On Harold Bloom’s Nontheatrical Praise for Shakespeare’s Lovers: Much Ado About Nothing and Antony and Cleopatra

Harold Bloom, after declaring that “Much Ado About Nothing is certainly the most amiably nihilistic play ever written and is most appositely titled,” asserts that in “every exchange between the fencing lovers,” Beatrice “will always win” (Bloom 1998, 193). I disagree with each of these claims: certainly that Much Ado is nihilistic, almost surely that the title is apposite, and most significantly, that Beatrice always wins. Many scholars will swiftly reject both Bloom’s’statements and my own because they express unverifiable opinions almost as if they were facts. Other readers will object to the hyperbole (common for Bloom, atypical for me). That Bloom’s excesses, epitomized in his subtitle, “The Invention of the Human,” have often provoked resistance should not blind us to his insight that current critical theory and discourse have been inadequate in treating characterization. At the very least, the publicity for Bloom’s popular work on Shakespeare—the chapters in The Western Canon (1994) and Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human (1998)—suggests strongly that he has managed to capture the curiosity and attention of readers whom professional specialists have failed to reach.