Shakespeare's great innovation was the idea that theater could be a model of the world. The author supplies the words, the audience members their meaning as they construct a simulated model, based on emotions, in the course of the play. One can say that fiction is to understanding social interaction as computer simulation is to understanding complex processes in physics. Shakespeare designed plays as simulations of human actions in relation to predicaments, so that the deep structure of selfhood and of the interaction of people who have distinct personalities becomes clearer, when they run on the audience's minds. I explore this idea by analyses of Henry IV Part 1, As You Like It, and Hamlet. As we run such simulations on our minds, we not only construct and experience the emotions of the vicissitudes that have caused them, but we are enabled to reflect on them to create deeper mental models of individuals (including ourselves) and of interactions among us.
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