Shakespeare on Love and Friendship

While not as good as, say, Shakespeare's Politics or Shakespeare as a Political Thinker, this book is quite fine and analyzes a few of the plays in the Shakespeare cannon. Especially good is the analysis of Propero, Romeo & Juliet, and Antony and Cleopatra. The short final chapter on Hal and Falstaff is quite interesting as well. This book makes a fine read, even if it is not as good as some of the other books on Shakespeare's deep thinking.

This was a Christmas present about a favorite subject, so it was disappointing to find that it is set in dense 4 point font, making it unsuitable for reading for pleasure.

Chicago has published the Shakespeare part of _Love and Friendship_ separately. Not knowing the play, I had to skip the chapter on Measure for Measure, but found the interpretations of Hal and Falstaff, Romeo and Juliet, Antony and Cleopatra, and the Winter's Tale intriguing. They seem to me to be a little long on plot detail, particularly in the last instance, but what Bloom wrote about Ulysses, Hector, Antony, Falstaff, Mercurtio, Romeo, Friar Laurance, and Prospero is at least tenable. And he is particularly acute about Juliet, Prospero, Octavius, Achilles, and Falstaff. I am not convinced that Shakepeare was so conscious a political theorist as Bloom supposes, systematically surveying different kinds of political communities. (That was Aristotle!). or illustrating Machiavelli (that was Leo Strauss and his students such as Bloom) Shakespeare certainly portrayed a range of human relationships, though with some more reucrrent patterns than one would guess from reading Bloom. In particular, I think that Bloom fails to examine the generally one-way erotics of many friends disappointed by being abandoned for wedlock. There is very little representation of what happens after the weddings which are the "happy endings" for some youth, while disasters flow from established marital and quasi-marital relationships in Macbeth, Antony and Cleopatra, Hamlet, Othello, and even Romeo and Juliet, including the deaths of all the title characters in these plays. Bloom's notion that Rome's imperial expansion was over by the time Octavius defeated Antony is very peculiar. Is it that there is no great literature about Trajan than makes Bloom ignore the later imperial growth? There was no "end of politics" or shortage of enemies, internal or external, for later emperors to contend against. As an introduction to Bloom's values and ways of thinking about canonical texts, this volume is far superior to Saul Bellow's fictionalized memoir, _Ravelstein_. _Shakespeare's Politics_ is even better an introduction.

If you have never entered the mind of Allan Bloom and you are up on your Shakespeare, this is an excellent place to start. You will appreciate his in-depth analysis of the Bard's most complex romantic plays. Strong character analysis will enhance your reading and/or acting experience.

Though not as tight as Shakespeare's Politics, this group of essay's by Bloom is the fruitful result of many years of careful study. Of particular interest is the section on Hal and Falstaff. More clearly than ever before, Bloom discusses the pleasure and ambiguity of the highest sort of friendship. Philosophy and Falstaff are congruent but not equal....they both hover just outside of the city and must remain there except in the case of friendship.Cosimo Rucellai