The Shakespeare Wars (Ron Rosenbaum)

In The Shakespeare Wars, Ron Rosenbaum (1946-) gives readers an unforgettable way of rethinking the greatest works of the human imagination. 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.
 
The Shakespeare Wars offers a thrilling opportunity to engage with Shakespeare’s work at its deepest levels. This book is destined to revolutionize the way we think about one of the overwhelming obsessions of our time.
 
Ron Rosenbaum studied Shakespeare at Yale. His bestselling work of cultural history, Explaining Hitler, has been translated into ten languages. His work has appeared in The New York Times, Harper’s, The Atlantic, and The New Yorker. He writes a column for The New York Observer and lives in New York City.