Shakespeare as the Inventor of the Human Personality

The title of the book shows that an important theme that Shakespeare was the inventor of the human, or of the modern notion of human personality. The author compares Shakespeare with the contemporary author Marlowe who wrote great plays, but whose characters had no inward thoughts. By the time of the Shakespeare play Richard III, Shakespeare was well on the way to break out of this mold. Richard III is ironic and almost ridiculous, but still fascinates audiences with his soliloquies on his wickedness and his planned murders. In the play Julius Caesar, the audience is provoked by the inward thoughts of Julius Caesar as he avoids his danger and walks to his assassination. Shylock in the Merchant of Venice is a difficult character for the author to analyze due to his suffering of anti-Semitism. Still, Shylock's great soliloquy on how...