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Clashing Scholars, Public Fiascoes, Palace Coups
Random House
September 2006
On Sale: September 19, 2006
624 pages ISBN: 0375503390 EAN: 9780375503399 Hardcover
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Non-Fiction | Non-Fiction Political
In 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 entirely: 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 right: 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.
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