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3 7 2 I n t e r p r e t a t i o n Volume 41 / Issue 3mately benefits those who witness his artful endeavors. 7 Burns concludes bysuggesting that the playwright’s displeasing a part of his audience throughProspero’s open blurting out of an important truth is one of the “crimes” towhich Shakespeare playfully refers in the epilogue and for which he seeks“pardon” from his audience (216–17). Again, readers will have to decidewhether Burns’s analysis of The Tempest is plausible, but the overall argumentof Shakespeare’s Political Wisdom proves that these plays demand the kind ofinterpretive attention Burns pays them.It turns out that Burns’s decision to avoid the scholarly subplots expectedin academic monographs is actually one of this book’s virtues. Because hehas the patience to simply read the plays, it is Shakespeare’s own wisdomthat emerges as the cause of the perplexity I mentioned earlier. All of theplays can be said to raise unexpected or disconcerting issues, and rather thanignore them or explain them away, Burns makes them his central theme.Encountering Shakespeare in the theater or on the page does not have to beperplexing, because the plays are written to entertain everyone, but readingShakespeare’s Political Wisdom is a welcome surprise and reminder of thethoughtfulness of a poet that can be examined and perhaps understood byreaders who are inclined to do so.7He is even willing to couch this sobriety within traditional Christian appearances in order for hispedagogy to be more successful (212–16). Prospero makes the impious claim to have several miraculouspowers of Jesus Christ that have not been presented on stage (e.g., raising the dead).