Bloom, Bardolatry, and Characterolatry

Abstract

The description of our seminar invites us to comment on Harold Bloom’s new book in terms of “the persistence of bardolatry and character criticism,” which raises the question of whether there is a necessary connection between them.¹ I do not think so, because there are other achievements of Shakespeare that can be, and have been, idolized besides his characters. Among the earliest appreciations of him that have come down to us (still far short of idolatry) are Robert Allot’s England’s Parnassus, or The Choicest Flowers of Our Modern Poets and John Bodenham’s Belvedere, or The Garden of the Muses, both published in 1600, which assemble brief excerpts from contemporary poets under various topics (the emotions, natural scenes, parts of the day, etc.), including a number from Shakespeare’s early plays, The Rape of Lucrèce, and Venus and Adonis (Allot 1970; Bodenham 1967). ² Both collections treat the passages from his plays exactly like those from his poems, without any reference to the characters who speak them or the situation, and ask us to admire them simply as isolated “flowers” (the figure operates in each title) or “sentences” expressing poetic sentiments about the topic in poetic language, so this might be called thought-and-diction appreciation.