A fascinating piece in The New Republic examines the notion of Eliot Spitzer's fall from grace as a "Shakespearean" event. The key passage:

The Shakespearean character who most resembles Spitzer comes not from tragedy but from comedy: Angelo in Measure for Measure. As the prosecutor of Vienna, Angelo sets about cleaning up the vice-addled city, all the while trying to seduce a would-be nun, Isabella. But Angelo is a much deeper character than Spitzer. He wants Isabella because she's virtuous; it's her virtue that arouses him. This is a much more complicated emotion than the one Spitzer must have felt when he called the Emperor's Club. And when Angelo is eventually confronted with his crime, his response is fascinating: "I crave death more willingly than mercy; / 'Tis my deserving, and I do entreat it." The hypocrite prosecutor, when called to judge himself, is true to his ideals. The lines are brilliant and original. Spitzer, in his initial press conference acknowledging his misbehavior, and then when he announced his resignation and said goodbye, just piled one useless cliché on top of another and called it a day.

Few, if any, of the commentators who have been using the term "Shakespearean" are thinking about Angelo, of course. All they are saying is that something dramatic has happened. "Shakespearean" used to mean a situation of extreme emotions in high politics mixed in with a measure of the unfathomability of fate. Now it is shorthand for any situation in which somebody becomes powerful and/or loses power. The whole range of Shakespearean terms has been debased. "Lady Macbeth" is shorthand for any ambitious woman. "Othello" is shorthand for anyone jealous. "Hamlet" is shorthand for anyone who overthinks. The time has come either to use these terms far more selectively or to retire them altogether.

Stephen Marche, the article's author, goes on to suggest that the value of Shakespeare's characters lies in their capacity to contain all of humanity's conceivable refractions; they are less individuals than prisms placed at varying angles relative to the light of dramatic circumstance.

The Polish writer Jan Kott suggested that the value of Shakespeare's history plays lay not in their explication of the character of the individual, but rather the awesome power of the "Grand Mechanism" formed by the collective force of history. The Mechanism, he argued, may be challenged by men such as King Henry, but it will, over time, correct itself and crush the foolish mortal who dares to impede its progress.

Interestingly, Marche, who argues that Sptizer's escapades do not live up to the exploits of Shakespearean characters in terms of enduring resonance, is credited as the author of Shining at the Bottom of the Sea, "a literary anthology of an invented country." Kott, meanwhile, writing about this same struggle between the individual and the weight of Shakespearean prose, titled the book in which he discusses the "Grand Mechanism" Shakespeare Our Contemporary, suggesting that we would do well to consider our own actions in the context of Shakespeare's characters.

Whether the country is contemporary or imagined, Shakespeare's grip on our perceptions of each other remains rock-solid. As evidence, the Public Theater is currently presenting two plays that explore the notion of the individual's historical significance to its fullest extent. Conversations in Tusculum considers the debates between the conspirators who murdered Julius Caesar, while Drunk Enough To Say I Love You explores the tumultuous relationship between the United States and Great Britain through the lens of the struggles experienced by pair of gay lovers.

The currents of theatrical history are converging on you, the viewer, as we speak! I urge you to succumb to the will of the Mechanism and check out both productions.