to have conceived and executed.
One possible treatment for bardolatry is given early in the book by textual scholar Paul Werstine who says, after Rosenbaum points out parallel imagery in Shakespeare’s plays and the possible “Shakespeare” passages in Sir Thomas More, “we read Shakespeare over and over again and we see correspondences like that, but we don’t read the other 350 plays written before the closing of the theaters in 1642.” Rosenbaum seems unlikely to take the implied advice. Stephen Booth, who at least seems to recognize that “great men lived before Agamemnon”, eventually manages to get the author to look at a poem by George Herbert (conveniently reproduced in the text), but Rosenbaum fails to consider that the levels of ambiguity and multiple meanings in Herbert’s Love (3) might really be on a par with those in Shakespeare’s sonnets.
Rosenbaum is not someone I would choose to write about the meaning of Shakespeare’s works – in the first chapter he analyzes the “Bottom’s Dream” speech to demonstrate the how the work of WS, like the dream, “hath no bottom”. But rather than plumbing the depths of interpretation, what he does there is actually follow a chain of associations which are, of course, endless because one thing is always connected to one or more other things. Ultimately we are asked not to read Shakespeare more closely or carefully; no amount of careful reading by someone with a mere Bachelor’s degree let alone a “rude mechanical” could possibly uncover the subtleties and ambiguities Rosenbaum’s selected scholars find. Rather we are asked to worship the Bard and take the pronouncements of these academic high priests as exegesis of the
In the penultimate chapter ”five hundred or so scholars” congregate for four days in Bermuda to sit in hotel meeting rooms listening to presentations on such topics as “Renaissance Ideas of Beauty” and “Shakespeare’s Late Language”. The groundlings are forgotten here, and no doubt the neglect is mutual; no hotel employee will leave off lighting the flames under trays of appetizers in order to attend to these academics’ “muse of fire”.
Barquentine, his review, part the first
I found the textual issues about which Rosenbaum interviews numerous academics and editors the most interesting part of this book. In these chapters Rosenbaum is outstanding when he chooses to act solely as a reporter – he talks to the right people, asks the right questions, and explains things in a clear and thorough manner. On most of the topics he covers he has views as to the right and wrong sides, but he is open about these and I never felt that he was shortchanging or misrepresenting the opposing side of an argument.
I come to this issue as an amateur seriously interested in music and the types of issues discussed here are very familiar to me from the world of opera, but the way they are presented to the public are very different between the two disciplines. In the world of opera, it is no longer any secret, if it ever was, that there are two versions of Don Giovanni and Boris Godounov, both entirely the creation of the composer. Indeed, the recording industry has in some way embraced the fact, with Roger Norrington’s Don Giovanni recording allowing the listener to program either the Prague or Vienna version and Valery Gergiev’s recording of Boris including both of Mussorgsky’s versions. In Shakespeare publications, by contrast, it was evidently an issue of some controversy and concern that the Oxford Shakespeare printed the Quarto and Folio versions of King Lear as two separate plays (as well as a third, traditional combined text) and that the Arden Shakespeare’s text of Hamlet was published as three separate texts, from the 1603 and 1604 Quartos and the 1623 Folio.
What is different in the operatic cases is that there is no doubt that the various versions come from the composer’s hand and the circumstances which produced a second version are well known. In the case of Shakespeare, all is conjecture. Do the Folio versions represent Shakespeare’s revisions made after the publication of the Quarto versions? Or are both versions derived from the same manuscript, changed radically from each other due to playhouse emendations, editors’ decisions and printers’ errors? It is here that “Bardolatry” enters the picture. I am not sure if this is a genuine concern of the academics interviewed or largely a projection by Rosenbaum of his own concerns, but much of the discussion involved concerns about what texts are really “Shakespearean” and which may represent the additions or emendations of other hands. While I found the detailed discussions of textual differences quite interesting, I thought that the whole question of which particular speeches, changes, and even punctuation Shakespeare himself was responsible for rather pointless. We have these separate texts and I think it would be most beneficial if they were available to the general reader in at least one accessible edition without the practice of editorial conflation.
Another issue Rosenbaum presents is whether Shakespeare’s works should be printed with the “original spelling”, so that Hamlet’s “The air bites shrewdly; it is very cold.” is printed “The ayre bites shroudly, it is very colde.” As the imbedded “shroud” in that line shows, this practice can introduce certain resonances unsuspected using standard spelling; whether these are intentional or accidental is a question, but one that I think should be available for the reader to decide, rather than the decision to standardize spelling always being made by an editor. I would appreciate it if, among all the editions of Shakespeare’s works currently available, at least one affordable edition took this approach. Again, a musical parallel comes to my mind: the “authentic instruments” movement’s interest in trying to reproduce the sounds composers of the past actually heard seems similar to the idea of “original spelling” presenting readers with the words as Shakespeare, his players, and his contemporaries actually wrote and read them.
Words Spoken
Being the second part of Barquentine, his review
For the most part I was not enthusiastic about Rosenbaum’s chapters on Shakespeare in performance. I did not find his interviews with actors and directors as interesting as those with textual scholars. Nor were his descriptions of stage performances very evocative.
A chapter featuring Peter Hall’s theories on how the iambic pentameter verse in Shakespeare should be spoken in performance was interesting, but a chapter profiling the director Peter Brook was a total waste. Rosenbaum and, by his account, many others had a transformative experience seeing Brook’s production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, but the author does almost nothing to help the reader conceive what the experience of that production must have been, though he goes on at length with maddeningly non-specific praise throughout the book. Brook may be a terrific director, but I’ve seen nothing of his work and Rosenbaum’s descriptions of the preparations that go into his productions is just so much sausage-making to me.
A chapter on Shylock consisted mainly of an interview with actor Steven Berkoff, who has done a one-man show of Shakespeare’s Villains, and an extended attack by Rosenbaum on Michael Radford’s film The Merchant of Venice with Al Pacino. In these later parts of the book concerning Shakespeare performance and criticism, Rosenbaum gives less consideration to opinions that differ from his own; he considers Merchant an anti-Semitic play and introduces opinions that would counter this view only in order to undercut them. The fact that it was by a vast margin the most frequently produced play of Shakespeare in Nazi Germany is all the evidence the author of Explaining Hitler feels he needs to seal his argument.
Nor was a chapter on Shakespeare on Film as interesting as I had hoped. Though he briefly touches on many different films including a comparison of Welles’ and Olivier’s Othellos, Rosenbaum concentrates on four films which, according to him, offer some the best experiences of Shakespeare in performance: Olivier’s Richard III, Peter Brook’s King Lear with Paul Scofield, Orson Welles’ Chimes at Midnight and a videotaped Hamlet with Richard Burton. As with the stage performances, the accounts of the films have little evocative power if you haven’t seen them, or, perhaps, even if you have. I have seen only the Olivier, and Rosenbaum’s account awoke no memories for me; what I remember best about it is the score by William Walton. I’m not sure that I would put it above other Shakespeare films I’ve seen, such as Branagh’s Henry V or Polanski’s Macbeth, both of which stick more strongly in my memory.
RazorGirl’s point about the popularity of Shakespeare in his own day and the appeal his plays had for even the lower levels of society was much on my mind when reading the second half of this book. I want to give it some consideration in the next, and last, part of my review.
Words Under the Microscope
Barquentine, his review, the third and latest part
Early in this book Rosenbaum evokes the late 16th century conflict between the largely self-educated playwrights of the popular London stage and the “university wits”, Oxford and Cambridge scholars who wrote plays and poems primarily for the amusement of the educated upper classes. In the later part of this book the author spends much of his time interviewing and attending conferences with modern day “university wits”, literary scholars whose theories and analyses of Shakespeare are, at least as Rosenbaum presents them, largely incomprehensible to me. In his descriptions of various papers on Shakespeare I was reminded of Jim Dixon’s article in Lucky Jim, “the article’s niggling mindlessness, its funereal parade of yawn-enforcing facts, the pseudo-light it threw upon non-problems.”
In discussing literary theory, Rosenbaum criticizes “deconstructionism” and makes it sound absolutely ridiculous, for example substituting talk of an “author function” for any discussion of a flesh-and-blood author. But, alas, he makes the approach of “close reading”, his alternative to deconstructionism, appear equally airy and out-of-touch by the extremes to which he allows it to take him. No depth of meaning is too obscure, no possible connection too unlikely for Shakespeare not to have planted it in his writing.
One of the prime practitioners of the close reading advocated here is scholar Stephen Booth. In the direct quotes Rosenbaum provides, Booth sounds like an interesting guy. He emphasizes that reading and viewing Shakespeare is primarily about “pleasure” and he even brings in a touch of the groundling with his recollection of a young actor, playing Lear with powder-whitened hair, being suddenly lost in a fog of cornstarch when the fool behind him, standing a head taller, sneezes. However when the worshipful Rosenbaum attempts to summarize or paraphrase Booth’s achievements in Shakespeare studies, he makes his work sound like something I would never consider picking up, a far too detailed and esoteric dismantling of the Bard’s apparently almost infinite possible meanings.
Nominally writing for a general audience, Rosenbaum is very enthusiastic about the work of academics like Booth, although it seems to me they are writing almost exclusively for other academics, not for a general reader like me who, while not quite a groundling, reads and views Shakespeare in order to enjoy an intelligent entertainment and is not conversant with fashions in literary theory or the minutiae of recent historical research. I have not read Harold Bloom, but he does seem to be writing with a reader like me in mind, as a result of which he is the bestselling writer about Shakespeare in the US and has earned the resentment and envy of the academics Rosenbaum writes about. A chapter on Bloom promises to provide some fireworks as Rosenbaum takes on Bloom’s “inventor of the human” image of Shakespeare. But most of the take-downs of Bloom’s “bardolatry” apply equally well to Rosenbaum himself who is inclined to put Shakespeare’s works on a literary plane transcending the capability of mortals to fully understand let alone to have conceived and executed.
One possible treatment for bardolatry is given early in the book by textual scholar Paul Werstine who says, after Rosenbaum points out parallel imagery in Shakespeare’s plays and the possible “Shakespeare” passages in Sir Thomas More, “we read Shakespeare over and over again and we see correspondences like that, but we don’t read the other 350 plays written before the closing of the theaters in 1642.” Rosenbaum seems unlikely to take the implied advice. Stephen Booth, who at least seems to recognize that “great men lived before Agamemnon”, eventually manages to get the author to look at a poem by George Herbert (conveniently reproduced in the text), but Rosenbaum fails to consider that the levels of ambiguity and multiple meanings in Herbert’s Love (3) might really be on a par with those in Shakespeare’s sonnets.
Rosenbaum is not someone I would choose to write about the meaning of Shakespeare’s works – in the first chapter he analyzes the “Bottom’s Dream” speech to demonstrate the how the work of WS, like the dream, “hath no bottom”. But rather than plumbing the depths of interpretation, what he does there is actually follow a chain of associations which are, of course, endless because one thing is always connected to one or more other things. Ultimately we are asked not to read Shakespeare more closely or carefully; no amount of careful reading by someone with a mere Bachelor’s degree let alone a “rude mechanical” could possibly uncover the subtleties and ambiguities Rosenbaum’s selected scholars find. Rather we are asked to worship the Bard and take the pronouncements of these academic high priests as exegesis of the
In the penultimate chapter ”five hundred or so scholars” congregate for four days in Bermuda to sit in hotel meeting rooms listening to presentations on such topics as “Renaissance Ideas of Beauty” and “Shakespeare’s Late Language”. The groundlings are forgotten here, and no doubt the neglect is mutual; no hotel employee will leave off lighting the flames under trays of appetizers in order to attend to these academics’ “muse of fire”.
August 30, 2021
In "Explaining Hitler," Ron Rosenbaum tried to deconstruct all the various biographies and histories of Adolf Hitler, trying to explain why explaining Hitler is both futile and worthy at the same time (and how wrong some efforts end up being, despite the best efforts of those involved). This book is not "Explaining Shakespeare," but it's pretty damn entertaining all the same. Rosenbaum isn't interested in the sketchy biographical information we have, or the conjectures about Shakespeare not being "Shakespeare" (i.e., someone other than Good Will being the actual author of the plays and poems, something that strikes me as the height of literary snobbery). No, "The Shakespeare Wars" is an entertaining look at how scholars approach the works of the Bard and what those approaches uncover (and what they obscure). From the debates over how many versions of "Hamlet" or "King Lear" should be presented to the public to how to render the spelling of the words in those plays (whether to render them in modern verse or in as close a version of Shakespeare's erratic spelling as possible without losing the reader), to cases of attribution that are debatable and performances that are life-changing (and preserved on film), Rosenbaum makes us care about these issues and many more because *he cares*, and his enthusiasm is infectious. I doubt I'll ever give much serious consideration to some of the questions he brings up in this book once I've moved on from it, but I'm glad to go on this intellectual journey with him. These kind of literary speculations are right in my wheelhouse, and Ron Rosenbaum is a great writer.
June 14, 2022
This book is for someone beyond a mere Shakespeare fan or enthusiast. Digging into textual analysis, close reading, literary theory, line reading, (actor and director prep), and critical scansion is usually beyond the interests of even serious readers. That said, it does have a lot to offer in language insight, and current trends in the thinking of the community of Shakespearean Scholars, directors, actors and literary critics. Stylistically, Rosenbaum's approach resembles John McPhee's approach to long form non-fiction, introducing each issue through the perspective of its chief proponent, with a little less of McPhee's level of intimacy with his subjects. Rosenbaum sticks rather closely to his subjects' professional views. He is fair-minded and makes his own interrogatory an active part of the exploration of the issues and those that represent them, only clobbering Harold Bloom's over exuberance, which upon reflection, deserves it. In the final analysis, I learned a lot, and felt rewarded for the engagement, but it was not easy sledding.
October 2, 2018
I really enjoyed a lot of this book and it made me think more deeply about Shakespeare. He talked about Shakespeare being "bottomless," as in you can continue to find meaning in his work no matter how many times you read it, and that part really rang true to me as a teacher who never gets bored teaching Hamlet.
I felt like the book was pretty repetitive about some ideas and could have been pared down for readability. I didn't like how he kept inserting what the next chapter would be about or referencing a previous chapter; the ideas could have stood alone. He went on some tangents about particular critics that I wasn't really into.
But if you enjoy Shakespeare and want to look differently at some plays/sonnets, this book is worthwhile! I want to go back and read a lot of Shakespeare now.
I felt like the book was pretty repetitive about some ideas and could have been pared down for readability. I didn't like how he kept inserting what the next chapter would be about or referencing a previous chapter; the ideas could have stood alone. He went on some tangents about particular critics that I wasn't really into.
But if you enjoy Shakespeare and want to look differently at some plays/sonnets, this book is worthwhile! I want to go back and read a lot of Shakespeare now.
January 15, 2026
It's very rare that I give up on a book part way through - I think I've probably done it maybe less than 5 times in my life. But this book made me do it.
I do like the topics, which are interesting - about various debates and disagreements between Shakespeare scholars on things like which play texts (Quarto vs Folio versions) should be considered "definitive", if any. Or about preferred spellings of texts, or how things should be interpreted, and so on.
It's interesting stuff, but padded out with page after page after page of the author's own personal anecdotes and recounts of his meetings with various scholars.
I feel like the book could have presented all the interesting stuff with plenty of context and analysis in about 100 pages. But after 300 pages, with 300 to go, I couldn't do it any more.
I do like the topics, which are interesting - about various debates and disagreements between Shakespeare scholars on things like which play texts (Quarto vs Folio versions) should be considered "definitive", if any. Or about preferred spellings of texts, or how things should be interpreted, and so on.
It's interesting stuff, but padded out with page after page after page of the author's own personal anecdotes and recounts of his meetings with various scholars.
I feel like the book could have presented all the interesting stuff with plenty of context and analysis in about 100 pages. But after 300 pages, with 300 to go, I couldn't do it any more.
Read
August 17, 2020Rosenbaum does something completing different to previous books on the man, the myth, the legend: William Shakespeare. For this book, he looks at Shakespeare's astonishing language to unlock the mystery. Did Will belt out of a play in one draft or was he a voracious redrafter? Very entertaining, even non-Shakespeare fans will enjoy it - Elisa, Book Grocer
Purchase this classic here for just $10.00
Purchase this classic here for just $10.00
June 19, 2017
My third read of this book. Doesn't hold up as it did when I first read it ten years ago - Rosenbaum's fragmented syntax drives me nuts even more now - but damn, his passion and abiding love for Shakespeare's works is, well bottomless. And thrilling. (See what I did there?) Every time I have read his chapter on Peter Brook I get chills. I have used Brook's techniques with my own high-school students, with great success. Lots of energy in this book. Crack it open and see what happens.
September 25, 2017
DNF due to circumstances beyond my control, I'll try this one again later.
February 4, 2019
This book looks at current research and debates on Shakespeare. It does a great job of making the debates accessible to a general audience.
December 15, 2021
There is so much here. It is packed full of information presented in a stream of consciousness format.
March 16, 2025
Source : Libby -Ebook. Originally published in 2006, See my Kindle notes .
About the author: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Ros...
He writes and argues beautifully. It starts with him talking about his time at Yale as an undergrad and then his first quarter of Yale Graa school Scholarship at Yale where he sours of the experience and quits in his first quarter to become a journalist.
This book talks about some of the studies on Shakespeare at that time and in fighting to get heard.
* a quote from the book as to why he wrote it *
In the seven years or so I’ve spent writing this book, when people have asked me what it’s about, the short answer I’ve found most applicable is some variation of this: One night in Stratford, England, something strange happened to me watching Peter Brook’s Dream. Something I haven’t recovered from. Ever since then I’ve been trying to recapture it, to explain what it was and this book, in effect, involves me seeking out those who can help “expound” it for me.
He is less interested in what made Shakespeare Shakespeare.” He focused on what makes Shakespeare “Shakespearean", his words and why we still are talking about the plays today. As one of his interviewees said " to discover what the fuss is all about "
What parts of Hamlet we've discovered are the true play ?
Are these plays reconstructed from members of his company years after his death?
Are some lines/words misprints or typos or 3rd party edits?
Are some parts reworked by W. S. or others shortening of the play to play better for certain audiences ?
Good parts on his love of Peter Brook MSN Dream and his mystical experience of watching this production.
Interesting parts on Halls statement that in each of WS plays there is a hidden play.
Discussion about a discovered play on Sir Thomas Moore and thoughts that WS worked on it.
Shakespeare Scholarship he disagrees with.
What's the real ending of King Lear ?
Films vs Theater what's better?
Is Shakespeare exceptional and why ?
Discussion of phrasing, breathing, pausing, deep reading and other subjects with Directors,Actors and Scholars
About the author: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Ros...
He writes and argues beautifully. It starts with him talking about his time at Yale as an undergrad and then his first quarter of Yale Graa school Scholarship at Yale where he sours of the experience and quits in his first quarter to become a journalist.
This book talks about some of the studies on Shakespeare at that time and in fighting to get heard.
* a quote from the book as to why he wrote it *
In the seven years or so I’ve spent writing this book, when people have asked me what it’s about, the short answer I’ve found most applicable is some variation of this: One night in Stratford, England, something strange happened to me watching Peter Brook’s Dream. Something I haven’t recovered from. Ever since then I’ve been trying to recapture it, to explain what it was and this book, in effect, involves me seeking out those who can help “expound” it for me.
He is less interested in what made Shakespeare Shakespeare.” He focused on what makes Shakespeare “Shakespearean", his words and why we still are talking about the plays today. As one of his interviewees said " to discover what the fuss is all about "
What parts of Hamlet we've discovered are the true play ?
Are these plays reconstructed from members of his company years after his death?
Are some lines/words misprints or typos or 3rd party edits?
Are some parts reworked by W. S. or others shortening of the play to play better for certain audiences ?
Good parts on his love of Peter Brook MSN Dream and his mystical experience of watching this production.
Interesting parts on Halls statement that in each of WS plays there is a hidden play.
Discussion about a discovered play on Sir Thomas Moore and thoughts that WS worked on it.
Shakespeare Scholarship he disagrees with.
What's the real ending of King Lear ?
Films vs Theater what's better?
Is Shakespeare exceptional and why ?
Discussion of phrasing, breathing, pausing, deep reading and other subjects with Directors,Actors and Scholars
July 6, 2019
Ron Rosenbaum really, really, really cares about Shakespeare. And he really, really wants you to care, too. He thinks it’s “scandalous” that there is a controversy over King Lear’s last words, depending on whether you go by the Quarto or the Folio; and he exults with schadenfreude when Professor Donald W. Foster is forced to recant his attribution to Shakespeare of a piece of doggerel called the “Funeral Elegy.” (Full disclosure: I took some classes from Foster at Vassar College around the time this book was published, and initially picked it up because of curiosity about what Rosenbaum had to say about my former professor.) For this book, Rosenbaum conducted extensive interviews with the greatest Shakespearean scholars, actors, and directors of the early 2000s, and always sounds absolutely delighted to be in their presence.
At times, though, Rosenbaum’s voice is too intrusive. In one chapter, he makes a thoughtful argument about why Shakespeare on film can be better than Shakespeare onstage, but it’s wrapped in a layer of “look at me, I’m such a contrarian.” In another chapter, he mildly embarrasses himself in front of his hero Peter Brook and then spends what feels like 20 pages in self-flagellation over his faux pas. And if a Shakespeare scholar implies that Rosenbaum (a mere ink-stained wretch of a journalist!) has said something clever or insightful about Shakespeare, he can’t resist patting himself on the back.
It’s also curious that, in a book whose stated aim is to introduce non-specialists to the major issues in Shakespeare studies in the early 21st century, Rosenbaum doesn’t look into feminist or postcolonial or queer theory. It’s fine if he’s personally more attracted to close textual analysis than to postmodern theory, but those theoretical approaches are a big part of Shakespeare studies these days and it’s odd that he didn’t speak to any scholars who specialize in those areas.
There are definitely times when I wish Rosenbaum’s editor had cut some of his digressions and repetitions, yet for the most part, his chatty style and incredible passion for Shakespeare keeps this a lively read.
At times, though, Rosenbaum’s voice is too intrusive. In one chapter, he makes a thoughtful argument about why Shakespeare on film can be better than Shakespeare onstage, but it’s wrapped in a layer of “look at me, I’m such a contrarian.” In another chapter, he mildly embarrasses himself in front of his hero Peter Brook and then spends what feels like 20 pages in self-flagellation over his faux pas. And if a Shakespeare scholar implies that Rosenbaum (a mere ink-stained wretch of a journalist!) has said something clever or insightful about Shakespeare, he can’t resist patting himself on the back.
It’s also curious that, in a book whose stated aim is to introduce non-specialists to the major issues in Shakespeare studies in the early 21st century, Rosenbaum doesn’t look into feminist or postcolonial or queer theory. It’s fine if he’s personally more attracted to close textual analysis than to postmodern theory, but those theoretical approaches are a big part of Shakespeare studies these days and it’s odd that he didn’t speak to any scholars who specialize in those areas.
There are definitely times when I wish Rosenbaum’s editor had cut some of his digressions and repetitions, yet for the most part, his chatty style and incredible passion for Shakespeare keeps this a lively read.
June 9, 2016
I loved this book. Is it repetitive at times? Yes. Does Rosenbaum have an annoying habit of using fragmented sentences? Yes. But look past these quirks, and you'll find a fascinating collection of the most interesting scholarly debates about Shakespeare's works. This is not a book about who Shakespeare was – Rosenbaum has little good to say about attempts at biography. This is a book about what Shakespeare wrote, and what scholars argue about when the argue about Shakespeare. The author wants you to see these debates from the inside, to feel the weight of the conflicts and attempts to resolve them. And that, for a guy like me, is what really makes this book worthwhile. For someone who prefers the "Shakespeare In Love" approach to the Bard, perhaps not so much. It can all seem a little pointless if you have no natural inclination toward exegesis. Personally, I found the question of the multiple Hamlet texts enlightening, as well as the debate over proper verse speaking (how important is a pause?) and spelling (does modernizing impoverish readings?).
The issues here circle a single, important question: "What does it mean to be 'Shakespearean'?" Can we articulate what makes Shakespeare special; or as one of Rosenbaum's idols Stephen Booth put it, "What's all the fuss about?" On this topic, I think Rosenbaum grows to an important point, which is that Shakespeare's writing is "bottomless." That is to say, the more closely you read the plays and sonnets, the more you find: more metaphors, more puns, more polysemy, more meaning, seemingly without end. "Shakespearean," then, is a supreme level of wordplay, married with a sense of human character and dilemma (dilemmas of love, of revenge, of forgiveness, of the self), that, when studied, appears limitless.
And yet, as dryly academic as this might sound, what drives Rosenbaum is a life-changing experience seeing Peter Brook's infamous staging of A Midsummer Night's Dream. And that, I think, is one of my most important takeaways from The Shakespeare Wars, one to which I can fully relate. It's worth your time to analyze the texts, but these are plays meant to be seen and performed. Invariably, the spark of a lifelong love of Shakespeare really begins not on the page, but on the stage.
As such, one who is already in love will find more to appreciate here than the merely infatuated. But writing quirks aside, there is much to value, and I count The Shakespeare Wars among those books that helped me to finally understand the fuss.
The issues here circle a single, important question: "What does it mean to be 'Shakespearean'?" Can we articulate what makes Shakespeare special; or as one of Rosenbaum's idols Stephen Booth put it, "What's all the fuss about?" On this topic, I think Rosenbaum grows to an important point, which is that Shakespeare's writing is "bottomless." That is to say, the more closely you read the plays and sonnets, the more you find: more metaphors, more puns, more polysemy, more meaning, seemingly without end. "Shakespearean," then, is a supreme level of wordplay, married with a sense of human character and dilemma (dilemmas of love, of revenge, of forgiveness, of the self), that, when studied, appears limitless.
And yet, as dryly academic as this might sound, what drives Rosenbaum is a life-changing experience seeing Peter Brook's infamous staging of A Midsummer Night's Dream. And that, I think, is one of my most important takeaways from The Shakespeare Wars, one to which I can fully relate. It's worth your time to analyze the texts, but these are plays meant to be seen and performed. Invariably, the spark of a lifelong love of Shakespeare really begins not on the page, but on the stage.
As such, one who is already in love will find more to appreciate here than the merely infatuated. But writing quirks aside, there is much to value, and I count The Shakespeare Wars among those books that helped me to finally understand the fuss.
February 8, 2017
I'm actually kind of surprised that I'm giving this book five stars. There was a point early on when I almost abandoned it. Rosenbaum goes very deep into his arguments, and a couple of chapters went beyond what I cared to learn. But the other chapters were exceptional.
So, I picked this book up at the Utah Shakespeare Festival. Whenever I see Shakespeare, I want to learn more and develop a better appreciation. This book appealed to me because it focuses on controversies -- "wars" -- that get at the very heart of who Shakespeare was, and how his plays should be read and acted. My favorite parts of the book were discussions about acting. Rosenbaum quotes and discusses many of the great actors that I personally admire (including Judi Dench, who I love, and Kevin Kline). Those sections of the book were riveting to me, and I definitely gained a deeper appreciation of what is so unique about Shakespeare. I also loved that Rosenbaum gives movie recommendations to see outstanding (even legendary) Shakespeare performance captured on film.
If you don't know very much about Shakespeare's most popular works, or if you aren't terribly interested in him, this is not the book for you. But if you are intrigued by the bard and familiar with his main works, I highly recommend this read. My major takeaway: Shakespeare is unique because his writing is bottomless -- he provides an inexhaustible supply of possible meanings, wordplay, and human themes. We never tire of him because there is always more beneath the surface. I love that Rosenbaum comes down on the side of "there is no one correct interpretation." Each of the great passages connote and can mean many things. The richness is incredible.
And, Rosenbaum writes with ardor. I love how passionate and florid he is about his subject.
So, I picked this book up at the Utah Shakespeare Festival. Whenever I see Shakespeare, I want to learn more and develop a better appreciation. This book appealed to me because it focuses on controversies -- "wars" -- that get at the very heart of who Shakespeare was, and how his plays should be read and acted. My favorite parts of the book were discussions about acting. Rosenbaum quotes and discusses many of the great actors that I personally admire (including Judi Dench, who I love, and Kevin Kline). Those sections of the book were riveting to me, and I definitely gained a deeper appreciation of what is so unique about Shakespeare. I also loved that Rosenbaum gives movie recommendations to see outstanding (even legendary) Shakespeare performance captured on film.
If you don't know very much about Shakespeare's most popular works, or if you aren't terribly interested in him, this is not the book for you. But if you are intrigued by the bard and familiar with his main works, I highly recommend this read. My major takeaway: Shakespeare is unique because his writing is bottomless -- he provides an inexhaustible supply of possible meanings, wordplay, and human themes. We never tire of him because there is always more beneath the surface. I love that Rosenbaum comes down on the side of "there is no one correct interpretation." Each of the great passages connote and can mean many things. The richness is incredible.
And, Rosenbaum writes with ardor. I love how passionate and florid he is about his subject.
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