Abstract
Jeffrey is to be congratulated for highlighting Shakespeare’s plays and sonnets, written some 400 years ago, beneath the same ‘inconstant moon’ that still fascinates us and whose writings continue to have immense relevance in today’s world.1–2 Literature, at its best, contains every possible aspect of our human existence and if it could establish a place in the medical curriculum, its relevance to the interactions in any consultation may add another dimension to understanding its often more hidden complexities, particularly the extraordinary unlimited range of problems seen by general practitioners. All doctors will have worked in a hospital but it has often been said that the very best hospital specialists are those that have spent some time in general practice.
The breathtaking scope of Shakespeare’s writings did not just address the more personal or domestic matters. For example, the Montagues and the Capulets give an almost perfect allegory for today’s continuing tensions between the East and West. ‘The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune’ reveal themselves in a spectrum from cyber crime to the more visible brutality of the battlefield itself. 3 But life goes on and his influence still informs us. Perhaps we will never learn from history, though maybe we can from literature.
