Lines I Wish I’d Written
On Leaders in Shakespeare
“Great leaders are those who can see what’s coming”
This is the second in a series of brief quotations from books, articles, and other media — all based on my personal tastes and interests — that will appear frequently on Lit Life. If you enjoy them, you might also like the longer pieces I post at @janiceharayda.
“In every play, Shakespeare has a leader whom he puts under terrible pressure, and then he puts them under more pressure, and ultimately their limitations and weaknesses are revealed and they fail to rise to the occasion. The very thing that puts you in power prevents you from seeing what’s going to remove you from power. Great leaders are those who can see what’s coming.”
James Shapiro, a professor of English and comparative literature at Columbia University and the author of Shakespeare in a Divided America, as quoted by Sarah Lyall in “Can Political Leaders Still Reassure Us?” in the New York Times.
