THE SHAKESPEARE IMAGINATION

The ""myriad-minded Shakespeare"" is getting and will keep on getting a myriad number of books babbling about him and his plays now that the Stratfordian's quadricentennial nears. Probably the breeziest babbler, and certainly one of the brightest, is Professor Holland whose The Shakespeare Imagination cuts through much scholarly lutter and delves into the structure, parallelisms, recurring images, themes, characterizations and the working principles which seem to sum up each drama or comedy a whole. The professor is a no-nonsense sophisticate, witty and in-the-know in the little magazine manner (his pieces for the Hudson Review are always lively vents). Of course, sometimes he goes a bit overboard at the thought of boring anyone and thus we get references to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern as the Bobbsey , etc. But you don't have to be stuffy to be serious and you don't have to have a lot of footnotes to fatten up your pronouncements. Holland's understanding Shakespeare is redoubtable and readable. He is informative and infectious; he loves the Bard, loves the language and loves the multiple interpretations the man's multiple identities elicit. It is an imaginative study itself.