Shakespeare’s Thinking

W hat makes S hakespeare distinctive, extraordinary, in the thinking that he exhibits in his poems and plays? Harold Bloom, A. D. Nuttall, Philip Davis, Stanley Cavell, and other literary scholars and philosophers have explored this question, and psychologists and cognitive scientists are turning their attention to it as well. Shakespeare’s mind is exorbitantly powerful, intricate and deep, vivid and engaging yet enigmatic: we want to know how it operates—the speed, intensity, and complicatedness of the thinking that it performs.