>Shakespeare, one might say, displays the dance of human passions. For this reason he has to be objective, otherwise he would not so much display the dance of human passions--as perhaps talk about it. But he shows us them in a dance, not naturalistically. (I got this idea from Paul Engelmann.) MS 162b 61r: 1939-1940
>It is remarkable how hard we find it to believe something the truth of which we do not see for ourselves. If e.g. I hear expressions of admiration for Shakespeare made by the distinguished men of several centuries, I can never rid myself of a suspicion that praising him has been a matter of convention, even though I have to tell myself that this is not the case. I need the authority of a Milton to be really convinced. In his case I take it for granted that he was incorruptible.--But of course I don't mean to deny by this that an enormous amount of praise has been & still is lavished on Shakespeare without understanding & for specious reasons by a thousand professors of literature. MS 131 46: 15.8.1946
>Shakespeare's similes are, in the ordinary sense, bad. So if they are nevertheless good--& I don't know whether they are or not--they must be a law to themselves. Perhaps e.g. their ring makes them convincing & gives them truth. It might be the case that with S. the essential thing is his effortlessness, his arbitrariness, so that if you are to be able really to admire him, you just have to accept him as he is in the way you accept nature, a piece of scenery e.g. If I am right about this, that would mean that the style of his whole work, I mean, of his complete works†a is in this case what is essential, & provides the justification. That I do not understand him could then be explained by the fact that I cannot read him with ease. Not, that is, as one views a splendid piece of scenery. MS 131 163:31.8.1946
>Shakespeare & the dream. A dream is all wrong, absurd, composite, & yet completely right: in this strange concoction it makes an impression. Why? I don't know. And if Shakespeare is great, as he is said to be, then we must be able to say of him: Everything is wrong, things aren't like that--& is all the same completely right according to a law of its own. It could be put like this too: If Shakespeare is great, then he can be so only in the whole corpus of his plays, which create their own language & world. So he is completely unrealistic. (Like the dream.) MS 168 1r: January 1949