ABSTRACT
Ben Jonson’s famous tribute to William Shakespeare-“He was not of an age, but for all time”—has often been taken as a measure of his greatness.1 Generation after generation has kept coming back to his plays as a font of wisdom. Shakespeare has been praised for the universality of his genius-the fact that even after four centuries his insights remain relevant to our world. But is it really true that Shakespeare has something to say about our problems today? Are there some issues that are uniquely modern, which Shakespeare, as an Elizabethan playwright, could not possibly have comprehended or even been aware of?
