Allan Bloom, "Antony and Cleopatra," in Love and Friendship, Simon and Schuster, New York, NY, 1993.

“Shakespeare was the first philosopher of history. He self-consciously tried to understand the minds of men and women of the most diverse times and places, always with the view to how the permanent problems of human nature are addressed and what are the serious competing visions of the good life. The conflicts of the characters in his plays are always colored by the typical circumstance of their particular place. In commercial Venice, mercenary tolerance permits us to se outsiders in their relation to insiders better than anywhere else. In England, the struggle for legitimate kingship affects the hopes and the actions of many of his most important characters. The student who went to school in Wittenberg brings some of its theological teaching with him in his failed attempt to right the rotten state of Denmark. Shakespeare’s utopia elaborated in The Tempest, is last play, takes place literally “no place,” on an island, that is, on the stage, beyond the specific limits. of real regimes. It is always helpful in interpreting Shakespeare to have a map and a chronology on hand.”

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