I received a digital copy of this book from NetGalley. What follows is my honest review.

I was introduced to Shakespeare the way most of us were: through terrible high school English classes that sucked all the joy and dick jokes out of them. While I'm sure the dick jokes would've helped pass the time, I've come to the conclusion that teenage me would still have never enjoyed it. Shakespeare's something I've had to grow into (occasionally kicking and screaming).

I'm so happy I have. Between MST3k's episode of Hamlet and Good Tickle-Brain's scene-by-scene Macbeth and King Lear, comedy has led me to love the tragedies, so it makes some sense that the tragedy of the history plays would lead me to love the joy of Sir John Falstaff.

I say all of this to set the scene, so when I say that this is the most enjoyable nonfiction book I've ever read and that the sheer love Bloom has for Falstaff comes through in every line, you know that this is said by a complete n00b to Shakespeare. If this book had been required reading in high school (or college, for that matter), my descent in to Shakespeare would've began years ago.

Falstaff: Give Me Life is the first in the Shakespeare's Personalities series, short books that focus on one character and how they connect with our world and theirs. With Bloom's insight and energy, these books are perfect for all fans, new and old alike.

I had no experience with the character of Falstaff, except for the vague awareness that his character was drunk and bawdy -- known more for his vices than his virtues -- but within the first pages of Falstaff, Bloom proves that there's much enough depth and complexity (and, in course of events, tragedy) in Sir John to rival any of the more popular Great characters of Shakespeare. He compares Sir John with Hamlet in what is possibly my favorite sentence from the book:

"But Hamlet is death's ambassador while Falstaff is the embassy of life."

Falstaff is almost Dionysian in his embrace of life and all its pleasures, though with none of the distemper of the gods. He has seen the horrors of life and has chosen to focus on the joys of it. When we throw off the blinders of Western Christian society, we embrace his so-called vices for what they are: freedom. How can living to excess be a greater sin than the scheming and hypocrisy of kings? "...The essence of Falstaffianism [is]: do not moralize," says Bloom, and I can think of no better fitting statement.

I can't even explain how much I love this book, when my head screams, "Poetry!" and my soul cries, "Life!" I've never been so enamored with a character, or more delighted by a scholar than with Harold Bloom's Falstaff. I cannot recommend it enough. Legit, I want to buy it for all my friends and vague acquaintances so they can discuss this with me. ( )

I'd heard about Harold Bloom ...literary critic...and, maybe confused him somewhat with Leopold Bloom ...the character from Jame's Joyce's Ulysses..who also had some literary aspirations. (Though more or less parasitic on Steven Daedelus who was the real literary scholar). And I's heard about Falstaff,,,though my impressions were not much more than he was a stout and comical figure from Shakespeare's plays. But in this collection of essays, Harold Bloom (American) takes Falstaff apart and examines the character from every angle. He does mention that he has played the roll of Falstaff himself and in many ways identifies with Falstaff.
He seems effortlessly well read and able to drop into the mix references to: Ben Johnson, Dr Johnson, Orson Wells, John Gielgud, Anthony Burgess, St Jerome's vulgate version of the Bible ..and on and on. Clearly he writes well. Beautifully? Hmm not sure about that because the flow (in this type of review/critique) gets interrupted by the quotes.....and the quotes can be rather complex to figure out. In fact, that's the major task for Bloom: to expound upon the quotations and explain what Shakespeare was getting at.
Falstaff is a kind of larger than life figure ...with no compunctions about regarding honour in battle as a poor substitute for survival. He's witty, charismatic, loves his Sherris Sack (What is this "sack"? I just checked it out. Sack is an antiquated name for fortified wines imported from Mainland Spain and the Canary Islands. And eventually the Cherris Sack (from Jerez de la Frontera) became known as Sherry in Britain.)
I just listed to an interview with Bloom. He is not a great speaker. What he says is fine but he says it rather poorly. I wonder what he was like as an actor playing the role off Falstaff? He speaks of Orson Wells playing the part and "Relished the goodness of every phrase, tasting it as if it were bread and wine". Not sure that I could see Bloom managing this.
Anyway, there is a wealth of material in this collection of essays and the character of Falstaff is subject to forensic evaluation. Rather a fun book to read. I give it four stars. ( )

What makes us free? What makes me free is the capaciousness of Shakespeare’s soul. He is the knowledge of what we were and of what we have become.”

In “Falstaff: Give Me Life” by Harold Bloom

“Weird" is the word that comes to mind after having finished his take on Falstaff. We all know about his fixation on Falstaff. No problem with that. I’ve also a kin interest on Hamlet. So, what? My problem with Bloom lies on a different plane. “Weird Ideas”. That’s Bloom all over. His ideas can be interesting - and, at their crankiest (as in “A Map of Misreading”, Shakespeare: Invention of the Human and his Genius book) quite funny - but there's far too much of Bloom the frustrated bard-oracle in them, which is why they fail to stand up beyond the books in which they appear. Show him a half-decent poet and he'll construct around him a new view of human history centred on an ancient Gnostic text and full of juicy prophetic names for things already perfectly well named (e.g. "The Chaotic Age" for the 20th century). There's an element of trying to out-crazy the crazy totalising schemes of Blake or Yeats. Bloom trying to out-poet the poets, or at least match them in inspired, over-learned nuttiness. That’s why his take on Falstaff seems far-fetched. if you asked me to name some critics that I thought were provocative, well-read, and 'advanced scholarship' I would perhaps list Zachary Lesser, Anne Ferry, Andrew Hadfield, Louis Montrose, Roger Chartier, and Alexandra Gillespie from the top of my head - with some heavy bias in there for the renaissance, given my own reading. While I'd love to see their works being praised (or even read) by those outside of the academy, I'm not sure that they really deal with work, authors, or issues 'popular' enough to attract that attention. I don't begrudge a Bloom or a Vendler their success: academia is going to have to try quite hard to prove its relevance with the big changes to higher education coming. But when their work gets talked about as if they were the only one’s writing, it can get a little frustrating. Bloom wasn't much of an original thinker, borrowing heavily from Northrop Frye in much of his work and, in the case of Anxiety, a book called The Burden of the Past and the English Poet. Basically, Bloom just took Bate's book (which is primarily concerned with the anxieties felt by pre-Romantic writers) and jazzed it up with a bunch of Freudian rigmarole about wanting to kill one's father. This was not a convincing angle to take at all, but it was really the only thing "new" that Bloom brought to the table. Put another way, using his own terminology Bloom was not a "strong" critic. I think the anxiety of influence he described was probably something he personally felt as an academic. My favourite word to describe him is "weird" as stated, but we need some sort of superlative for someone who is a perverse in his judgments as Bloom: Othello never consummates his marriage to Desdemona; Orlando knows all along he is talking to Rosalind in disguise; Parolles is "the spiritual center" of "All's Well That Ends Well"; Portia, like Bassanio, is a yuppie lightweight, while Antonio is Shylock's evil twin; Kate tames Petruchio and dangles him like a puppet. Here's for "Measure for Measure": "It is difficult to decide who is more antipathetic, Angelo or Duke Vincentio. . . . Lucio is the only rational and sympathetic character in this absurdist comedy (except for the superb Barnadine)." Bloom simply announced these findings; he no longer argues; he is too Olympian for that. His notorious misogyny may be the key to many of these ludicrous sallies: Desdemona as castrating intimidator; Kate as emasculating manipulator. Bloom says that Shakespeare invented us, which implies that, as a demigod, he was too elevated to be anxious over much of anything. But surely he was stimulated by an Oedipal rivalry with Marlowe; "two competing young playwrights from strikingly similar origins egged each other on to do better, and more original, work." No, I'm sorry, they were the same age but Marlowe died in May, 1593, by which time Shakespeare, egged on by the supposed competition, had written exactly none of the plays that make him the Bard: had he died the same year, he would be about as famous today as Beaumont or Fletcher. Marlowe was quicker to attain box office success, which is the success that Shakespeare cared about, so Shakespeare copied him shamelessly. That isn't exactly rivalry or competition. Bloom, on no evidence whatsoever, pronounces "Titus Andronicus" a parody of Marlowe. A knockoff is not a parody. Such a genre did not even exist at the time. The audience wanted its pornography of violence straight up, not with a smirk, and the audience was Shakespeare's deity.

Calling Bloom "overrated" doesn't even begin to say it, but the fault is ours, not his: I wouldn't expect him to see himself as we should have seen him.

3 stars for the book due to the quote at the beginning of this post. ( )