Shakespeare and Nietzsche
Has Shakespeare been identified at all as one of Nietzsche's influences?
Recently reading Troilus and Cressida, it occurs to be that Ulysses's famous speech in 1.3 bears striking similarities to Nietzsche's theories on "Good and Bad" vs. "Good and Evil" in On The Genealogy of Morals.
Here is some of Ulysses's speech (it exceeds 60 lines):
..........How could communities,
Degrees in schools, and brotherhoods in cities,
Peaceful commerce from dividable shores,
The primogenity and due of birth,
Prerogative of age, crowns, sceptres, laurels,
But by degree stand in authentic place?
Take but degree away, untune that string,
And hark what discord follows. Each thing meets
In mere oppugnancy. The bounded waters
Should lift their bosoms higher than the shores
And make a sop of all this solid globe;
Strength should be lord of imbecility,
And the rude son should strike his father dead.
Force should be right -- or rather, right and wrong,
Between those endless jar justice resides,
Should lose their names, and so should justice too.
Then everything includes itself in power,
Power into will, will into appetite;
And appetite, an universal wolf,
So doubly seconded with will and power,
Must make perforce an universal prey,
And last eat up himself.
(1.3.103-124)
I have bolded the sections that bear closest resemblance to Nietzsche.
To summarize Nietzsche, whose theories are difficult to group into one tightly knit sentence:
Nietzsche posited that the idea of "Good and Bad" is distinct from what we consider "Good and Evil," - "Good and Bad" being a noble morality and "Good and Evil" being a slave morality.
"Good and Bad" arose for a very obvious reason. That which is useful in the hunter/gatherer, instinctual sense is "Good", that which is retrograde to man is "Bad". As certain men are more powerful than others, some were masters and others slaves. Out of the slave's ressentiment (a word that describes the complexity of feelings that the slaves bore towards the noble), the morality of "Good and Evil" took off. The weak associate those qualities that are "Good" in the noble sense (as in ambition, strength, sexual potency) with "Evil" in their slave morality, and the characteristics that they possessed as slaves (piety, weakness, etc.) with "Good".
This is a poor reading by a poor student of a very difficult philosopher, but bear with me. I see in Shakespeare (even the very language of Shakespeare) a preamble to Nietzsche. Ulysses's (Shakespeare's) idea of the loss of "degree" - that is rank, value, etc. - means that those that are strong and powerful would rule. In this world, old, decrepit Nestor, who although wise, is far beyond in years, would be destroyed, and powerful men like Achilles and Ajax - both of whom possess a minimum of wits and even less a sense of "degree" - would be the masters. The only reason the soldiers do not rise up and strike down Agamemnon is because of his status as leader. In a world without "degree", station in life would not matter and everything would be governed by strength alone.
That Shakespeare could anticipate philosophical theories 200 years after his death is astounding, but even more so that in even one speech of Shakespeare we can find a wealth of philosophical interest and value.
