PanThe Arts FuseRobert McCrum loves the Bard well but none too wisely in Shakespearean, his sloppy amalgamation of biography, literary history, and memoir ... McCrum ignores Shakespeare’s memorable female characters as well as his astute examination of the dynamics between the sexes. So Shakespearean‘s version of the Bard comes off as somewhat Monty Pythonesque — we are usually marching along with \'Men Men Men\' ... McCrum stays away from anything in the selected texts that might cast serious doubt on his literary idol ... McCrum is all thunderous effusion with little discrimination ... Worse is a bit on Othello that does not make much of an attempt to look at what the play means in the era of Black Lives Matter and #Me Too ... Shakespearean is at its best when it is dealing with concrete historical matters, chronicling how Shakespeare survived in a treacherous period ... Still, even some of the volume’s speculation about the past falls short, with potted stuff about Shakespeare’s competition with Christopher Marlowe and the Bard’s reception in America. McCrum is also a bit gullible.
