Berryman's Shakespeare: Essays, Letters, and Other Writings

John Haffendon has done Shakespeare readers a great service with this compilation of poet John Berryman's writings and musings on Shakespeare, both the man and the dramatist. Included in this compendium are extensive excerpts from a projected biography of the bard; introductory fragments of an authoritative edition of King Lear; conjecture as to the identity of Mr. W.H. ("the onlie begetter" of the sonnets); as well as short essays on a number of plays, including The Comedy of Errors, King John, and Macbeth. As one might expect of a poet of his caliber, Berryman has a keen ear and an insightful intelligence. He calls Dogberry "the supreme and triumphant enemy of the English language"; he sizes up Lady Macbeth as "unscrupulous, but short-winded," "single-natured...[b]ut nihilistic"; sonnet 135, he informs us, "is among the most indecent formal poems in English." Treasures such as these can be found throughout these wonderfully rich essays. Never intended for publication in this form, the book does contain a good deal of repetition: a comment regarding King Lear, for instance, or a supposition about Shakespeare's source reading will be mentioned here, repeated there. This does little, however to mar the surprising cohesiveness of the book; it very nearly reads as a completed volume. Haffendon does reveal a bit more than he should in the more-than-fifty-page introduction, giving away some of the surprises Berryman has in store for us. It might have made a more appropriate afterword. Similarly, "Letters on Lear,"--a bit overly pedantic and tedious--might have fitted better into an appendix, although it does offer a fascinating insight into the workaday efforts and integrity of a scholar like Berryman. The letters also contain at least one laugh-out-loud moment when the poet casually and parenthetically corrects Dr. W. W. Greg: "I am not `Dr.,' by the way." In the closing pages of this fascinating book, Berryman rewards us with a compelling meditation on the King of France's recollections of Bertram's father from All's Well That Ends Well. It is a striking passage, "nearly fifty lines, contributing nothing to the play" and without support in Shakespeare's sources, but nevertheless, asserts Berryman, "the most remarkable tribute in the whole Shakespearean canon." His thoughts on this passage (and others besides), offer the attentive student as much insight into Berryman and his works as into Shakespeare and his plays.

This posthumous collection of essays, letters, and unfinished writings by John Berryman is one of the most vivid and interesting works of Shakespearean literary criticism I've read. Berryman's insightful essay on "Shakespeare at Thirty" is alone worth the cover price. The real heart of the book is the author's lectures on Shakespeare's body of work, from the earliest comedies to "Shakespeare's Last Word" ("The Tempest"). While I disagree with some of Berryman's idiosyncratic readings, such as his endorsement of an Oedipal complex for Hamlet and his disparagement of "Much Ado About Nothing," I nevertheless found the book consistently interesting, always readable, and sometimes brilliant. I would rank it among the best general-interest books on Shakespeare in the last fifty years or so. Also recommended: Harold Goddard's two-volume THE MEANING OF SHAKESPEARE.