Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human

Rating:
Summary: Wonderful resource on plays, jointly with intriguing essay.
Review: Bloom admits that his theory, that Shakespeare's plays helped invent what it is to be human, is a conceit that is unproveable. He is also right, in that this conceit helps tell the story of the plays in a way that illuminates the genius of Shakespeare.

This is a wonderful book to have on your shelf if you are going to go to one of the plays. Each play gets its own chapter, and by reading them you can discover what to look for in the words of the play, and in the performance.

Read the entire book cover to cover? I have, but most won't want to... there are obscure plays discussed at length, and after awhile the reader begins to skip over plays that hold no interest. There are surprising revelations that you might hate to miss... the Falstaffiad, the three plays where Falstaff is revealed to be Shakespeare's greatest, most humanizing charcter.... The beginning and ending essays are fun to read, even for a non-English major.

This is a rich and challenging book, a grand resource, but a bit long of tooth unless you are embracing Shakespeare and attending many performances. If you are, this book would be invaluable to you.

Rating:
Summary: Shakespearean commentary by a premier professor and critic
Review: In his new, hugely popular book, Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human, Harold Bloom reacts in play by play fashion to some of the most famous Bardian characters while paying special attention to his obvious personal favorites, Falstaff and Hamlet. Bloom peppers his highly entertaining tome with other critics' Shakespearean commentary, most provocative among them that of W.H. Auden in The Dyer's Hand. Some of his interpretations of Auden's critical work are certain to elicit debate from the Audenesque among us. For example, was Auden's view of Falstaff as a "comic symbol of christian charity" an "extravagant claim?" Is it true that "Auden apparently disliked Hamlet," the character? And, of course, Bloom's insinuation that Auden's so-called "religious conversion" slanted and compromised his literary criticism, is an idea that has reared its presumptuous and incomplete head many times in the past. Auden's preservation of traditional manners, art, language and liturgy is no more equivocal than Bloom's holding on to the language, playmaking and indeed the recollection of past performances of Shakespeare's plays, illustrated most gloriously by Bloom from his own memories of Sir Ralph Richardson as Falstaff and Sir Lawrence Olivier as Prince Hal in an over 50 year old stage production of Henry IV, Part I! Auden's commentary has more to do with Bloom's thesis than the author of Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human seems able or willing to admit. To illustrate, consider this Auden quote from The Dyer's Hand: "Man is a history-making creature who can neither repeat his past nor leave it behind." Nonetheless, Bloom's tome is a keeper, a rare and delectible literary treat for those of us who are looking for more than Stoppardesque Elizabethan yuks (not that there's anything wrong with that)!

Rating:
Summary: Shakespeare's Invention
Review: Contrary to what some reviewers suggest, Bloom never makes the claim that Shakespeare invented 'modern man'.

The claim is, rather, that Shakespeare invented 'the human'. By that Bloom means that Shakespeare developed a means of representing human consciousness that became so influential that it is now the universal means of describing and thinking about our own psychology.

True, Shakespeare was doing no more than writing plays for the amusement of the public, but it turned out that this was a more fruitful ground for making psychological discoveries than was the essay, treatise, or other expository work. The Greeks no doubt would have understood, since they were constantly quoting playwrights as a major source of wisdom.

It must be admitted that Bloom never gets around to making this point crystal-clear - in many books he fails to explain his ideas fully - but a little brainwork will ultimately make his point clear to the reader. There is no excuse for reducing his argument to something absurd and then complaining about it.

Rating:
Summary: Good criticism with a weird central thesis
Review: This big Shakespeare book is very welcome and valuable as
a general companion to the plays (the sonnets are not discussed
much). It is certainly a book intended for the general
reader: it contains nary a footnote and there is no
bibliography. There is not even, alas, an index!

However, aside from its use as Shakespeare companion and
tutor, this book advances a rather odd thesis that William
Shakespeare singlehandedly invented human beings as we know
them today. The average reader will very likely pause,
go back to re-read that sentence, and then scratch his head.
"What?"

For the sake of perspective, it is a commonplace of social
history that the European Renaissance gave birth to our
modern conceptions of "the individual." For example,
A. L. Rowse's "The England of Elizabeth" made this point
fifty years ago: "The increasing national
self-consciousness expresses itself; but most significant
of all is the growth of words expressing self-awareness
and personality, fancy and instinct, acuteness of
observation, the psychological consequences of the sense
of individuality that is at the core of the Renaissance
experience."

Well, Bloom is having none of this. Bloom tells us, rightly,
that "the age" or "the times" did nothing at all -- wrote
no plays, created no art, played no music. Of course all
this was done by people, not by "the age." But Bloom then
asserts that the entire Renaissance "sense of individuality"
was the work of William Shakespeare. This would strike many
as a rather odd thought, a side-effect of the Bardolatry
which Bloom cheerfully admits.

Well, this is a complex issue and we can all decide for
ourselves, but here are a few reflections.

First, Bloom never even hints that this "invention of the
human" might in fact be a re-invention of the individual
found in ancient Greece and Rome. In this sense, Bloom
wants to reconceive the Renaissance as the Naissance --
thereby once again showing his enormous blind spot: for
such an avid reader, Bloom seems to have read and
understood precious little from pagan antiquity.

Second, it would seem to stand to reason that -- if Bill
Shakespeare was the unique inventor of the human -- that we
would find this miraculous event only happening in England;
the Renaissance experience in France, Germany, and Italy
would be utterly different, and their humanity would remain
"stuck" in the Middle Ages, since Shakespeare didn't get
translated very quickly. But I see no evidence at all of
this, and Bloom can't be troubled to supply any.

So, my own feeling is that Bloom's grandiose claim should be
whittled back to Shakespeare's visible achievement, in
revolutionizing the representation of human beings in his
plays, of building on the masterpieces of antiquity
(Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides) and surpassing them in
certain key aspects. With this in mind, it is easy to
enjoy the rest of the book.

Rating:
Summary: This book covers a lot of territory
Review: This gigantic book summarizing a lifetime of teaching Shakespeare would not seem so familiar to me if the shocks of recognition were not always so close to the truths that I value most highly. My knowledge of Shakespeare is not much, but the information this book contains about plays that loomed large in Walter Kaufmann's books FROM SHAKESPEARE TO EXISTENTIALISM and TRAGEDY AND PHILOSOPHY largely supports a bracing view of the worst things that Shakespeare could find to say about people. A few years ago, at a performance of the play "Cymbeline," I seemed to be much more disturbed than other members of the audience, seeing it in an intimate setting that put people on folding chairs close enough to feel that we were all taking part in what was going on. Harold Bloom adds to that feeling of intimacy by declaring:

"Iago, like Hamlet and Macbeth, is beyond us, but we are Iachimo. Our bravado, malice, fearfulness, confusion are all in Iachimo, who is not much worse than we are, and whom Shakespeare intends to spare." (p. 637).

I have a DVD collection (3 discs), LIVE DEAD, THE GRATEFUL DEAD IN CONCERT, which has an interview with the band, probably the special Dead Facts fan quiz on the GRATEFUL DEAD: TICKET TO NEW YEAR'S recorded at the Oakland Coliseum on December 31, 1987, in which some fan wants to know what they think the words of the song, "Iko Iko" mean: "Jockamo fee na - ne'." It sounds like Iachimo to me, and the attitude that the band adopts to come up with a reasonable explanation which will not produce any more questions is worthy of a truly comic society. The song has been around since 1964, and one verse is like a Shakespeare play:

"Look at my king all dressed in red.
Iko. Iko, unday.
I betcha five dollars he'll kill you dead.
Jockamo fee na - ne'."

Incidentally, there is a version of "Iko-Iko" on the Warren Zevon CD "Wanted Dead or Alive," which also has his song "She Quit Me" which was used in the movie "Midnight Cowboy," which is pretty good if you want to see Dustin Hoffman playing a character called Ratso.

Bloom dates "Cymbeline" to 1609-10, with Shakespeare returning to Stratford in 1610 for semi-retirement (p. xiv), which allowed him to turn on his work with what Bloom regards as "unmistakable overtones of his personal distaste for the London of 1609-10." (p. 615). The larger question is "the question of Shakespeare himself. What was he trying to do for himself as a maker of plays by the heap of self-parodies that constitute `Cymbeline'?" (p. 621). Obviously, "Shakespeare is his own worst enemy in `Cymbeline': he is weary of making plays." (p. 621). Bloom still finds some good poetry:

"Golden lads and girls all must,
As chimney-sweepers, come to dust." (p. 629).

The six lines of [V.iv. 146-51] are so good that they show up on page 634 and 635 as "Compulsive self-parody" which leads to "It is another of those uncanny recognitions in which Shakespeare is already beyond Nietzsche." (p. 636).

It is easy for me to look up plays that other people might think are awful. Bloom thinks that "Troilus and Cressida" was never staged at the Globe because it "might seem too lively a satire upon the fallen Earl of Essex, who may be the model for the play's outrageous Achilles," (p. 327). Thersites denies having any honour: "no, no: I am a rascal, a scurvy railing knave: a very filthy rogue." (p. 329). Margarelon told him, "The devil take thee, coward." (p. 329). Bloom is sympathetic. "If we can trust anyone in the play, then it must be Thersites, deranged as doubtless he is." (p. 332).

"Timon of Athens" is considered unfinished. "Shakespeare appears to have to have abandoned `Timon of Athens,' for reasons still unclear. He never staged it, and parts of it are less finished than others." (p. 588). There are a few examples of "venereal invective" (p. 596) that were ultimately dismissed as unworthy of himself. "This hymn to syphilis is unmatched and unmatchable." (p. 597). There are topics which are far more worthy of poetry in this book, and the book makes every effort to present explanations which make the poetry worth understanding. Not every reader in our society will make the effort to find what they want in Shakespeare. This book will make sense to people who would want to know all this, whether it will do them any good or not.

This is April. "Shakespeare was christened on April 26, 1564, at Stratford-on-Avon, and died there on April 23, 1616." (p. xiii). He only lived to the age of 52, more or less. Many of his plays were so popular that Bloom can keep talking about characters throughout the book as if readers who have not encountered them already will know who they are someday. They should, too.

Rating:
Summary: Important and self-important
Review: Bloom's long, rambling discourse on Shakespeare's plays is sometimes insightful, often pompous, and always readable. His self-styled brand of criticism allows him to trumpet huge, occasionally fascinating propositions, without ever REALLY backing them up (except with various paraphrases of "Isn't this obvious?")...his title proposition is not the least of these ill-supported theses. He repeats himself to a ludicrous degree (we are afforded the same observations on Hamlet and Falstaff in just about every chapter in the book), and commits himself to writing entire chapters on plays that he seems willing to discard. Still, we feel throughout as if we are in the presence of a great mind and a piercing eye; Bloom's enthusiasm for these works is infectious. And he delivers courageous blows to a variety of pillars that are in need of some major re-evaluation. We have the sense, by the end, that this will stand as a hallmark of Shakespeare criticism for centuries to come.

Rating:
Summary: Maddening but Bountiful
Review: In The Western Canon, Harold Bloom stated that Shakespeare, along with Milton, was the center of Western thought. In Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human, he contends that Shakespeare, alone, "went beyond all precedents (even Chaucer) and invented the human as we continue to know it." Bloom assigns Shakespeare the singular honor of being responsible for our personalities, not just in the Western world, but in all cultures. Falstaff and Hamlet, the central characters of Bloom's discourse are, he says, "the greatest of charismatics" and are "the inauguration of personality as we have come to recognize it."

Naturally, critics of Bloom have taken great exception to sweeping statements such as the above and their general reaction is one of resentment. Individual critical response depends on what particular school of criticism the respondent adheres to, but most often critics and readers alike have simply attacked Bloom, himself. However, even those who denigrate both Bloom and this book have found the time to read and review it to a greater extent, rather than to a lesser.

The book, itself, is made up of three major critical discussions by Bloom combined with brief discussions of each of Shakespeare's thirty-seven plays. Bloom begins by expressing his awe at Shakespeare's ability to create literary characters who epitomize the quintessential nature of humanity itself. In Bloom's opinion, Shakespeare shapes all of humanity, not just the elite literati.

Bloom does acknowledge the fact that great writers existed before Shakespeare and says that, "The idea of Western character" defined as "the self as a moral agent" came from many sources at many different times. Individually, however, Bloom says, Shakespeare's predecessors created nothing more than "cartoons" and "ideograms" rather than fully-developed personalities. "Every other great writer will fall away," he says, but "Shakespeare will abide, even if he were to be expelled by the academics..." And Bloom makes his point so convincingly that even those who cannot abide Shakespeare (or Bloom) will be swayed.

Bloom next turns to short, individual synopses of each play, with each review intended to support Bloom's argument that Shakespeare was truly the inventor of the human. These reviews do bristle with long quotations from the plays themselves but they are always extremely interesting to read.

Bloom, however, is nothing if he is not contentious. In concluding his review of The Taming of the Shrew, he says, "Shakespeare, who clearly preferred his women characters to his men, enlarges the human, from the start, by subtly suggesting that women have the truer sense of reality."

After the individual play reviews, Bloom treats us to a concluding essay entitled, "Coda: The Shakespearean Difference," and says that "Shakespeare, through Hamlet, has made us skeptics in our relationships with anyone, because we have learned to doubt articulateness in the realm of affection." Bloom, himself, identifies most intimately with Falstaff. "What Falstaff teaches us is a comprehensiveness of humor that avoids unnecessary cruelty because it emphasizes instead the vulnerability of every ego, including that of Falstaff himself."

Whatever your feelings about Bloom or Shakespeare, Bloom does take a critical stance that he supports textually. His humor is there but it is, at times, scathing. While no one should take everything Bloom introduces in this book at face value, no one should dismiss it all, either. Both this book, and Bloom, deserve a lot more than that.

Rating:
Summary: Bloom on Shakespeare
Review: Bloom's Shakepeare: The Invention of the Human is eloquent, frequently brilliant, provocative, ambitious, playful, educational, entertaining, yet flawed. Several of his major premises are unproven, and since these logical prerequisites are key to his central thesis, his whole edifice is shaky at best. For instance, he presumes, with no evidence, that Shakespeare wrote Ur-Hamlet, and this presumption is fundamental to his later review of the play. Other weaknesses come through as well. He repeats through virtually every play review his deification of Hamlet and Falstaff. He goes too far too often with little or no evidence. Yet to be fair, Bloom's book is clearly a labor of love. Even with its limitations this is an excellent book that is worth reading.

Rating:
Summary: The Ivory Tower was never taller
Review: With all the love Harold Bloom expresses for Shakespeare's work, he really gives a shallow exploration of the Bard's work in this book. Each play receives a couple of pages here, but I found many of them too brief and uninformative.

This book is based on a faulty premise: Bloom seems to believe that Shakespeare 'invented' the modern man. No. Shakespeare reflects the modern man. This is the reason we still read Will. If Shakespeare were alive today, I tend to think that this idolizing account would have him shaking his head.

Bloom elevates Shakespeare to the level of near-mythical proportions instead of as a human being who accepted and loved humanity, warts and all. As I understand it, Shakespeare was accessible to even the most uneducated people of his time. This book unconsciously dehumanized Shakespeare and tries to put the man in an ivory tower, where wit isn't shared - it's delegated.

Rating:
Summary: Hang the Chapters from the Trees
Review: There are few books that are willing to speak to us groundlings who love Shakespeare for reasons we cannot really articulate, except perhaps to say, "I laughed so hard I thought I would wet myself" or "Oh, my God. Oh, my God." The dearth of kind unfolding of thought in doses of scholarship that are accessible to those of us who merely trudge reminds me of Biblical scholarship which either addresses the *hang hog* debates which are quite beyond modest believers or else demands adherance to fundamentals or dogmas that stand in the way of dialogue, inquiry, and devotion.

I grew up in Appalachia, and on those mountains where I grew up most families, poor or not, had a bible and a Collected Works of Shakespeare, even if they didn't have Dickens. Often the Shakespeare was a set of individual volumes. No TV. We couldn't get reception.

By hazard I picked up Romeo and Juliet when I was nine. I couldn't put it down. I had no idea most of the time what I was reading, but the language was intoxicating, and the occasional glimpse of dreadful, lyrical beauty life-shattering and life-saving.

How many people have I encountered on the ground or in the stratosphere of scholarship that are willing to fall flat on their faces for the mere privilege of being able to read and to discuss Shakespeare? No one, but no one, who has any feeling for the plays at all will tell you that he or she has finally got it right and here it is. But the man who won't speak his mind about he actually thinks today of his love and her/his beauty on this summer's day is a stingy man indeed.

One reviewer compared Bloom's ego to his belly. I would compare his ego to his heart--if only on the basis that I was able to read every single page in the presence of someone who loved Shakespeare as much as I did on that first West Virginia day that summer of 1961.

I am willing to read a book of this size, compare it to belly, heart, ego, what you will--to learn one little idea that will help carry me along this journey of reading the plays and living, by snapping fits and starts, in the world of the mind of the man who made them. If there are scholars who believe they are closer to the man's mind because they have never labored outside of their minds till even this day, they must possess too fragile to be as big as any scholar of Shakespeare requires.

Bloom has provided me with at least thirty good ideas. I defy you Gods of criticism and scholarship to do the same. What Bloom lacks is cynicism, which may keep a scholar safe (in it's guise of skepticism). But if a scholar would debate the nature of Bloom's critiques seriously, I'd have to say the way we might at home that she's too smart to eat tomatoes.

Can you imagine Will himself talking to Shakespeare scholars, the ones whose quips and quiddities must be measured in dreadful spoonfuls and consequently will always be unsavory? I can't. I can, however, imagine Will watching a good performance of Hamlet and being as awed by the Prince as we all are. Bloom simply gave me many news ways to keep being awed and avoid getting on top of the plays and looking down at them.

I think that is what I learned from reading this book: that when the play holds the mirror up to nature, nature reflects the play as well; if substantiation of phrases, versions, comparisons to arguments of the day and imposition of theoretical constructs upon the globe itself are what you find in Shakespeare, then that is what you will reflect of the play, because it is your nature, and it is what you are. If you find preposterous, outrageous joy, infinite brooding, and the wit of Socrates (that constant unsmiled grin one senses must be hidden with every question he asks in the Republic mixed with the deviousness of his speech about Diotima in the Symposium), in this glass and globe, you will reflect it back.