Every Good Morning

The Tempest is about the motivations for vengeance and murder, and what one might do with the power of a god. It shows the audience the arbitrary bloom of one love match, but also has something to say about earned and unearned forgiveness and the residue of viciousness. Prospero, with his power to summon storms and spirits, create hallucinations, bestow sleep, hold others to his will, is a very human god. His […]

One way that genius with language works means coming up with ways of seeing that no one has thought of and making a metaphor* as a vehicle of that new vision. Shakespeare does this effortlessly, or so it seems in my experience. What does effortless imply? I think it means that for Shakespeare these images surfaced quickly from the flow of thought involved in his writing process. Maybe he asked […]

  Machiavelli’s view of humanity brings to mind this description of The Inferno : “… Virgil’s warning to Dante when traveling in Hell: if he is to see rightly, pity is forbidden. The eye that wishes to see human nature complete must be unclouded by tears, unclouded even by allegiance.” * In this context of pitilessness, we see that Machiavelli has little faith in human nature: “We can say this of most […]

One can draw out Machiavelli’s assumptions about human beings based on his analysis of power and his real-world examples. We possess a desire for freedom that is intrinsic and therefore a capacity for rebellion that is equally intrinsic. We are naturally corrupt. No one and nothing can perfect us. In theological terms, we are all sinners. Some may sin more, some may sin less, but no one is without sin. […]