What I Love about Shakespeare: Psychology

I was a student at Northwestern University in the late 1970s, and disco was at its peak.  I loved what Alec R. Costandinos did: an uptempo rendition of Romeo and Juliet, as only that era could produce.  Much of the album was disco instrumental, but I found myself particularly drawn to two passages.  I searched our student bookstore for the play, and learned that these passages were exactly the opening sonnets for Act I and Act II.  I bought the plays, I enrolled in Shakespeare, and the rest is history.  It's been an enduring love affair since.

This week I talk about the three main things I find so compelling about Shakespeare.

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My specialty as a management consultant is leadership assessment.  Our process was well thought through and well practiced.  It plunged into whatever stuff our client executives and managers were made of.  As I wound down my one feedback and coaching session, an executive related that he felt undressed by the intense process.  Such an intimate look, such an unvarnished glance, such pointed accuracy.  His revelation was calm and grateful, though perhaps there was a note of resentment there, too.  I simply listened, and in short order he said our session helped him to get dressed again.  I smiled.

Whether it's King Lear, Othello, Macbeth or so many more, that's exactly what Shakespeare does to the psychology of the larger than life, truer than life kings, queens, princes and courtiers.  He works his magic on the characters, then strips them of their trappings, conceit and glib.  We know what Lear was reduced to at the end, howling in pain with his dead beloved Cordelia.  We know how the undoing of the proud, battle-tested and honorable Othello happened.  We know how the eviscerating Lady Macbeth succumbs to her guilt and the stress. The psychological grasp Shakespeare owned rivaled that of psychologists.