The Shakespeare Wars

I need to read more Shakespeare.  Maybe then I'll appreciate The Shakespeare Wars more thoroughly.  That's not to say it wasn't interesting with my scattershot knowledge of his works, because it was.  Ron Rosenbaum started out as an English department grad student but changed to journalism because he didn't quite fit into a department run by one of the acknowledged Bardologists. A few years later, Peter Brook's production of A Midsummer Night's Dream which rekindled his interest. Decades later, Rosenbaum used Shakespeare as a palate cleanser after a particularly grueling assignment and The Shakespeare Wars is the result.  

Rosenbaum wanders through the plays, spending a few chapters on the three versions of Hamlet and how different scholars reconcile them. He explores the plays through the eyes of actor Steven Berkoff and director Peter Brook, and explains how attempts to scrub The Merchant of Venice of its anti-Semitism actually makes it more anti-semetic. It's all fascinating, but I felt at times like I hadn't done the required reading.