William Shakespeare: Inventor of the Human

“Dante and Shakespeare divide the modern world between them; there is no third.” 

     -T. S. Eliot

You’ve been tongue-tied, hoodwinked, in a pickle. You’ve worn your heart on your sleeve or placed your heart in a coffin, seen daggers in men’s smiles or had too much of a good thing, not slept a wink or laughed yourself into stitches. All of these experiences, all of these thoughts, all of these feelings are familiar to us simply by virtue of being human, but the words, the phrases are Shakespeare’s. 400 years before you were born, Shakespeare thought your thoughts, felt your feelings, and coined the perfect words and phrases to express them, words and phrases that are still common currency today. It’s Will’s world, we’re all just living in it. 

So great is Shakespeare’s capacity to capture universal human experiences in language that Harold Bloom, the greatest literary critic of the last half century, advanced the claim that Shakespeare invented the human. Following Shakespeare, we will ask what a piece of work is man: a giddy thing or a quintessence of dust? We will examine Shakespeare’s thoughts on love, religion, politics, friendship, ambition, work, and leisure. And yes, we will pose the famous question—to be or not to be?

Last semester, Lectio Humana joined Dante on his pilgrimage through the afterlife in the Divine Comedy. For this upcoming year, Lectio Humana will explore the Shakespearean side of T. S. Eliot’s bold claim by examining four of Shakespeare's masterpieces of history, tragedy, comedy, and romance: Julius Caesar, Hamlet, Much Ado About Nothing, and The Tempest. Not only will we study Shakespeare on the page, we will also experience Shakespeare on the stage through a live showing of Much Ado About Nothing at the Lantern Theater Company in Philadelphia. 

Lectio Humana's William Shakespeare: Inventor of the Human will take place weekly starting Friday, September 6th. Click here to register and receive free copies of Julius Caesar, Hamlet, Much Ado About Nothing, and The Tempest.

Date: Fridays 3pm-4pm

Location: Fox-Fels Hall, University of Pennsylvania

Please direct any questions to Joe Perez-Benzo (jperezbenzo@collegiuminstitute.org).