text: This is the worst book of Shakespeare criticism I have ever read.  Bloom makes no attempt to link one paragraph to the next.  It reads like 30 years of lecture notes piled together haphazardly, handed to a graduate student, and entered into a computer over a weekend.  He contradicts himself several times.  I donated my copy to the library as soon as I was done reading it, so I cannot cite the pages where the contradictions occur; but several times I recall reading a passage where Bloom had just said the exact opposite a few pages earlier.  To make matters worse, he even says the bard contradicts HIMself.  He points to supposed paradoxes regarding Hamlet's age, stating that his seeming age does not jive with textual evidence that would put his age at about 30.  Apparently the point is that if Shakespeare contradicts himself, so can Bloom.  Bloom ignores the obvious conclusion that Hamlet is a slacker.  He has not grown up yet.  That is why his parents tell him to come home from school and not to waste his time as a professional student when he should be learning how to run a kingdom.  Some of the book's observations are interesting, but they are glossed over and presented as a random jumble from Bloom's notes.  Interespersed between the passages scribbled down from Bloom's lectures are outbursts where Bloom reminds us that Shakespeare is without any question whatsover the greatest writer, in verse or prose, who ever lived.  Bloom is a great critic when he still tries, but in this book he was not even trying
  