Collection 5: "Why Read Shakespeare?" by Michael Mack

It predates by centuries our truncated attention spans and our preference for the fast cuts of modern video.

It is a problem that the editors of the First Folio addressed in 1623, just seven years after the death of Shakespeare.

Indeed, some of Shakespeare’s contemporaries justified the seriousness of literary fictions by pointing out that Christ Himself used them.

Take the parable of the prodigal son: in this fiction you learn about sin and forgiveness.

Take the parable of the prodigal son: in this fiction you learn about sin and forgiveness.

But what makes the play terrifying is not that Macbeth looks like a fascist dictator—a popular staging these days—but because he looks like us.

If you don’t see your own overreaching in the phantasmagoric restless ecstasy of Macbeth, you need to read again.

If you don’t see your own overreaching in the phantasmagoric restless ecstasy of Macbeth, you need to read again.

What we see in these examples is a fairly complex interplay of life and literature.

Shakespeare offers a world of vicarious experience—a virtual reality, a sort of
flight simulator—that gives you a great advantage when it comes time to venture out into the real world.

By reading about the heart, your head and heart become more fully integrated.

This integrity, when you understand what you feel and you hear with an understanding heart, is the mark of an educated person....