john keats on william shakespeare …

[John Keats] was impressed by William Shakespear’s work in making such a variety of characters in his plays, none of which seemed to be a projection of Shakespeare’s ego.  Each had an independent life of his or her own.  Keats wrote, “A poet has no Identity … he is continually … filling some other Body.”  He believed that the only way real creative will matured was in a person who was not hell-bent on imposing his or her will on another person or thing but was “capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable searching after fact and reason.”  Interesting: Shakespeare, the poet from whom we know the most about people, is the poet about whom we know next to nothing.

– Eugene Peterson, The Contemplative Pastor