Daily Inspiration Quote by Stephen Greenblatt

Greenblatt’s sentence performs the very hesitation it recommends. The repeated “maybe,” the shrugging “I don’t know,” even the slightly awkward layering of clauses are not verbal tics so much as a critic’s quiet rebellion against the pious way we’re trained to talk about Shakespeare. In classrooms and cultural temples alike, Shakespeare is often treated as a truth machine: timeless insight, moral instruction, the Great Books halo. Greenblatt nudges that whole posture off its pedestal. Start with pleasure, he insists, because pleasure is how Shakespeare actually works on us: pacing, jokes, shocks, seduction, the itch to know what happens next.

The subtext is a critique of interpretive righteousness. Greenblatt, a key figure in New Historicism, has spent a career showing how “meaning” gets made through power, institutions, and desire, not delivered as a pure, stable essence. So he’s wary of claiming “truth” without air quotes. Yet he doesn’t dismiss meaning; he demotes it from an entry requirement to a possible byproduct. That’s a pedagogical argument disguised as casual talk: don’t demand profundity upfront, because that demand often functions as gatekeeping, rewarding those fluent in reverence and punishing ordinary curiosity.

It also doubles as cultural triage. In an era of dwindling attention and suspiciousness toward elite canons, Greenblatt’s move is strategic: save Shakespeare by insisting he’s not homework first. Pleasure is the democratic doorway; meaning is what you might find once you’re already inside.