The trouble with Shakespeare is that he takes the heart out of controversy. Any flat-earther, royalist, republican, anti-abortionist, any Bennite or Thatcherite, will lose whatever fierce exudation it is about them that we hate or love or love to hate, if they are so unwise as to enlist Shakespeare on a regular commission in a systematic struggle against the forces of non-enlightenment. As an ally, the Bard is too co-operative by half. Long ago the Atheist Society were rumoured to have taken as their motto a line from Julius Caesar: 'There is no fellow in the firmament.' Anyone else who believes anything strongly could do almost equally well.

LRB 20 May 1982 | PDF Download