Shakespeare Book

....well, this is terrible so far, about a quarter of the way through. Pretty much a rehash of stuff I already knew, plus unwelcome stuff like SURPRISE RIZZLEY PORTRAIT. With his demented-looking cat.

I bought a bunch of these a while back and I'm realizing now (I'm slow, I know) I did it mainly for the covers, which are delightful Rothko-esque lozenges of colour, so vivid it's as if your eye could taste them. Well-done job by the marketing department, anyway, someone definitely deserves a raise.


Finished and -- this had the tendency to really wildly swing from /0 to 60/ awesome to risible and back again. There were wonderful points on Hamlet, and ace comparisons of MND and The Tempest, but then a long section on how Lear suffers from atherosclerosis. A very thoughtful meditation on Macbeth, and then useless stuff on Othello - but then, much later, an analysis of how poor Desdemona is singing a "simple song" before she's murdered that took my breath away. I don't know if I would recommend this exactly....definitely not to beginners, actually. Maybe to more advanced Shakespeare courses who were comparing various theorists. It was the usual Germaine Greer stew - many ideas, most of them wrong, but some of them very original and well-thought-out. I'm glad I read it, but no, I don't think I'd press it upon people. It's sort of like a crabapple: not anything you'd want to eat straight off the tree, but excellent for pollinizing and rootstock.