shakespeare and the invention of the human

This list of Shakespeare plays brings together all 38 plays in alphabetical order. Plays It is believed that Shakespeare wrote 38 plays in total between 15.

Indeed, it is a great pity that Bloom has not followed the example of Helen Vendler's recent edition of the sonnets and included a recording of his own recitations. Bradley or Harold Goddard-writes as well for actors and directors, or understands as clearly the performability of the plays. And no critic-not even Bloom's masters A.C. For the latter, Bloom is an ideal cicerone: a passionate, sensitive reader who tempers his irreverent common sense with an even-more-instructive stance of awe. Those readers fall into two categories: performers and everyone who studies Shakespeare outside the academy. Other extravagant claims-that Shakespeare wrote an early version of Hamlet between 1589 and '93, or that the playwright may have lived in physical terror of his street-tough rival Marlowe-may raise eyebrows, but they will not matter to readers who need this book. The leitmotif of Shakespeare's ''invention of the human,'' i.e., of the changeable, individual human character, is a useful through-line to the essays but never highjacks them as Bloom's critical tropes sometimes do. The ratio of screed to reading is blessedly low although Bloom has kept his common touch, one feels that he has ceased the play to the peanut gallery that made The Western Canon a cause c l bre. The result is a series of brilliant, persuasive, highly idiosyncratic readings punctuated by attacks on current Shakespeare criticism and performance.

In some ways the crowning achievement of the controversial Yale critic's career (which has produced The Anxiety of Influence The Book of J etc.), this sweeping monograph devotes an essay to each of the plays, emphasizing their originality and their influence on subsequent literature, feeling and thought.

Shakespeare and the invention of the human