No poem, not even Shakespeare or Milton or Chaucer, is ever strong enough to totally exclude every crucial precursor text or poem.

What we call a poem is mostly what is not there on the page. The strength of any poem is the poems that it has managed to exclude.

Shakespeare is universal.

A play that takes as its burden the meaning of self-consciousness may hint that inner freedom can be attained only when the protagonist can separate his genius for expanding consciousness from his own passion for theatricality.

According to the myth, Prometheus steal fire to free us; Iago steals us as fresh fodder for the fire.

Shakespeare will not make us better, and he will not make us worse, but he may teach us how to overhear ourselves when we talk to ourselves... he may teach us how to accept change in ourselves as in others, and perhaps even the final form of change.