SOURCE: “Great Observers: A Comparative Essay on Shakespeare and Leonardo da Vinci,” in The Centennial Review, Vol. XXXI, No. 2, Spring 1987, pp. 146-66.

In the following essay, Fly contrasts the differing conceptions of human sight reflected in the works of Leonardo and Shakespeare. For Leonardo, he declares, “the primary function of the eyes” is “the scientific scrutiny of the phenomenal world,” while for Shakespeare it is “the acknowledgment and expression of essential human relationships.”

He is a great observer, and he looks Quite through the deeds of men. 

(Julius Caesar I.ii.202-3)

My general subject in this essay is the role of vision as a mode of discovery in the work of two great Renaissance artists, Leonardo da Vinci and William Shakespeare. The particular kind of comparison I want to make, and the crucial distinction I hope to reveal, can best be set forth by placing a famous...