This short book packs a wallop. Studies have documented that reading fiction increases empathy. Cohen reveals Shakespeare to be our greatest literary empathy expert, through a close reading of twelve plays. She learned about Shakespeare not in graduate school, but from teaching undergraduates for twenty years, and from realizing that understanding how his characters made her feel in turn made her a better person. She insists that Shakespeare belongs at the center of the curriculum, and her unique approach to Shakespeare lends this demand more credibility than do faddish literary theories. Cohen maintains that Shakespeare's empathy with outsider figures steadily increased over his career, as his plots and conflicted characters gained in complexity. Like Marvin Krims, she shows the therapeutic value of reading Shakespeare, when our world seems all too lacking in empathy.
Hannibal Hamlin has demonstrated Shakespeare's familiarity with many works of theology, and Cohen acknowledges theology's influence on his plays. However, she downplays biblical allusions, such as Hermione's Christlike resurrection in The Winter's Tale. On the other hand, she makes excellent observations about the salience of female authority in this play, and she extols the simplicity and clarity with which the play treats this and other recurrent themes in Shakespeare's works.
Cohen's students appear throughout the book, as her empathic focus on their Miranda-like reactions to the brave new world of Shakespeare deepens her admiration for the playwright's extraordinary insights about empathy, and how he imparts them through his plays. Remarkably, most of her students side with Shylock, not Antonio. Whether or not a given student follows family expectations influences their reaction to Richard II. Surprisingly, Black mothers she has taught empathize with Brabantio's anger at Desdemona for defiantly marrying Othello. Cohen makes the brilliant observation that “diversity [is] a motor for empathy . . . diversify your surroundings and your range of feeling expands” (50).
She sees Prince Hal as displaying “the beginning of the divided self” that is developed further in the great tragedies (34). Hamlet is unmatched in “his dramatic shifts in mood and behavior” (62). Compelling inner conflict in a Shakespeare character allows the reader to increase their empathy for both sides of such conflicts. What we are tempted to condemn in others often reflects disavowed aspects of ourselves. Becoming more aware of the complexity of our own identity—which many psychoanalysts now conceptualize as including multiple self-states—increases empathy for complexity in others. Cohen says her “struggles as a novelist” have also contributed to her respect for Shakespeare's genius in stimulating our empathy for his characters (148). Where other scholars might advance one or another conflicting interpretation, she is admirably tolerant of the ambiguity and complexity that characterize our inner lives. She candidly admits that Lear gave her new insight into her own “manipulative and histrionic” parenting (99).
Since Cohen begins with Richard III, she may want to minimize his capacity to evoke empathy, thus using him as a foil for Shakespeare's subsequent deepening of empathy for his future characters. She views him as lacking a meaningful interpersonal context. Yet he addresses the audience directly, trying to seduce and corrupt us into sharing his sadistic glee. Cohen values reading over watching Shakespeare's plays. She is persuasive in noting that a poor production may serve “as a handicap to appreciating [Shakespeare's] empathetic imagination” (142). Nonetheless, reading rather than watching Richard III may lead her to overlook the title character's relationship with his audience. Subversively, his hunchback has more in common with the powerful Robert Cecil than it does with his merely scoliotic historical model.
To her credit, Cohen includes Measure for Measure, though she regards it as an exception to her thesis that empathy expanded with each play—instead, it presents “a world without empathy” (101). She believes that Antony and Cleopatra lures us away “from conventional notions of heroism” (122) and “causes us to feel beyond ourselves for those outside the realm of our experience” (125), which is her definition of empathy. She compellingly connects this play with Sonnet 138. This superb book should find a wide readership.
