Abstract
This essay considers the reading of Shakespeare as a potentially virtuous act in the university classroom. It treats Shakespeare’s tragedies as low-stakes material that can reveal the high moral stakes for students who make personal the ethical questions that Shakespeare’s plays raise. Focusing on marital abuse in Othello, myopic scapegoating in Macbeth, and the prudence, courage, and compassion that characters in both plays lack, the essay combines textual analysis and critical self-inquiry into a method of reading for individual empowerment and virtue cultivation. Consequently, it claims that such an approach to reading would prepare students for eventual ethical scenarios that call for intense, and often immediate, action. Whether witnessing domestic violence, finding the good through physiological cues, and participating in a community to support those sick in the spirit, students could use Shakespeare’s plays as scripts to anticipate and eventually to respond virtuously to sudden, exigent ethical situations.
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