798.5 Thinking Through Shakespeare (with David Womersley) | My Last Book with Ramie Targoff

Summary

The History of Literature Episode 798.5: "Thinking Through Shakespeare" (with David Womersley) | My Last Book with Ramie Targoff

Main Theme

In this bonus episode, host Jacke Wilson speaks with Oxford professor and eminent scholar David Womersley about his book Thinking Through Shakespeare, exploring whether Shakespeare approaches perennial questions of human nature in his plays and how this has changed—or remained relevant—in light of modern literary theory. The conversation dives into the philosophical tensions within Shakespeare’s works and their significance for readers, students, and literary scholars today. In a special end segment, Ramie Targoff (author of Shakespeare’s Sisters) shares her pick for the “last book” she’d want to read: George Eliot’s Middlemarch.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Classical View of Shakespeare’s “Universal” Nature

• [03:48] Samuel Johnson’s View: Jacke begins by quoting Dr. Johnson, who lauded Shakespeare as “above all writers… the poet of nature, the poet that holds up to his readers a faithful mirror of manners and of life.”
• This "mirror to nature" view held sway until the late 20th century, when academic theories introduced more skepticism about literature’s universality.

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2. The Theoretical Turn in Literary Studies

• [04:26] Womersley: Explains that late-20th-century movements from anthropology and linguistics challenged the assumptions that literature refers directly to reality or universal human nature.
• “This was... a kind of calamitous development in the whole history of literary study.” — David Womersley [05:27]
• Womersley argues that “hyper skeptical theoretical encroachment” led in part to declining interest in studying English literature.

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3. Reconciling Universality and Social Construction

• [06:35] Jacke’s Question: How can Shakespeare be said to represent timeless truths if he is writing from a specific, and often privileged, social position?

• [07:16] Womersley’s Counterpoint: Acknowledges surface differences but argues basic human experiences (love, jealousy, power struggles) endure:

  • “We still have mothers who love children, we still have men and women falling in love, we still have jealousy, we still have struggles with power...” — Jacke Wilson [07:16]

• [07:43] Womersley:

  • Overemphasis on total historical/social construction is “self-destructive”—if true, “why would one look at literature from the past at all?” [07:43]
  • Even proponents of that position don’t really live by it.

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4. Womersley’s Approach: Shakespeare’s Perennial Questions

• [09:18] Four Perennial Questions Identified

  1. Identity
  2. Barbarism and civilization (insiders vs. outsiders)
  3. Relationship of utilitarian government and supernatural/religious sanction
  4. Distinction between the expedient and the moral good

• Shakespeare doesn’t give one simple answer. These enduring questions are “intrinsically dramatic.”

  • “My point is…as human beings, we are caught perpetually between competing ideas…these issues divide us in the sense that we can’t have a simple attitude towards them.” — David Womersley [10:20]
  • “The questions themselves seem to be enduring.” — [11:11]

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5. Shakespeare’s Dramatic Method: Exploration Over Answers

• [12:46] Jacke’s Analogy: Like court cases, Shakespeare’s chosen subjects are “hard cases” without easy answers—fertile ground for drama.
• [13:17] Womersley:
  • Shakespeare “was not undivided on these questions”; he explores opposing sides in different plays—even contemporaneously.
  • E.g., Timon of Athens vs. The Tempest on civilization; King Lear (moral intuitionism) vs. Measure for Measure (utilitarianism).
    • “He is right in the middle of these questions, but somehow…does not feel obliged to take a side.” — [13:47]
    • Shakespeare’s “extraordinary flexibility of imagination…He’s free to go on imagining and go on thinking about these profound questions.” — [15:32]
    • This flexibility can be viewed as “a certain kind of shallowness”—he’s not “captured by his own ideas.” — [15:57]

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6. Tolstoy’s Critique

• [16:03] Jacke: Raises Leo Tolstoy’s harsh judgment of Shakespeare, speculating that Tolstoy disliked Shakespeare’s refusal to declare a winner in his moral debates.

• [17:09] Womersley: Notes that Tolstoy’s critique could—slightly twisted—serve as praise, and illustrates the complementary approaches to art and morality between writers like Tolstoy and Shakespeare.

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7. Deep Dive: Expediency vs. Right (King Lear and Measure for Measure)

• [23:53] Approaching the Question

  • Utilitarianism (the expedient) vs. intuitionism (the just/right). Philosophers like Kant and Rawls have struggled with this.
  • In practice, even the most principled philosophers rely on both at times; so do we.

• King Lear: Utilitarians (e.g., Edmund) are villains; play sides with intuitive morality (no end-justifies-the-means).

• Measure for Measure: The “flexible approach” and substitution (“put yourself in my position”) do good—moral rigidity creates problems.

• Two Noble Kinsmen: Moves toward a “precarious balance” between utilitarian and intuitive approaches.

  • “Shakespeare was wiser than the philosophers in that way.” — David Womersley [29:56]

• [31:22] Womersley: “These problems are intractable, but they’re also constitutive of our human nature…We shouldn’t be impatient with them.”

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8. Macbeth & The Tension of Political vs. Religious Authority

• [32:08] Jacke Introduces the Modern Echo via contemporary political questions of divided loyalty or faith vs. public office.
• [34:03] Womersley:
  • From Plato onward, government is meant to benefit the governed, but must also command obedience—often requiring supplementary religious authority.
  • Macbeth: The murder of Duncan is “perfectly ambiguous”—both sacrilegious and potentially justifiable tyrannicide.
  • Richard III, Henry VI, and Richard II: Shakespeare explores dangers when kingly and priestly authority are conflated.
  • “The divine right of kings” was a secular legal innovation, not a mystical one, designed to resist papal authority.

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9. Does Art Need to Provide Moral Answers?

• [42:16] Jacke: Should art strive to provide answers, or is it enough to dramatize moral questions?
• [43:07] Womersley:
  • Some issues can be decided, but “the great moral issues…will always be [undecidable].”
  • “You can’t ask art to free us from [the] human condition of being divided, but it can allow us to reflect on that rather than just being imprisoned within it.”
  • “Rejecting easy answers…is in itself a very good thing…lifting up a predicament…something we can hold at arm's length and reflect on.”
  • “Shakespeare is better than anyone else at doing that, at least as far as I knew.” — [44:23]
• [44:26] Jacke: Thanks Womersley for his insights.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “This was…a kind of calamitous development in the whole history of literary study.” — David Womersley [05:27]
• “We still have mothers who love children, we still have men and women falling in love, we still have jealousy, we still have struggles with power...” — Jacke Wilson [07:16]
• “If it were true [that humanity is wholly constructed], why would one look at literature from the past at all?” — David Womersley [07:43]
• “He is right in the middle of these questions, but somehow…does not feel obliged to take a side.” — David Womersley [13:47]
• "[Tolstoy] perceives something very acutely in Shakespeare, and he just doesn't like it. But he doesn't like it because of his own contrasting ambitions for his art." — David Womersley [17:09]
• “Shakespeare was wiser than the philosophers in that way.” — David Womersley [29:56]
• “We shouldn’t be impatient with [these problems]. I mean, we should struggle with them…but the alternative is worse.” — David Womersley [31:38]
• “You can’t ask art to free us from [the] human condition of being divided, but it can allow us to reflect on that rather than just being imprisoned within it.” — David Womersley [43:16]

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Noted Timestamps for Key Segments

• [03:48] — Johnson's take on Shakespeare’s universality.
• [04:26–06:00] — Rise of literary “theory” challenging traditional views.
• [07:16] — Universal human experience across time.
• [09:18] — Four perennial questions in Shakespeare.
• [13:17 – 16:03] — Shakespeare explores many sides; Tolstoy’s critique.
• [22:56 – 29:56] — Expediency vs. moral good in Lear, Measure for Measure, and Two Noble Kinsmen.
• [32:08–40:40] — Political vs. religious authority in Macbeth and historical plays.
• [43:07–44:26] — Does art need to provide answers or illuminate questions?

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“My Last Book” Segment with Ramie Targoff

[46:21] Ramie Targoff on Middlemarch as her “last book”:

• Would reread Middlemarch in her final months, describing it as “the first great novel written for grownups.”
• Eliot’s characters are nuanced; she sympathizes with nearly everyone in the novel.
• The book evolves in meaning with each reread and with the reader’s life experience.
• Jacke and Ramie reflect on Eliot’s wisdom and presence throughout the novel.
  • “She accompanies you through the novel…not in an intrusive way, but guiding the narrative. And I think that would be a very comforting thing to have on my deathbed when I'm like 105.” — Ramie Targoff [49:14–49:39]

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Conclusion

This episode is a rich, thoughtful discussion on Shakespeare’s lasting relevance, the philosophical depth of his plays, and the value of literature that reflects rather than resolves the human condition. Womersley masterfully argues that Shakespeare’s genius lies in dramatizing the perpetual dilemmas—never reducing them to formula or doctrine. In the closing segment, Ramie Targoff’s choice of Middlemarch beautifully complements the theme: great literature grows with us, inviting us back again and again to press up against the intractable questions of life.

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For a deeper dive:

• David Womersley’s Thinking Through Shakespeare
• Ramie Targoff’s Shakespeare’s Sisters and George Eliot’s Middlemarch

Transcript

[Jack Wilson]

The History of Literature Podcast is a member of the podglomerate Network and Lit Hub Radio.

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[Jack Wilson]

Hello, we are running a bonus episode this week because Emma, the show's producer, and I are headed to England for our first ever History of Literature podcast tour. And today's guest, the wonderful David Wommersley of Oxford University, is going to be one of the special people who will be there to greet us. Along the way, our group will be having lunch with him at one of Oxford's finest restaurants. We actually have recorded two interviews with David, one on Shakespeare, which you'll hear today, and another on Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels, which we will play in another month or so after we return home. We're accelerating this one a bit, squeezing it into our schedule, which is why it has a decimal, maybe, or not have a number, we'll see. But because we will be meeting with David in person, along with Will Tosh, Emma Smith, Marion Turner, Fiona Sampson and other friends of the show, I wanted our tour guests to hear this conversation beforehand so they can ready themselves to shake David's hand and maybe ask a question or two about his scholarly work, including this book, Thinking Through Shakespeare. If you stick around, we'll also hear from Ramy Targoff about her choice for the last book she will ever read. But first, a conversation with David Womersley. I hope you enjoy it. Okay. Joining me now is David Wommersley, who is the Thomas Wharton professor of English Literature at the University of Oxford. His previous books include Divinity and State, Gibbon and the Watchmen of the Holy City, and the Transformation of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. He's also the editor of many books, including the Penguin Classics edition of Gibbons's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson, and David Hume's Complete Essays. He's here today to discuss his book, Thinking Through Shakespeare. David Wommersley, welcome to the History of Literature.

[David Wommersley]

Thank you very much, Jack.

[Jack Wilson]

So let's start with Dr. Johnson, my personal hero. You point out that he argued that Shakespeare is enduringly popular because he, quote, is above all writers, at least above all modern writers, that the poet of nature, the poet that holds up to his readers a faithful mirror of manners and of life. End quote. And you note that this view prevailed until the late 20th century, that we can learn about human nature by reading Shakespeare. And then something emerged in the late 20th century to challenge that view. What was it that emerged?

[David Wommersley]

Well, in the late 20th century, there was a migration of theoretical approaches to literature which came from. They originated in anthropology and also in structural linguistics, but they encroached on literary studies because academics saw that some of the very provocative and counterintuitive positions that theory had thrown up in those areas could be applied to literature. I mean, maybe not persuasively applied, but could be plausibly applied, at least initially. And this led to an erosion of many of these traditional or accepted ideas about literature, in particular, the idea that literature might refer to things outside itself, which seems so commonsensical that one couldn't really question it, but it was questioned. And also that language itself could refer to anything outside itself. So. So this was, I think we can now see, a kind of calamitous development in the whole history of literary study, because what we're seeing in universities now across the west anyway, is a great drop in enrollments on English literature courses. And I think that it's not the whole explanation for why that's happened, but a contributory course certainly was this hyper skeptical theoretical encroachment on literary study.

[Jack Wilson]

Right. What about a question that is maybe still with us and a lot of listeners probably still wrestle with which is, you know, if we're talking about human nature and kind of looking for a universal nature, but we're limited to socially constructed view of people, maybe it was created often by men, often white European males. And if that's not exactly essential or universal or timeless, then how can we say that someone like Shakespeare is describing something timeless?

[David Wommersley]

Well, a very good question. And of course, no one who has defended the idea of constant and universal principles of human nature has suggested that the surface of human behavior is unchanging. Of course it changes dramatically over time, it changes dramatically over space. The question is, how far down does that variation reach? Now, in some recent academic work, it's assumed that human nature is historical from top to bottom. That's to say that there's nothing that endures. It is all socially conditioned. And my view is that nobody can

[Jack Wilson]

seriously believe that we still have mothers who love children, we still have men and women falling in love, we still have jealousy, we still have struggles with power. And things. If you abstract it enough, you get to things that you can easily see are there in Homer as well, as far back as you can go, you can see that those issues are there and we would expect them to be present as long as there are human beings.

[David Wommersley]

And also it's a kind of a self destructive position, because if it were true, why would one look at literature from the past at all? Or indeed, why would one look at any. Consider anything that anyone else said to you. I mean, why would the conditionness of human nature just be a temporal thing? It might also be a spatial thing. I mean, why should I pay attention to my neighbor, you? So I think that it was a very good example of how in the academy, an insight that is intriguing and has something to recommend, it gets expanded and extrapolated to the point where it becomes just untenable. And even the people who have written in support of that view don't actually act as if they believed it. As far as I can tell right

[Jack Wilson]

now, up to this point, there are maybe listeners who are getting ahead of us a little and thinking that your book will then say no, here are some things Shakespeare said which are always true, or that he was a poet of general nature. And here's how we prove it. But instead you are taking a slightly different approach. I don't think that's your position. At one point you say, I wish to rehabilitate the idea of Shakespeare as a poet of general nature. But this does not entail a commitment on either his part or mine to an idea of human Nature that is either immobile or unchanging. So what do you mean by that? And what approach are you taking in thinking through Shakespeare?

[David Wommersley]

So, on the one hand, I recognize as who could not the fact of extraordinary variation in human behavior over time and space. But what I also don't accept is that that means that there is just variation. And so what I have tried to do in this book is to focus on four, as it were, perennial questions that it seems to me apply to human life as far as we know from the beginnings and everywhere. And the four things are identity, the question of barbarism and civilization, or what's within a society and what's outside. It's the relation between utilitarian ideas of government and also more supernatural sanctions for government. And then finally, the question of how we distinguish and whether we should distinguish an action that we think of as just right from one that we think of as advantageous or expedient. And what I'm not saying is that there's just one solution to any of these questions. Nor do I think that these questions will ever be resolved. I mean, my point is that actually, as human beings, we are caught perpetually between competing ideas of identity, barbarism and civilization, religion and politics, the expedient and the good. And we can't ever hope to settle on one or other of those alternatives. So these issues divide us in the sense that we can't have a simple attitude towards them. They are, therefore intrinsically dramatic, I think, so they make wonderful material for drama. But also, we can't ever hope to resolve them. And so although the answers to all these questions has varied dramatically in time and space, the questions themselves seem to be enduring.

[Jack Wilson]

When I got to this point in your introduction, I sort of saw where this was headed. It reminded me of something, a conversation that I overheard once between a young law student and an experienced judge who was at the end of his career. And the judge said, well, how do you like law school so far? And the student said, well, it's good. I'm just hoping that I. I can find a career in one of the interesting areas of the law and not one of the boring ones. And the judge said, it's all interesting if you know enough about it. And the point he was making is that by the time something gets to court, it's because it's hard, not because it's easy. And because it's a dispute that doesn't have an obvious answer or an easy answer. It's something we're going to have to wrestle with. And It's. You have to kind of study it in all of its factual permutations and apply all of the details that should be applied to it. And it seems like what you're saying is Shakespeare had a talent and a genius and kind of a predisposition to say, I'm going to take a look at areas where this is the case in human nature, where these are points where we fundamentally can see different sides clashing against each other.

[Ramy Targoff]

And.

[Jack Wilson]

And it's going to be dramatic because it'll be worthy or valid to put these in the mind of two different characters as they figure out how to. As they take different sides on this position, or that it'll be within someone's mind as they agonize over what to do, because they can see both sides of this issue. And you have a phrase that I thought was a perfect encapsulation of this. The abiding concerns of thoughtful people.

[David Wommersley]

Yeah, well, you've, I think, accurately described a lot of what I'm trying to do in the book. There's just one other thing I would add to what you've said, which is that Shakespeare himself was not undivided on these questions. And one of the fascinating features of his career as a dramatist, I think, is how he writes, for instance, a play like Temon of Athens, which seems so extraordinarily skeptical about the claims of civilization, and then perhaps at the same time is working on the Tempest, which is so positive about the claims of civilization as opposed to an uncommodified state. So it's not that Shakespeare is, as it were, above these questions in any way. I mean, he is right in the middle of these questions, but somehow, and this is where I think he is so distinctive somehow, does not feel obliged to take a side. Yes. And so is free to explore, you know, the inverse of the view that he has just, you know, lavished his talent on, on dramatizing. Another example would be King Lear and Measure for Measure. So King Lear seems to me to be a play which is profoundly Kantian in the sense that it's committed to an intuitive idea of what is right and wrong. And characters that the play contains who are utilitarian in their attitude, like, for instance, Edmund, end up as the villains, and the play brings in a very sharp verdict against them. But at the same time, he's writing Measure for Measure, where it's actually the utilitarians who, far from creating the problem, actually supply the solution. So it's this extraordinary flexibility of imagination. And I think, as well, the Ability not to be captured by his own ideas. I mean, that is the great quality that Shakespeare has. And it goes with. If one wants to put it in a slightly more. Well, not negative, but less adulatory way, it goes with a certain kind of shallowness. I mean, Shakespeare is kind of wonderfully good at sliding over the surface of things, and he's incredibly quick at spotting lots of dramatic value in the surface of things. But because his commitments always stop short of something like a full commitment, he's free to go on imagining and go on thinking about these profound questions. I think.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah, I've always wondered about Tolstoy's hatred of Shakespeare, and it's been a while since I've read his essay on that. But I do wonder if a writer like that would see Shakespeare. I've never heard it described as shallowness, but I could see where someone who feels like, no, my job as a writer and our job as readers is to try to. Try to find the truth or the victor, not just look at the clash. Try to figure out who's right and try to figure out what we're supposed to do and which character we think is behaving correctly and is more moral or who should win here. And Shakespeare, as we've been saying, seems very comfortable saying, this is not something we're going to resolve today. And in fact, here's. Here's why we won't. Because I can see all the sides of this, and I'm going to present that to you, and you're going to just have to deal with maybe not feeling like the author is giving you a sense of, well, here's who we know was right.

[David Wommersley]

I think that's quite right. And it's good to bring up Tolstoy. I mean, Tolstoy's views on Shakespeare. If you just were to twist them slightly, instead of being a critique, it would be a eulogy. I mean, the point about Torso is he perceives something very acutely in Shakespeare, and he just doesn't like it. But he doesn't like it because of his own contrasting ambitions for his art, I think. So he does. What he recognizes is that Shakespeare is the representative of a very different way of thinking about art and literature and how it relates to human life. And one of the wonders of our literature is that we have both Tolstoy and Shakespeare. So we don't need really to choose between them.

[Jack Wilson]

Right. Well, here's a question that maybe we can just. I'll just pose the question now so we can both think about it. And so I won't forget, but I'd like to see some practical applications of this and talk about the plays and some of these perennial questions that you explore. But the question that maybe we should try to answer at the end of this is, is this something that we feel like we can use these questions to help us think our way through problems, or do we feel kind of like Tolstoy of well, no. This is if we're trying to improve society, if we're trying to be better people, we can't just have these questions. We have to have some answers, and we have to have those answers given to us by the work of art rather than just get these questions that we have to explore. But let's hang on to that. We'll take a quick break and come back with more from David Wommersley. Hey folks, launching a business is fun, but there's so much to do and so much risk. What if I put out a podcast and nobody listens? What if nobody buys my products? That's why it's great to have one. Go to partner on your side. Shopify is the commerce platform behind millions of businesses around the world. From household names like Heinz and Mattel to brands just getting started like Gymshark and Death Wish Coffee. Choose one of Shopify's hundreds of ready to use templates to build a beautiful store that matches your brand and benefit from all of Shopify's behind the scenes tools like campaigns, inventory, shipping, payments, analytics and more. If you get stuck, Shopify is there to help with their award winning 24. 7 customer support. It's time to turn those what ifs into with Shopify today. Sign up for your $1 per month trial today at shopify.com literature go to shopify.com literature that's shopify.com literature it's time to refresh your yard during Spring Backyard Days at the Home Depot. Get low prices guaranteed on propane grills starting at $179 like the next grill 3 burner gas grill or get $50 off a select Weber Spirit Grill and bring big flavor to your backyard. Then set the scene with Hampton Bay String lights that bring it all together. Shop Spring backyard days for seven days at the Home Depot now through May 6th exquisite supply seehomedevo.com pricematch for details

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[Ramy Targoff]

Foreign.

[Jack Wilson]

Okay, David, so I teed up a question that we're going to save until the end, but in the meantime, where should we begin? You mentioned the four perennial questions. You've tied each of them to four plays. Othello, Hamlet, Macbeth, and Lear. The four great tragedies. Which do you think would be the best in service of showing how this works?

[David Wommersley]

Right. Okay.

[Jack Wilson]

Or I can pick one, if you'd rather not choose among your darlings.

[David Wommersley]

Well, I mean, it all depends where you want to end up. So do you want to end up with this final, very good question about, you know, shouldn't art be doing more than just putting the problem before us again? Shouldn't it help us in some way? In which case maybe Lear and measure and the question of the expedient and the right would be good, because then I finish up with two noble kinsmen there, which does supply a kind of solution or seems to tries to pass beyond just the impasse of expediency versus intuition, moral intuition. So, I mean, we could try that. I'm happy to talk about any of them.

[Jack Wilson]

Let's do that one, because that will also, Let me quote Dr. Johnson again, where he says, villainy is never at a stop, that crimes lead to crimes and at last terminate in ruin. And here our question is, what's justified? We often will use examples like, oh, it's okay to tell a little white lie, to tell someone who's sick that they're looking better than ever, to kind of give them some confidence. But you could take that all the way to, should we assassinate a dictator? Should we steal to feed one's family? Can we torture people in order to find a ticking bomb somewhere else? Where do you say, no? This is a line that we shouldn't cross because means do not justify the ends. How does Shakespeare tee that up for us? And what are his concerns in the plays? And what do you think are his ultimate questions that he's presenting for us?

[David Wommersley]

The two plays that I use to focus on this question of the expedient and the right, which, of course, is a philosophical dilemma that goes all the way back to Plato and in our own day, continues all the way up to John Rawls. So, you know, if. If this isn't a perennial question, then nothing is really a perennial question, and different people have taken different lines on it. So on the one hand, you have out and out utilitarians like John Stuart Mill or Bentham. And on the other hand, you have out and out intuitionists like Kant and Rawls, I think, would say that he was an intuitionist. I mean, he says that his moral theory is very like Kant's. But one of the odd things I think about all these arguments is the way in which, although often the initial move is to repudiate either utilitarianism or intuitionism, in fact, that rejected principle comes back at a late stage in the argument to do some important work of closure. So even the philosophers can't really create a completely clean position. And I don't think that we are going to be completely clean on that issue. There are always going to be moments when a utilitarian consideration seems to be worth taking seriously, just as there will be other moments when your moral nature kind of revolts from what you're being asked to do, and you say, no, I won't do that under any circumstances. I mean, it wouldn't matter what the consequences are. So in the case of Shakespeare and these two fascinating plays that he writes, as far as we can tell, at the same time. So in 1603, 1604, on his desk at the same time, it's extraordinary to think of it, but nevertheless, it seems to be true. He's got King Lear and also Measure for Measure. And these two plays have all sorts of things in common, but their moral standpoint is utterly opposed. So in King Lear, we are initially tempted, I think, to find a character like Edmund, who is a utilitarian, very attractive. He seems to be a familiar kind of stage character, the witty trickster. And yet, and this goes back to your excellent quote from Dr. Johnson. In fact, it provokes that quote from Dr. Johnson. We see that utilitarianism can lead very quickly to a kind of terrible condition of moral devastation, which is what we have at the end in Measure for Measure. It's actually that the intuitionists who represented initially in that play by Isabella and Angelo, who create the problem in some ways. And the problem has to be released by a more flexible approach to moral questions. And that involves substitution. So substitution is something that I talk about in relation to this question in the book quite a lot in the sense that on the one hand, substitution is a wonderful dramatic property, you know, someone taking the part of another and characters being confused with one another. But also it's an ethical position. Put yourself in my shoes, as we might say. And what's interesting in Lear is that we admire people like Cordelia enduringly admire people like Cordelia who refuse to be put in a position that someone else has defined for them, who remain somehow resistant to that. That substitution in Measure for Measure, at the end in Act 5, when Mariana is asking Isabella to save Angelo, whom she wants to marry, and she says, put yourself in my position, effectively. Lend me your support. And that is the kind of flexibility which produces the happy ending of, well, as it were, happy ending. It averts anyway, Angelo's execution. So this sort of flexibility in the utilitarian position is perfectly ambivalent. In the case of King Lear, it's a vicious flexibility that allows people to be treated as just tools or expedients or means to an end. But in Measure for Measure, treating people like a means to an end actually produces a kind of relaxation, a moral relaxation that is helpful. So in Two Noble Kinsmen, which is this slightly strange late play that Shakespeare writes with John Fletcher and which takes some Chaucerian material and reworks it, he comes again, or he and Fletcher together come again at this question of whether or not you can substitute someone for someone else. And that play produces a wonderfully sort of balanced view in which neither position is rejected, but somehow they come into a kind of precarious balance, which perhaps I think is all that we can hope for on that question. I mean, we're never going to be able to say, well, intuited ideas of right and wrong just are irrelevant because we live in a purely utilitarian society. Nor can we say, oh, utilitarian ideas are completely unimportant, as Kant said they were. You know, this is just to reduce morality to prudence or something like that. So I think Shakespeare was wiser than the philosophers in that way.

[Jack Wilson]

That is so strange because you're right. And often we think that in the history of thought we just keep improving and we keep getting smarter and smarter. And instead, as you were talking, I was thinking, well, this seems like the difference between Kant and Rawls. Whether the Rawls seems like he would be an avid substitutionist who would say, we must think about this as if you're in someone else's shoes, otherwise your judgment will be flawed because you're choosing things that would be in your own self interest and that might not be for the benefit of the greater good. It's always been a problem for utilitarianisms of who decides who's going to say what happiness is and how we maximize that and what's worth, where the exceptions are worth making and so on. But ultimately we're all kind of Left with this idea, it's like Kant seems like he has the solution and the way to think about it. And then Rawls thinks like. Seems like he has a solution and a way to think about it. And instead Shakespeare, in the ways you've been describing it seems to just be saying, here are a couple of ways you can think about it, but ultimately that's not going to necessarily be decisive anyway.

[David Wommersley]

No, and I think that, I mean a phrase that I use in the introduction to the book is that we're all candidates for contradictory honors in a way, as human beings, and we can't abbreviate one part of our human nature. It would make life simpler, but it would also make life, well, worse, I think. Simpler, but worse. So these problems are intractable, but they're also constitutive of our human nature. And we shouldn't be impatient with them. I mean, we should struggle with them, and we do struggle with them, but the alternative is worse.

[Jack Wilson]

Right. Let's see if we can dive into another one of these issues and of these perennial questions. And the one I wanted to ask you about was the one that you center around Macbeth and the relationship between political power and religious authority. And for a long time here in the States, the big question or the example that I might have turned to was when John F. Kennedy was running for president and people were saying he's got loyalty to the Pope. We've never had a Catholic president, and that's why, how can he be a president if he's got this divided loyalty? And today we might see that same kind of question with other religions as well. I don't need to, we don't need to get into that too much, I guess, for contemporary politics. But it is this question of. And the way I've thought about it is, well, what if I ran for Congress, you know, and I was going to represent a community and I felt like I owed them some obligation to represent their interests as their representative. And they, let's say 90% of them wanted the Ten Commandments up in schools, which I disagree with myself as someone who believes in church versus state. But, but how do we, how do we balance that? How do I effectively say, no, it's, it's, it's okay for the community to, to have this kind of blurring of religion and, and, and political power. And ultimately, where does political power come from anyway? I like to think it comes from the will of the people, but in a lot of countries and societies it comes. It's divinely handed down. And so Forth. So what is Shakespeare wrestling with? And how does he present these questions for us?

[David Wommersley]

Okay, so again, this is a perennial question, at least in the West. And you go back to Plato again, and the metaphor of government as the shepherd looking after his flock, which implies that the purpose of government is to benefit the governed, to protect and benefit the governed. So that seems to be a kind of pragmatic defense of what government is for. But the problem is that for government to be effective, it also needs to command obedience. And obedience is. Is not something that flows very naturally or immediately from a kind of rational calculation of personal benefit. So for government to be effective and to fulfill the kind of practical goal of being beneficial for the governed, something supplementary has to be introduced. And typically, that has been some kind of religious sanction. And these two issues tussle with one another across human history in various ways. In the case of Macbeth, I mean, I tried to bring it to a focus by discussing the imagery of Duncan's murdered body. And it seems to me that this is perfectly ambiguous imagery. On the one hand, you can see it as a sacrilegious act, the murder of the divinely anointed king, or. And the language of the description allows you to construe it like this as well. This could be a kind of quasi republican example of the virtuous murdering of a tyrant or a despot. So Macbeth, it seems to me, is a play which holds together, or places in the kind of challenging relationship with one another, both these ideas of what government is for and how it is legitimated. And in that respect, I mean it. Although, as you've said, I mean, each of these four chapters focuses or has at its heart one of the four great tragedies. I also look at other Shakespeare plays around them. And Macbeth we think of as a tragedy. But another way of thinking about it is that it's just a very late history play. I mean, it comes out of the same kind of reading that Shakespeare was doing for his English history plays. And what we can see is in those earlier plays, the Henry VI plays, Richard iii, Richard ii, particularly questions of political authority and religious authority and religious sanction are very much to the forefront of Shakespeare's attention. And again, he's trying to think about what is the right relationship between spiritual authority and political authority, and what happens when those two things come into sharp conflict. So one of the questions that I explore a bit in that chapter is the whole concept of, or the doctrine of the divine right of kings. So when people talk about the divine right of kings, Today, it's easy for it to be, as it were, dismissed as this, this completely incredible and mystical doctrine that no one could possibly take seriously today. But this is to misunderstand what the doctrine is about and. And why it was forged, because it was actually forged as a reply to an earlier divine right, the divine right of popes. So the divine right of kings, far from being a sort of mystical doctrine, is actually a very juristic, very legal and very secular doctrine. It's the strongest argument that the late medieval period could come up with to resist encroachment by the Church on the realm of political government. And Shakespeare, interestingly, is quite aware of. Of that. And we can see that in King John, he gives John lines that show that Shakespeare is fully aware of how this doctrine comes into existence in a way. Actually, very interestingly that eluded later philosophers like John Locke, who seems to me to misunderstand the origins of the divine right of kings, or at least misrepresents them in his treatises of government.

[Jack Wilson]

Is this an area where Shakespeare comes down on a side, or is he still balancing the two and saying, you know, there are powerful arguments for both, or there's a reason why this question isn't as simple as it might seem to say that one form of government is better than the other?

[David Wommersley]

Well, I think that in the earlier English history plays, he certainly does take a view about how these two things should be related. And one of the things that is repeated in those plays is an exposure of how awful it is if the regal character gets confused with a priestly character. In other words, those two things have to be kept separate. Monarchical authority needs to be endorsed by a kind of spiritual sanction. But that doesn't mean that the king is a kind of priest. And if those two things get confused, then very bad things follow. So Henry VI is a good example of that. And also there's a very interesting moment in Richard III when the tyrant who is Richard III pretends to be very priestly in his character when he's soliciting the kingship. This is a very dangerous path to go down. So those two things need to be kept separate. But on the other hand, it's very important that there is this kind of supplementary endorsement of political authority by something that is not simply practical.

[Jack Wilson]

And we can maybe see with Shakespeare that he's saying, leaders are always going to be tempted to try to wear this mantle of religion as well as power. It's too powerful for them to resist the idea that maybe they need to set themselves up as a kind of pope as well as a king.

[David Wommersley]

But it ends disastrously. I mean, I think. But yeah, of course, of course. Tempting. I mean, any kind of power is tempting. I mean, I think what Shakespeare shows in the case of Henry VI is the way in which a particular interpretation of the priestly character, that's to say self denying abnegation of the world, retreating from practical responsibilities, that is obviously disastrous. But in Richard II he shows a different way in which a confusion of priestly character and monarchical character can be disastrous. In the sense that Richard II completely misunderstands the divine right of kings. I mean, the language of the divine right of kings is in his mouth the whole time, almost throughout that play. But the problem with Richard II's understanding of the doctrine is that he thinks that it confers as rights what it really holds out as duties, and that he is simply in virtue of being anointed. He is entitled to and will be rewarded by sort of supernatural endorsement of his actions and defense of his actions. And the play shows, of course, this, this doesn't come to pass. I mean, this is a terrible error of understanding, but one that will overtake anyone who actually takes the language for the doctrine. I mean, there's a difference between the two things.

[Jack Wilson]

Okay, let's try to tackle our big question. And we didn't get to personal identity with Othello or the distinction between civilization and barbarism with Hamlet. So we'll leave that for listeners to go read your book and get more. And also to go much deeper than we were able to go into the two perennial questions that we did cover. But let's see if we can tackle our question of is it enough for an artist to just tease us, as it were, with, with these questions and outlining it for us, or does art need to do more than that? Does it need to have a moral position or give us some kind of answer that maybe we could wrestle with or object to, but kind of do more than just lay it all out for us and force us to make up our minds?

[David Wommersley]

Well, you know, there are some issues where I think you can make up your mind. I mean, not all moral issues are undecidable, I think, but the great moral issues, which will always be undecidable, I think, or these ones always will be. So I think that one can't ask art to free us from human condition of being divided, but it can allow us to reflect on that rather than just being imprisoned within it. So that's the claim I would make for what Shakespeare does. And also that he is not a kind of moral snake oil salesman who says, well, here is your solution and this is all you need to do and you can forget about all that. So rejecting easy answers, I think is in itself a very good thing. But also lifting up a predicament from being just something that entraps us to being something that we can hold at arm's length and reflect on and see round in a way. And that's partly what drama allows us to do. I think that Shakespeare is better than anyone else at doing that, at least as far as I knew.

[Jack Wilson]

The book is called Thinking Through Shakespeare. David Wommersley, thank you so much for joining me on the history of literature.

[David Wommersley]

Thank you Jack. It's been a pleasure. Zootopia 2 has come home to Disney Plus.

[Jack Wilson]

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[Jack Wilson]

Prices may be higher for delivery. And finally today, Ramy Targoff was here back in episode 631 to talk about Shakespeare's sisters. The women contemporaries of Shakespeare who overcame obstacles and wrote their way through a male dominated literary world. After Raymi and I discussed her book, I asked her a special. Okay. We're joined now by Raymie Targoff, author of the book Shakespeare's How Women Wrote the Renaissance. Raymi. This question comes from a listener who asks, what do you want your last book to be? This will be the last book you will ever read. You can either choose one that exists or describe one that has not yet been written.

[Ramy Targoff]

So I thought about this a bit and I've decided, may I live a very long life that I would like to spend my last month or two months rereading, probably for the fifth time. By the time this happens, I hope Middlemarch. Oh yes, Middlemarch is my period.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah, right now you're not the first person to have chosen Middlemarch and we've done some episodes on Middlemarch. So our listeners hopefully will be familiar with It. But what does it mean for you? Why does that stand out in particular?

[Ramy Targoff]

Although that keeps growing with me, and that's part of what I'm responding to.

[Jack Wilson]

Yeah.

[Ramy Targoff]

If you've read Rebecca Mead's My Life in Middlemarch, but I. I've had a similar. I mean, Rebecca Mead grew up in the same physical place or where Middlemarch is set. But for me, this is a novel I first read as a teenager. And while I think I appreciated certain things about it a lot. And now I can say you said that you're often talking about Virginia Woolf as having last word. Virginia Woolf, I believe, said something like, middlemarch is the first great novel written for grownups, for adults. And I do feel, as one gets older and understands just how complicated life is, how complicated marriages are and families and what it means to live in a community. And I find that she, George Eliot, manages to sympathize or make sympathetic almost everyone in that novel, so that we have such an enormous cast of characters, and almost everyone is what Aristotle would say. Right. In other words, neither all good nor all bad, but has some laws, makes mistakes, but we can sort of figure out why they deserve our attention and our sympathy. And then specifically, I think my relationship to Dorothea Brook, with whom I so much identified as a very bookish, idealistic child or young woman thinking, you know, that the world should be in a certain way, and then watching her, you know, adjust and scale back her expectations and just evolve. I think I've read it now three times, and each of the times I have a different perspective on it. So as I get older, I'm now in my mid-50s, so moving to the next chapters of my life, I feel that I can return there and see new things in same text. And I think that's amazing.

[Jack Wilson]

It also seems like, in addition to being in the presence of characters who are fun and illuminating to spend time with, it also feels like George Eliot is right there with you when you're reading the book, too. Her intelligence and just her presence kind of presiding over this work. I don't mean it's like a voiceover, narration kind of thing, but just being in her intelligence for that period while you're reading it is a very uplifting feeling.

[Ramy Targoff]

I agree. She has so much wisdom, and she. What you say is absolutely right. She accompanies you through the novel. So at different moments, she speaks in her own voice and sheds some sort of moral wisdom on what's happening. You feel that she's there, not in an intrusive way, but guiding the narrative. And I think that would be a very comforting thing to have on my deathbed when I'm like 105. So that's my hope.

[Jack Wilson]

Right. Well, we're all going to live to 200 because of the technological advances.

[Ramy Targoff]

Yeah.

[Jack Wilson]

And Middlemarch will still be there for us. I'm sure it will. Okay. Raymi Targoff, thank you so much for joining me on the History of Literature.

[Ramy Targoff]

Thank you so much. It was a pleasure.

[Jack Wilson]

Okay, that's going to do it for this episode of the History of Literature. My thanks to David Womersley and to Raimi Targoff for joining me. Tomorrow we return to Emma Smith Week, and we will talk to her about Shakespeare's first folio. Emma Wilson and I will be meeting Emma Smith soon, and we couldn't be more excited. Next week we'll have a Mother's Day tribute on Sunday with some unexpected motherhooding. And we have a visit from Indira Ghosh, one of our favorite guests who has been looking at the history of humor in Shakespeare's works. A lot of Shakespeare, which is a good thing. But fear not, that will be the last one for a while on the bard. After episode 800, we'll kick off a new hundred with French novelist Colette Some Jane Austen, a new biography of American poet Robert Frost, an analysis of what makes a story a story and where stories are headed, and a man who's battling on behalf of authors in the face of AI. We'll have Mary Beard on loving the classics, a new biography of George Sand, a dive into the Harlem Renaissance, and much more. I'm Jack Wilson. Thank you for listening, and we'll see you next time.

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[David Wommersley]

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[Jack Wilson]

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