Hot in pursuit of Shakespeare

The characters involved are numerous and fascinating in their diversity. At one point, Rosenbaum interviews a long-haired Alabama professor at a Krispy Kreme in Tuscaloosa and then later, his opponent, an elderly scholar in a tidy little cottage in London. The stakes for these experts, we come to understand, are incredibly high. The older man suggests to Rosenbaum that he'd rather die before seeing his work on Shakespeare superseded.

Some of the controversies Rosenbaum wanders into are more obscure than others and there are a few places – for example, where he delves into questions about Shakespeare's spelling and punctuation – that I frankly hesitated to follow.

And yet, reading on, I was hooked. In one version of "Hamlet,"for example, Hamlet says, "The air bites shroudly" – a word some editors assume to be outdated spelling of "shrewdly." But what if it's not? What if Shakespeare really intended to convey the notion of "shroud," a hint of death? In context it makes perfect sense and in fact neatly enriches the exchange being examined. It's hard not to agree that it's a point worth fighting over.

"The Shakespeare Wars" also offers some quirky but rewarding detours. There is the story of Teena Rochfort-Smith, a young 19th-century Shakespeare enthusiast who was busy preparing a four-column parallel edition of "Hamlet" when her clothes caught on fire and she was burned to death. An eerie tale, but it speaks poignantly to the ranks of almost forgotten scholars who, in their time, lived and breathed Shakespeare.

There is also the story of the Wigmaker's Lawsuit, a cryptic incident in 1604 when Shakespeare was sued by a wigmaker's apprentice over the role he had played in helping to arrange a marriage. It may seem a bit of trivia, but it is one of the few times in history that Shakespeare's actual voice was caught on the public record and as such it fascinates.

Rosenbaum offers at least one assertion likely to infuriate any number of Shakespeare scholars. He suggests that today many people can better experience the Bard through film rather than on stage. He even specifies the four films that he considers must-sees. (I'm not telling – for that you'll have to buy the book.)

"The Shakespeare Wars" suffers from some excess and there are definitely chapters that would have benefited from a disciplined recognition that more is sometimes less. A shorter, tighter book would still have had plenty of punch.

What is lovely about this book, however, is its exaltation of the vastness of Shakespearean riches – a vastness proven by the endless intensity of the very debates that Rosenbaum writes about. "The works will exhaust us, outlive us before we reach bottom," Rosenbaum writes. "Life is too short to really plumb the depths."

And then there's Rosenbaum's passion for his subject. It's genuine and highly infectious. Someday, when they're old enough, I bet that some of those seventh-graders I met will enjoy this book.

• Marjorie Kehe is the Monitor's book editor. Send comments toMarjorie Kehe.

Page: 1 | 2