Shakespeare and dependency

[Extract] In a 2010 book, Iargued for Shakespeare’s commitment, as well as that of some of his more prominent commentators, to individuality and autonomy.1 Iwas interested in what Itook to be Shakespeare’s fasci-nation with what separates out each human being from those around him or her—from the public, average realm Heidegger calls das Man, “the They”.2 It seemed to me that an ethic of heroic self-sufficiency was part of what made Shakespeare so attractive to modern admirers. This sense of Shakespeare as somehow standing apart entered early on into conceptions of him: thus, in 1709 Nicholas Rowe argued that, while Shakespeare’s “Fancy” was not “so loose and extravagant, as to be Inde-pendent on the Rule and Government of Judgment”, nonetheless “what he thought, was commonly so Great, so justly and rightly Conceiv’d in it self, that it wanted little or no Correction”. Rowe’s emphasis is all on Shakespeare’s not needing rules.3