Shakespeare and the Early Modern Self 173
have sexual issues like Macbeth’s; they may be compensating for
being dominated by their mothers the way Coriolanus appears to
be. They may be as un- self- knowing as Othello or Hotspur or
Lear. Professors will be the last people in the world to tell you that
virtue, true to the Latin root virtu, means strength, as the Romans
believed. On the fi rst page of his life of Coriolanus, Plutarch tells us
the Romans believed that virtue equaled martial prowess and that
was that. What Shakespeare despises, those who are currently
intelligent enough or refi ned enough to comprehend his work will
likely despise too.
Shakespeare is by far the most quoted author in the English- speaking
world. But I would dare to say it is often a mistake to do so. This is
because almost every Shakespeare passage comes from the mouth
of a character speaking to achieve his or her desires. They speak
from desires for and of the Self— they articulate, directly or indi-
rectly, self- interested aspirations. “There is a tide in the aff airs of
men,” we say, “which taken at the fl ood leads on to fortune.” But
Brutus, the character we quote, has just conspired in an assassina-
tion and is now endorsing a strategy, engaging Antony and Caesar
Augustus at Philippi, that will fail utterly. “Neither a borrower nor
a lender be,” we say, “for loan oft loses both itself and friend and
borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.” But in saying so we forget
we are quoting, and thus summoning as our corroborator, a foolish
counselor who spies on his own son and dau gh ter and who lives for
court intrigues. One says, “the lunatic, the lover and the poet / Are
of imagination all compact,” and feels he has wittily slandered
the aspirations of poets and poetry. But one is likely to forget that the
speaker is the rather unimaginative Duke Theseus, who under-
stands almost nothing of the world of Midsummer Night’s Dream.
One says, “The devil can cite scripture for his purpose,” and forgets
that the devil in question is Shylock and that the line is infl ected