Tag: Shakespeare

Advisor Wanting: The Absence of Moral Limits in Lady Macbeth

Our best ally should not be a man or woman who lacks the aptitude to discern right from wrong...one should not draw unto himself or herself a companion like Lady Macbeth, for Lady Macbeth does not exercise virtue.

The Restorative Tonic of Wildness

Particularly in a culture that values comfort and convenience, we need to listen to those who have encountered wilderness with the humility and attentiveness necessary to receive its instruction.

Marilynne Robinson’s Jack and the Need to be Forgiven

Much of the novel reads like this sentence—the internal struggle of someone who wants—not forgiveness, nor salvation, really, but rather to not need to be forgiven, to not require salvation nor redemption, to maintain what dignity is possible, given irremediable forsakenness.

Shakespeare and the Pastoral Idyll

Why does Shakespeare offer us love instead of politics? Love is intimate. Love is about attachment. Love is about beauty. Love is local.

Politics as Religion: A Brief Assay Essayed after Midnight

For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds; / Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds.

On the Nightstand this Week: Lear

A good recent Louisville production of King Lear sent me back to my handily small Yale edition to reread this most poignant of Shakespeare's...

Power Made Perfect in Weakness

If we expect others to rely on our fairness and justice we must show that we rely on their fairness and justice. —Calvin Coolidge My wife...

Fire Burn And Cauldron Bubble

Unnatural deeds do breed unnatural troubles.

Norman Maclean and the Question of Craft

"Fear and pity are made out of grammar,” he writes, and in this most particular grammatical unit he finds the fabric of tragedy itself.

Meditation on the Cold

Lovers of snow and cold are qualitatively different from the lovers of sun and surf; they are different moral beings altogether.