Harvard Book Store; WGBH Forum Network; Stephen Greenblatt: Shakespeare's Freedom

Yeah. You know. Yes. Oh it's. It's it. I don't I think he did I mean and this is that's a very it's a very good question and I don't have a very good answer for it I don't I I would like to say Shakespeare was a Jeffersonian Democrat but I don't think he was I mean that is a he. I don't think he got it that way I don't think it was it. I don't think it I think he thought that that election was interest in elections lots of the plays are there are a surprising number the players are interested in elections but the election seemed to Shakespear occasions in which large numbers of people are persuaded to vote against their interests. And the end he found that the kind of distressing weird phenomena is interested it is a phenomenon but he he seems to extremely skeptical about their little glimpses moments in which you can see it might work but in his in his works but I don't think he just thinks of it as a particularly better. He doesn't get that all systems are miserable but democracy is a better system than the

other available ones which is what I guess most of us. Believe in one form or other. I don't think that wasn't didn't seem to be available to him to for whatever reason or he didn't think his way through that. So I think he did actually bump up against the kind of uncertainty he thought that you couldn't withdraw from power. That said I think he thought that the philosophical dissolution of the philosophical academies which is let's get away from this they just felt that he was drawn to the garden. It's necessary to cultivate your own garden to think of Voltaire but it's a long tradition goes all the way back. I think he thought that was a very bad idea because someone was going to exercise power is probably going to be much worse if you withdraw. But I don't think he believed it was ever going to be very good. And I don't I think he he I had when I thought of different kind of remarks to make tonight I I printed up a couple of moments in which freedom was used in as a term in Shakespeare. All of you know what

what Caesar Caesar's dying words were Yes. And Shakespeare is to you Caesar whether this famous his famous or.