What utter silliness. (I realise this view will be seen as - at best - naive, and - at worst - idiotic.) The late A.D. Nuttall was clearly a brilliant man, but this is a scatterbrained examination of the plays, that offers very little in the way of substantive thought.

Nuttall is at his best when examining Shakespeare the man. He comes out fighting fit when examining character, and particularly the middle tragedies, such as "Julius Caesar". Perhaps the most interesting parts are in the opening chapters, when Nuttall descants on older methods of Shakespearean criticism.

However, clearly, the aged Nuttall never enjoyed a direct answer when the more complex would do. Perhaps I'm just not as intelligent as I thought, but much of this book struck me as reaching. Certainly not a book for the general public (as someone born and raised very much in the Bardolatry tradition, I still struggled), "Shakespeare the Thinker" is almost a parody of academia. It is an endless spiral of beautifully worded emptiness. (Whenever I read non-fiction, I use sticky-notes to mark important passages, so I can transcribe them into a computer file later. When I finished this book, I realised that 90% of my sticky notes referred to fascinating turns of phrase from Nuttall's generation that I wanted to remember, rather than insights!)

Perhaps my dismissiveness really is naive. This is clearly a book written for academics - and philosophers, at that. Nuttall is overly fond of the phrase "everyone knows" or "Everyone remembers" when discussing elements of Shakespeare's plays. It's painful, whether he's recalling events from the rarer plays or putting forth an opinion. There probably is an audience out there for this particular brand of criticism. Probably. I have a bookshelf groaning under the weight of Shakespeare criticism. At this point, "Shakespeare the Thinker" will probably find its place as one of the least. ( )

Excellent - like a course in Shakespeare with a great professor. Full of interesting insights. ( )