1G0xxeB

3 6 8 I n t e r p r e t a t i o n Volume 41 / Issue 3verifiable human hopes and desires that predispose each and every one of usto decide the issues before we investigate them.It is impossible to judge Burns’s efforts to understand Shakespeare withoutfirst describing his approach. As the editors of the Recovering PoliticalPhilosophy series in which this book appears explain, Burns makes thesimple assumption that Shakespeare has attracted generations of readerswith “the moving depth and humanity” portrayed in his dramas (ix). WouldShakespeare not also have given a great deal of thought to the precise way wewould be moved? An author with the technical ability to excite our passionswith such regularity would be very aware of the subsequent inducement forsome portion of his audience to try to understand the cause of their experience.To note an obvious and related issue, there are several instances in thedramas where characters play actors, directors, and theatergoers, and it isunimaginable that Shakespeare wrote these lines without reflecting on hisown craft as a playwright. But the same logic impels us to consider whatShakespeare thought of the deepest moral, theological, and psychologicalquestions, that is, all political questions. Could Shakespeare move us withouthimself considering and even understanding—better than we do—the questionsthat prick human interest? This poet has wisdom. According to Burns,this wisdom is not only what allowed Shakespeare to create exceptionallyvivid portrayals of political life, it makes each play a kind of “educationalproject” (13). Whether we like it or not, these plays shape the way audiencesunderstand the world, and it is the result of a conscientious understanding,not the byproduct of creativity or good “storytelling.”This summary of Burns’s simple approach will be sufficient for thosesympathetic to reading and discussing Shakespeare in a similar way, but adeeper explanation is ultimately required. 1 I was initially disappointed thatBurns did not offer one. Rather than confront examples of criticism andalternative approaches to reading Shakespeare, he chooses to ignore secondaryliterature altogether. He writes about the plays “naively, without thesophistication that is lent to our thinking by contemporary social science andby modern political philosophy, as well as by contemporary literary criticism1For the best introduction to the issues surrounding Burns’s approach to Shakespeare, see the debatein the American Political Science Review between Allan Bloom and Sigurd Burckhardt (APSR 54,nos. 1 and 2 [1960]: 158–66, 457–73); also see John Alvis, “Introductory: Shakespearean Poetry andPolitics,” in Shakespeare as Political Thinker, ed. John Alvis and Tom West (Durham, NC: CarolinaAcademic Press, 1981), 3–26. For an extended defense of reading literature as a necessary supplementto political science, see the contributions of Paul Cantor, Werner Dannhauser, and Michael Zuckert in“Symposium: Literature and Politics,” PS: Political Science and Politics 28, no. 2 (1995):189–200.