Shakespeare in Bloomsbury

This meticulous study by Garber (Character) traces the influence of Shakespeare on the Bloomsbury group, the early-20th-century English cohort of writers, artists, and critics that included E.M. Forster, John Maynard Keynes, Lytton Strachey, and Virginia Woolf, to whom Garber devotes the most attention. Unpacking allusions to the Bard in Woolf’s novels, Garber explains that Woolf draws parallels between Mrs. Dalloway’s two protagonists, who never meet, through their independent reflections on the Cymbeline dirge, “Fear no more the heat o’ the sun,” using the lyrics’ contemplation of the relationship between death and joy to emphasize her novel’s meditations on “the ecstasy of love and the danger of loss.” Garber suggests that even though economist Keynes often underscored his critiques of “the dangerous foibles of politicians” with allusions to Macbeth, the Bloomsbury group was otherwise largely unconcerned with Shakespeare’s politics and instead primarily valued his mastery as a poet and wordsmith, as exemplified by painter Roger Fry’s criticism that the spectacle offered by elaborate scenery made for Shakespeare productions demonstrates a “distrust” of the plays’ poetic power. The careful analysis is sometimes a bit dry, but it succeeds in highlighting the diverse ways in which a brilliant group of thinkers made use of Shakespeare’s oeuvre. The result is a worthy testament to the Bard of Avon’s ubiquitous influence. (Sept.)