RWhen those BBC productions from the 1970s became available in the Grand Rapids library, I checked out four (that was the max then) titles which I'd never seen performed, including "Measure for Measure" and "Timon of Athens" (frankly, I had no recollection of the name of that one; I don't think there are any well-known quotes from that one). The full set of 37 plays was something like two grand back then, a completely ridiculous figure; a few years later five of the comedies, five of the history plays, and five of the tragedies, were sold in separate box sets for around $100 each (I saw them at Sam's and didn't bite).
Samuel Johnson on Shakespeare:
“Shakespeare is above all writers, at least above all modern writers, the poet of nature; the poet that holds up to his readers a faithful mirrour of manners and of life. His characters are not modified by the customs of particular places, unpractised by the rest of the world; by the peculiarities of studies or professions, which can operate but upon small numbers; or by the accidents of transient fashions or temporary opinions: they are the genuine progeny of common humanity, such as the world will always supply, and observation will always find. His persons act and speak by the influence of those general passions and principles by which all minds are agitated, and the whole system of life is continued in motion. In the writings of other poets a character is too often an individual; in those of Shakespeare it is commonly a species.”
There you have it - Shakespeare is for all time.
Check this out:
Lady Macbeth’s mind is overwhelmed with guilt from her complicity in the murder of Duncan. She is tormented no end.
Macbeth: How does your patient, doctor?
Doctor: Not so sick, my lord,
As she is troubled with thick coming fancies,
That keep her from her rest.
MACBETH: Cure her of that.
Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased,
Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow,
Raze out the written troubles of the brain
And with some sweet oblivious antidote
Cleanse the stuff’d bosom of that perilous stuff
Which weighs upon the heart?
Doctor: Therein the patient
Must minister to himself.
Here Shakespeare (it seems to me) anticipates Freud by about 400 years. Macbeth thought the Doctor might be able to prescribe some physic (medicine) to cure her mental affliction. The Doctor says there’s no such nickel-in-the-slot therapeutic that can cure her. There’s no such thing as a pill for every human malady, especially maladies of the mind. What a profound insight.