Sublime

In his description of Jack Cade’s Rebellion (1450) in Henry VI, Part 2, Shakespeare has a commoner rebel called Dick the Butcher take the antipathy to bureaucracy to its logical conclusion. Dick has a plan to establish a better social order. “The first thing we do,” advises Dick, “let’s kill all the lawyers.” The rebel leader, Jack Cade, runs with

FER. Sir, she is mortal; But by immortal Providence she ’s mine:

the rarer action is In virtue than in vengeance: they being penitent, The sole drift of my purpose doth extend Not a frown further.

Sibyl—if

to collapse, and Shakespeare is a major witness to that event. Even after the disappearance of blood feuds, duels, and similar customs, Christian culture never disentangled itself completely from values rooted in revenge. Although nominally Christian, social attitudes remained essentially alien to the authentic Judeo-Christian inspiration.

but you must fear, His greatness weigh'd, his will is not his own; For he himself is subject to his birth:

Nothing is but what is not. They’d had a terrible fight about that line. Magnus had insisted that it was simple: Macbeth’s fixation on something that has not yet happened but should, could, must, will – the power fantasy more real than the present. Astrid, though, had felt that the line was more nuanced; Shakespeare is saying that what we perceive,

he hath ever but slenderly known himself. – King Lear, Act I, Scene i