Essay: He Springs Eternal

THE Internet is fast becoming a Borgesian universal library of books in print. Millions of books are available almost immediately, through a simple click of the mouse. But even if we prescind from the conservative complaint that books aren’t as good as they used to be, it’s still statistically improbable that the best books in any given field will happen to be the most recent ones. That’s why it’s so important that worthy old titles be restored to print; they need to be kept in the classrooms and in the conversation.

ISI Books is doing excellent work on this. Shakespeare as Political Thinker (416 pp., $24-95), edited by John E. Alvis and Thomas G. West, is a good example. This anthology, an expanded edition of a 1981 work, is defiantly untrendy in its contributors’ refusal to read back into the Shakespearean canon the political agendas of the present. In his introduction, Alvis says that “if Shakespeare composes a supreme fiction, its supremacy rests upon its singular comprehensiveness as an image of truth”; based as it is on a knowingness about human nature, Shakespeare’s politics sets modest goals, and “we may doubt that Shakespeare envisions the likelihood of discovering even these… realized in actual historical regimes.”

About the Author

S. T. Karnick

Mr. Karnick is the director of research for the Heartland Institute.

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THE Internet is fast becoming a Borgesian universal library of books in print. Millions of books are available almost immediately, through a simple click of the mouse. But even if we prescind from the conservative complaint that books aren’t as good as they used to be, it’s still statistically improbable that the best books in any given field will happen to be the most recent ones. That’s why it’s so important that worthy old titles be restored to print; they need to be kept in the classrooms and in the conversation.

ISI Books is doing excellent work on this. Shakespeare as Political Thinker (416 pp., $24-95), edited by John E. Alvis and Thomas G. West, is a good example. This anthology, an expanded edition of a 1981 work, is defiantly untrendy in its contributors’ refusal to read back into the Shakespearean canon the political agendas of the present. In his introduction, Alvis says that “if Shakespeare composes a supreme fiction, its supremacy rests upon its singular comprehensiveness as an image of truth”; based as it is on a knowingness about human nature, Shakespeare’s politics sets modest goals, and “we may doubt that Shakespeare envisions the likelihood of discovering even these… realized in actual historical regimes.”