Currently reading: Lectures on Shakespeare, by W. H. Auden
Of all dramatists Shakespeare is, perhaps, the most “life-like.” His plays may be in verse and, therefore, anything but “naturalistic,” yet no one else conveys so perfectly the double truth that, while each man is a unique individual responsible for the choices he makes and not an impotent victim of circumstance, at the same time we are all members one of another, mutually dependent and mutually responsible. No man is what he is or chooses what he chooses independently of the natures and choices of those with whom he is associated.
—from an article on The Merchant of Venice published in The New York Times
