Modern Age - Spring 2016 - 35

VIRTUE IS NOT BORING

to life the very picture of the abstraction "virtue," giving their
spectators living pictures of her dramatic representatives choosing between good and evil. It is a tableau that the royal house of
Denmark is in need of seeing.
Virtue's energy can also make it dangerous if it is misdirected.
Friar Laurence in Romeo and Juliet has noticed from his study
of nature "the powerful grace that lies / In plants, herbs, stones,
and their true qualities" but also how they may be misused; he
then reflects, "Virtue itself turns vice, being misapplied / And vice
sometimes by action dignified" (2.3.19-20). The Montagues and
Capulets vividly illustrate this last statement with their obstinate
insistence on following a code of revenge for a quarrel whose
origins no one remembers. Which leads us to recall Aristotle's
statement that virtue is an extreme with regard to what is "best
and right."
Shakespeare's plots and heroes neither tolerate tepid compromises of what is best and right nor finally accept as irreconcilable
those seeming opposites that so bedevil our public and private
lives-love and duty, desire and reason, justice and mercy, family
life and career ambition, and that very disastrous separation so
commonly heard today between what one "personally" believes
and what he or she is publicly willing to advocate. In Shakespeare's plays the times are nearly always desperate, and persons
of character must confront them with a desperate resolve. "Virtue
is bold," says Duke Frederick to a woman who needs his help in
Measure for Measure, and "goodness never fearful" (3.1.210).
This notion of the dramatist is different from John Keats's romantic description (which has become standard) of Shakespeare as
one who embodied a "negative capability" that allowed him to
manifest a chameleon-like sympathy with his various characters.
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Modern Age - Spring 2016

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Modern Age - Spring 2016

Contents
Modern Age - Spring 2016 - Cover1
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Modern Age - Spring 2016 - Contents
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