Women of Will

This book cannot even justify the one-star rating. I read it as fast as I could like a personal mental exercise. I wanted to test my irritation limits, how much nonsence I could handle before I said ‘‘ok, that's enough.'' I dont know how I managed to finish it, but I did. Now, I want to forget everything about it.

Consider yourselves warned...A rant of epic proportions is about to begin...

When I saw the title, I thought ‘‘Oh, this is going to be great!''. When I saw the imposing Ellen Terry front cover, with the goddess of Theatre in Lady Macbeth's famous beetlewing dress, I said ‘‘come to me, you beautiful book, you.'' I dived right into Shakespeare's world, trying to learn more about the development of female roles over the course of his work. Sadly, what I found was a huge pile of problems and a stinking ego.

The first blow came early, when the writer referred to ‘‘The Taming of the Shrew''. In my opinion, she has completely misunderstood the meaning of the ending. I believe that Kate decides to answer in irony, hidden in docile words, in order to show to Petruchio that he will never win completely. In my mind, she wants him to understand that he can never be certain whether she is sincerely tamed or not. And there lies the beauty of the play. I think Shakespeare has concluded it in such a way so that the readers can view it openly and interpret either way. Many acclaimed critics have stated this as a possibility, but Packer never states a doubt. The expression in my opinion is totally absent. She promotes her own prejudiced views as being ‘‘canon'', in a pseudo-revolutionary, highly pretentious manner.Her dogmatic tone bothered me deeply and made me doubtful as to what was coming next.

And next, she took the theme of male friendship, which is so important to Shakespeare's plays (a concept that the Bard borrowed from Ancient Greece) and drew a comparison to the Paul Newman and Robert Redford films(!) I mean...SERIOUSLY? Show some respect...Her way to refer to Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine was to mention the actors who portrayed them in the film adaptation of The Lion in Winter, the famous play by James Goldman. As if there is no chance in the world that the readers will recognise these legendary historical figures, who shaped a large part of the European History, unless they have watched a film. We're talking about the parents of Richard the Lionheart, call me an idealist but I'd like to entertain myself by thinking that the readers who are interested in essays about Shakespearean characters do know a thing or two about History. History, people, not Hollywood...

The writer is so opinionated (in a negative way, of course), so boisterous that it becomes tedious, irritating, infuriating. She seems to have convinced herself that she knows what went on in Shakespeare's mind as he was writing the plays (!) She is so certain her view is correct because ''I have read thousands of books on Shakespeare, I have played in and directed all Shakespeare's plays, I founded Shakespeare & Company in Massachusetts...'' There are so many ‘‘I''s and ‘‘Me''s that I had the feeling I was reading about her, not about Shakespeare. Well, you're not Laurence Olivier, you know. Not even he had ever the nerve to claim that he was aware of Shakespeare's thought. I mean, who are you? The Doctor Who of the Mind? For instance, she says she liked to think that Joan of Arc was the first woman he wrote about, because...no reason. Just like that!

This has been a rant, it has been a long rant, but I had the need to vent after witnessing Shakespeare being abused in the hands of the writer. I was ready to toss it aside after 50 pages, but I didn't. I was hooked by her -fascinatingly- poor writing and lack of objectivity. I considered it a hunt in order to spot the following outrageous claims.And I stayed up all night to finish it. Well, it was entertaining, I can tell you that. After all, I managed to find the worst book about Shakespeare after 14 years of devouring everything that has to do with the Bard's life and work. And I thought that ''Shakespeare In Love was an ugly, poorly-written (not to mention acted, since she adores Hollywood so much) nightmare...This book deserves no stars, it deserves minus stars, actually. If only I had a raven to cry ‘‘Hold, hold!'' when I started reading it...

An interesting and insightful book not just in the sense of Packer's analysis of the role of women in Shakespeare's plays, but it's also a great overview of Shakespeare's works in general. Packer uses a mix of historical/biographical research, her experiences as a performer of the plays, and the text of the plays themselves to really dive into Shakespeare's life and works. I felt that she focused a little too much on minor plays, but that's probably because I teach Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet and Othello every year, so I wanted to see more about them and less about Troilus and Cressida.

An interesting and insightful book not just in the sense of Packer's analysis of the role of women in Shakespeare's plays, but it's also a great overview of Shakespeare's works in general. Packer uses a mix of historical/biographical research, her experiences as a performer of the plays, and the text of the plays themselves to really dive into Shakespeare's life and works. I felt that she focused a little too much on minor plays, but that's probably because I teach Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet and Othello every year, so I wanted to see more about them and less about Troilus and Cressida.