BOOKLIFE, May 2025 -- A celebratory study of desire and love in the bard’s plays.
With close textual readings and clear historical, cultural, and religious context, Brackshaw illuminates Shakespeare’s handling of themes of love and desire. He persuasively champions the bard’s “appreciation for feminine strength, his promotion of mercy and forgiveness, his deep understanding of the intricate mechanisms of evil, his admiration for generosity of the heart,” and more, especially his understanding of “the joys of every aspect of love, including the sexual.”
Brackshaw roots Shakespeare’s evolving treatment of love and desire in the literature of Courtly Love (that “quasi-religious veneration of the virtuous and, therefore, physically unavailable lady”) and Christian beliefs. In inviting language, he demonstrates that the plays draw from and challenge the former while exemplifying “the moral dynamics of genuine love” of the latter. He links the “open-hearted desire for genuine, sacrificial love” of Twelfth Night’s Viola, for example, to “the Christian savior’s commitment to serving a cause greater than self” and “an attitude of habitual, instinctive generosity.”
Further enriching this study: Brackshaw’s consideration of Shakespeare’s handling of eroticism, especially in contrast to Ovid before him and in light of "the shrill voice of Puritanism" in his era. While the moving selflessness of many of Shakespeare’s women shines through, Brackshaw proves especially compelling in fresh readings of Shakespeare’s fallen men facing past selfishness, from the “moral and spiritual” rejection of Falstaff to the “very personal, keenly felt human vulnerability” of the naked Lear.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY August 11, 2025
“Is love a tender thing?” asks Romeo, that excitable Veronan teen, not long before he meets the young woman who will teach him what tenderness is all about. Before that bewitching encounter, though, Romeo insists that love is “too rough, / Too rude, too boisterous, and it pricks like thorn.” Brackshaw makes a spirited, accessible case throughout this inviting study of love, desire, sin, and morality in Shakespeare’s plays that Romeo’s education in love, guided by Juliet, is emblematic of a recurring truth in the Bard’s works: like Rosalind, from As You Like It, Juliet and Shakespeare’s other “best heroines … teach their men the finer points of genuine love.” For them, Brackshaw argues, love is “a presence … whose light provides guidance through a wicked world but whose true worth remains mysterious and therefore under-appreciated.”
Love is deeply appreciated in this study, in all its sundry forms, be the relationships marital, filial, reckless, divine, or even murderous. Writing for an open-minded lay audience, Brackshaw demystifies the seething brains of lovers and madmen in a host of plays, from the comedies and tragedies that clearly center amor to lively explorations of the cruelly misguided passions of Othello and the hard choices of the first Henry IV, where Prince Hal’s rejection of Falstaff, for Brackshaw, reflects the “generosity, self-discipline and self-sacrifice” of Shakespearian heroines, like Cleopatra, who strive to “transform” relationships limited “by male self-indulgence into something far richer.” (The Antony and Cleopatra chapter is especially enlightening.)
As that phrasing suggests, Brackshaw eschews academic jargon and trends in favor of an impassioned celebration of Shakespeare’s grappling with love and desire. Crucial context comes from consideration of Christian morality in Shakespeare, plus what the Bard himself read about love, in Ovid and courtly romances. A companionable guide, Brackshaw demonstrates how the playwright, with poetic genius and a generous spirit, both challenged and reflected conventions of his day and ours. His close readings, crafted to reward casual and expert readers alike, reveal and revel.
Diane, Beta Reader, 2020
Perhaps the audience aware of Shakespeare's plays on a less critical level stands to gain the most from these considerations. This is the result of Dr. Brackshaw’s ability to not only explain these undercurrents of reason, logic, and emotion but to contrast these ideas with other critical approaches to Shakespeare's works.
Without making any assumptions about the reader’s familiarity with Shakespeare, Dr. Brackshaw explores the contents of each play, elucidating important connections to history, critical precedent, and other philosophical and psychological approaches. Because great care has been given to making each play and relevant critical perspectives more accessible, the inevitable consequence is a better understanding of Shakespeare's works.
By focusing on Shakespeare’s evolving perspective on love as the basis for moral behavior, this book leads the attentive reader to an appreciation of Shakespeare's ultimate, lasting impact on the literary world and demonstrates why these works have withstood the test of time.
Whether a reader of this book is in high school or college or simply an adult who maintains an appreciation for the Bard's major works, any student of Shakespeare will find In The Theater of Love a worthy social and critical inspection of the man, his views, and his times. This is a book that should appear in any serious literary collection and on the reading lists of every Shakespeare enthusiast.
