100% bonkers but awesome. Goddard was from a very different age of criticism - one rejecting much of the criticism of the early 20th century, but also coming to terms with a move toward historical study and context rather than the slightly ignorant processes that had come from the Victorian era.

Often, his points are completely absurd, argued on a philosophical level rather than even remotely relating to form or context. And his elitism - particularly when it comes to material he believes to have been written for the so-called "groundlings" - is deeply off-putting. But when he's right, he's right. Paradoxically, for a posthumously published work, I think this second volume is better than the first, perhaps because Goddard's high-art style works better with the more complicated later works, when Shakespeare really was writing with something of a bubble, rather than the earlier works where many of Goddard's beliefs were, if conceptually tight, ill-related to any realities of Shakespeare's era.

An interesting read, but hardly in the Top 100 works on the Bard. ( )

Hmmm. An odd one, this. Goddard's critical style is now supremely outdated (A.D. Nuttall makes but one, dismissive reference to him in his recent "Shakespeare the Thinker"). What's more, with Goddard dying before the text was published, some of this reads as if it is still in draft format. Ideas go on for pages, astoundingly poetic, but often amounting to very little. No doubt Goddard was a sublime intelligence, and his words are beautiful. His insight into the characters is fascinating, even if I find much of it dubious. (Any critic can - and should - defend Shylock OR Katherina OR Joan of Arc, but all three? Methinks the critic doth protest too much.)

Goddard is outright bonkers, which leads to wild variations in quality. Some of his opinions come off as psychadelic counter-culture ramblings; others tap into a vein of brilliance that is well-worth exploring. But it's fairly uneven. Oddly, for a posthumously published work, Goddard's work resounds more in the second volume, where he tackles the mature plays with deftness and accuracy. He is at his weakest in the early chapters here, betraying that attitude of his generation (carried over somewhat from the 19th century Romantics) that Shakespeare knew he was "too good" for something as plebeian as the theatre. Indeed, the most dispiriting moments of the book are when Goddard falls into that old academic trap of writing off sections of the plays with the note "well, the groundlings must have their comedy". Any fellow traveler on our Bardolatrous Way is a worthy reading companion, but there are times when the Lost Generation's psychologically telling desire to separate Shakespeare the poet from Shakespeare the man is nauseating.

In Goddard's defense, perhaps I am simply of too distant a generation to truly appreciate him. Often, he will quote one or two lines from a character as definitive proof of what the character or Shakespeare himself was thinking. Yet, even though I consider myself a part-time Shakespeare academic myself, I can barely even grasp how he has reached that point. Not always - there is undoubtedly much true brilliance in these books - and anyone with this much reverence for William Shakespeare deserves to be read for many years to come but, with the passing of the years, and a revised view of Shakespearean (not to mention literary) criticism, the bloom is often, in this case, off the rose. ( )

Shakespeare Downheartedness:"The Meaning of Shakespeare" by Harold C. Goddard (2nd volume) “'King Lear is a miracle,' wrote a young woman who had just come under its incomparable spell. 'There is nothing in the whole world that is not in this play. It says everything, and if this is the last and final judgment on the world we live in, then it is a miraculous world. This is a miracle play.'
 
If you're in the mood, hop on to my webpage and the read the rest over there. ( )