Self and Soul A Defense of Ideals

Shakespeare, we are told, invents the human. This is a statement
full of consequential truth, though not quite the truth that its orig-
inator conceives. Harold Bloom says that “the human” as we know
it comes into being when the playwright’s characters display a
certain interior life. Shakespeare’s characters are distinct not only
because their speech reveals their minds and hearts so brilliantly.
They are also distinct because they can refl ect on their own utter-
ances, and through their refl ections change their sense of who they
are. Shakespeare’s characters read and interpret themselves. “I think,
therefore I am,” Descartes asserts. Shakespeare’s characters, ac-
cording to Bloom, think about their own thought, and so represent
a level of being that makes them diff erent not in degree but in kind
from previous repre sen ta tions of human beings.
One of Shakespeare’s most ferocious villains, Edmund, about to
die, cries out “Yet Edmund was beloved.” He surprises himself by
what he says—up until this point Edmund has thought he was in-
capable of love and completely unlovable. He overhears himself and
he has to reconceive himself. He is not quite the being he thought he
was: he’s more capable of aff ection and generous feelings than he
had imagined. He calls out to the guards to try to save Cordelia

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Shakespeare and the

Early Modern Self