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Book Review: Shakespeare’s Political Wisdom3 6 9which is so deeply shaped by postmodern philosophic thought” (2). BecauseBurns abandons the use of conventional scholarly support for his arguments,Shakespeare’s Political Wisdom can at times be disconcerting or perplexing.Reading Shakespeare without contemporary assumptions is appealing,though the procedure potentially exposes the interpreter’s own point of viewto undue criticism. This book forgoes the usual protection given to scholarswho couch arguments either in opposition to or in agreement with secondaryscholarship. In his own name, Burns gives detailed accounts of JuliusCaesar, Macbeth, The Merchant of Venice, King Lear, and The Tempest, buthis arguments often hinge on subtle readings of details that are not normallygiven so much interpretive weight. For example, characters such as Brutus,Macbeth, Antonio, Edmund, Ferdinand, and Miranda each make statementsthat appear contradictory. These contradictions, according to Burns, are nothappenstance or simple indications of the ordinary complexity of humanmotivations. Rather, the contradictions within the carefully crafted lines ofShakespeare’s text point to the poet’s own assessment and criticism of theprinciples by which individuals ordinarily claim to be guided. On one level,this approach yields plausible interpretations, but in order to judge if theyare correct, readers are ultimately asked to judge issues that are between thelines (217).Many readers are familiar with Shakespeare’s Brutus and Macbeth, forexample, but Burns’s treatment of both will likely be a spur to revisit bothJulius Caesar and Macbeth. Brutus is often seen as a hero of the ancient republicanvirtue of Rome. A reader as astute as Nietzsche points to the Roman’smoral purity and suggests it is identical to Shakespeare’s own deeply heldsentiments. 2 Other critics have noted the problematic character of Brutus’svirtues, but Burns gives such an extended and compelling criticism that itbecomes impossible to take Brutus’s moral purity seriously. Shakespeare doeshighlight Brutus’s own claims of moral consistency (27–30) and uncompromisingpurity (51–55), but the poet’s emphasis on this idealism ultimatelyserves the purpose of undercutting it. Just as obvious, though seldom seen,the same man is simultaneously consumed with his own ambition for glory(59–60). This leads to remarkable prudential missteps, and, more seriously,to Brutus’s willing blindness to the immoral actions of others that makehis own pretense to nobility possible. 3 Burns’s treatment of Macbeth yields2See Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Vintage Books,1974), 96–98, 150–51 (§§ 23 and 98).3When Brutus confronts an apparition in 4.2—“Speak to me what thou art”—it is no accident theghost replies, “Thy evil spirit, Brutus.” Brutus and Caesar are both driven by personal ambition; the