"...if you want to get any serious drinking done you've got to go to Shakespeare. What Shakespeare offers is cognitive power. For example, Freud's work was the systemisation of what he saw in Shakespeare. Nevertheless, Freud's post-modernist Parisian scions, academic feminism, Marxism, Lacanianism, Foucaultianism, Derrideanism, contribute nothing to a critical appreciation of Shakespeare. I once thought otherwise, but now I rather doubt it (alas, now I am old). What others have called Bardolatry seems to me nothing other than an authentic response to Shakespeare. You know, Charles, you go to Shakespeare for the characters. Of course, in Shakespeare, we come to confront the anxiety of influence. Personality is a Shakespearean invention... One goes to Shakespeare because one doesn't have enough friends..."
