Jonathan O'Neill’s Reviews > Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human > Status Update
Jonathan O'Neill
is on page 90 of 745
Read ‘Midsummer’ Essay
Bloom “rejects the prevailing notion that sexual violence and bestiality are at the centre of this humane and wise drama” and finds the questions of whether or not Bottom was, in fact, the carnal lover of the Fairy Queen, “ambiguous or elliptical” and, in any case, “unimportant compared with Bottom’s uniqueness in the Dream.” [Cont...]
— 13 hours, 55 min ago
Bloom “rejects the prevailing notion that sexual violence and bestiality are at the centre of this humane and wise drama” and finds the questions of whether or not Bottom was, in fact, the carnal lover of the Fairy Queen, “ambiguous or elliptical” and, in any case, “unimportant compared with Bottom’s uniqueness in the Dream.” [Cont...]
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Jonathan’s Previous Updates
Jonathan O'Neill
is on page 68 of 745
Read ‘Hamlet’ Essay
The crux of the majority of Bloom’s essay surrounds his support of Peter Alexander’s surmise that the Ur-Hamlet, written no later than 1589, was not written, as many believe, by Thomas Kyd, but was indeed perhaps the earliest dramatic effort and failure of a young and inexperienced Shakespeare. {cont...]
— Oct 04, 2026 04:36AM
The crux of the majority of Bloom’s essay surrounds his support of Peter Alexander’s surmise that the Ur-Hamlet, written no later than 1589, was not written, as many believe, by Thomas Kyd, but was indeed perhaps the earliest dramatic effort and failure of a young and inexperienced Shakespeare. {cont...]
Jonathan O'Neill
is on page 15 of 745
Shakespeare perspectivizes his dramas so that, measure for measure, we are judged even as we attempt to judge. If your Falstaff is a roistering coward, a wastrel confidence man, an uncounted jester to Prince Hal, well, then, we know something of you, but we know no more about Falstaff. If your Cleopatra is an aging who're, and her Antony a would-be Alexander in his dotage, then we know a touch [cont...]
— Oct 01, 2026 12:56AM
Jonathan O'Neill
is on page 9 of 745
In reading Shakespeare's plays, and to a certain extent in attending their performances, the merely sensible procedure is to immerse yourself in the text and its speakers, and allow your understanding to move outward from what you read, hear and see to whatever contexts suggest themselves as relevant...
... Alas, sensible, even "natural" as this way was, it is now out of fashion, and has been cont...
— Sep 30, 2026 05:52AM
... Alas, sensible, even "natural" as this way was, it is now out of fashion, and has been cont...
Jonathan O'Neill
is on page 3 of 745
[Shakespeare] is a system of northern lights, an aurora borealis visible where most of us will never go. Libraries and playhouses (and cinemas) cannot contain him; he has become a spirit or "spell of light," almost too vast to apprehend. High romantic bardolatry, now so much disdained in our self-defiled academies, is merely the most normative of the faiths that worship him.
— Sep 30, 2026 05:13AM
Jonathan O'Neill
is starting
That for which we find words is something already dead in our hearts. There is always a kind of contempt in the act of speaking
Nietzsche, The Twilight of the Idols
— Sep 29, 2026 05:12AM
Nietzsche, The Twilight of the Idols
I think the truth lies somewhere in the middle. To see it Bloom’s way, you have to turn a blind eye to a huge amount of very dodgy unanswered questions, probably too many, but on the other hand much of the justification for the more insidious modern take is not explicit at all so one is left to fill in the blanks through psychoanalysis or their own perverted (kidding, not kidding) imagination. Quite fitting for this play actually.
I didn’t know that this is only one of three plays in which Shakespeare didn’t follow a primary source, making it probably his most original work. Bloom says “Inventing plot was not a Shakespearean gift; it was the one dramatic talent that nature had denied him.”