Bloom's Modern Critical Views - William Shakespeare (2004) (561p) [Inua].pdf

Title: Shakespeare (Bloom's Modern Critical Views)
Editors: Aaron Tillman & Harold Bloom & Henry W. Hewet
Series: Bloom's Modern Critical Views
Hardcover: 300 pages
Publisher: Chelsea House Publications (January 2004)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0791076555
ISBN-13: 978-0791076552

Description:
Shakespeare calls upon the audience to surmise just how Falstaff and Hamlet and Edmund got to be the way they are, by which I mean: their gifts, their obsessions, their concerns. I am not going to ask what made Falstaff so witty, Hamlet so skeptical, Edmund so icy. The mysteries or enigmas of personality are a little to one side of Shakespearean foregrounding.
Shakespeare’s literary art, the highest we ever will know, is as much an art of omission as it is of surpassing richness. The plays are greatest where they are most elliptical. Othello loves Desdemona, yet seems not to desire her sexually, since evidently he has no knowledge of her palpable virginity and never makes love to her. What are Antony and Cleopatra like when they are alone together? Why are Macbeth and his fierce lady childless? What is it that so afflicts Prospero, and causes him to abandon his magical powers, and to say that in his recovered realm every third thought shall be of his grave? Why does no one behave other than zanily in Twelfth Night, or other than madly in Measure for Measure? Why must Shylock be compelled to accept Christian conversion, or Malvolio be so outrageously tormented? Foregrounding is necessary to answer these questions.