Harold Bloom, 87, long a champion of Falstaff, offers one more passionately argued paean to Sir John"s central importance in Shakespeare's creation of deeply human characters. Bloom tells us he first fell for Falstaff at age 12, and it was nearly 20 years ago in his seminal book on Shakespeare, subtitled "The Invention of the Human" when he laid out many of the arguments found in this new slim volume. He has sharpened his arguments, and the book serves as a wonderful introduction to both Henry IV and Henry V as well. Here is Bloom at his fiery best.
"Falstaff is as bewildering as Hamlet, as infinitely varied as Cleopatra. He can be apprehended but never fully comprehended. There is no end to Falstaff. His matrix is freedom but he dies for love." You may not agree with all of Bloom's assertions in this book, but his erudition and passion for his subject are irresistible.
In 2012, Dominic Dromgoole, the former Artistic Director of Shakespeare's Globe Theatre in London, had the patently insane idea of taking a production of Hamlet to every country in the world. Two years later, on the 450th anniversary of Shakespeare's birth, the journey began. Over the next two years, culminating with a closing performance on the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death, his company of 12 actors and 4 stage managers performed in 197 countries only missing North Korea and Syria. Dromgoole's wonderful book documents this seemingly impossible accomplishment. We learn much about the play, more about the personalities and places and particular hardships, and crucially, the belief in the power of a cleanly told and vivid story. Here is Dromgoole after watching the final performance before the actors departed,
The show was there, the story was told, and it had a gracious modesty in world. Too great a immediate success would have induced a grandiosity which would have been a nightmare to tour. 'See, see how great we are' is not an attitude to take on the road - it's not an attitude for anything really...... The show was not perfect, but it worked. It told the story, it carried the language and delivered it, and it presented the life within the story. This is not always what people mean by theatre these days. There is a difference between a car that works, and an exploding car with balloons on it. A car that works ferries people from A to Z, conveying them from where they begin to a different place, and along the way it shows them scenery, whether beautiful, sad or strange. A lot of theatre these days seems to be watching a car festooned with balloons explode, then bursting into applause and waiting for a blogger to deconstruct the event. Having been taken nowhere. Our show didn't dazzle or explode, but it worked. And it felt ready to wander.
The final book is a biography of a fictional character. Rosalind is one of the greatest heroines in the English language and in her 417 year life span to date she has inspired many other brave, articulate and passionate fictional offspring. She is wonderfully complex, playful, deeply emotional, highly skilled verbally, and full of intellect and longing. It is the longest woman's part in Shakespeare, and one that every serious Shakespearean actress hungers for.
Angela Thirlwell blends sharp scholarship with a Bloom-like love of Rosalind to create a memorable mix of theatre history and passionate exploration of both the role and actresses who have played her. In 1962 as an early teen Thirlwell saw Vanessa Redgrave play the part and fell in love with both the character and the play. Over all the subsequent years she has seen many actresses take Rosalind on and interviews many of them. This gives the book an engaged energy of performance that makes it different from other similar studies. On page two of her Prologue Thirlwell lets us know, deliciously, what will follow.
I love Rosalind because she is merry and mischievous, impetuous, empowering and brave. Her play is about love. It's for everyone and anyone who has ever loved, either unrequitedly or to joyous fulfillment. Every kind of love is in this play, from carnal to divine: not only heterosexual love, but also homoerotic love, the love between friends, between women, love across generations, brotherly love and sibling rivalry, the love between parents and children. Rosalind faces up to love inside out and it spectre of rejection that all lovers fear.
Taken together the three books are a besotted graduate seminar in Shakespeare and so much more. Don't be late for class!
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