Daily Inspiration Quote by John Foster

Architect brain, literature heart: John Foster is sketching an argument the way you’d sketch a building section. The supernatural in Shakespeare isn’t decorative gargoyles bolted onto the plot; it’s structural, a load-bearing device that exposes what the characters can’t admit in daylight. Foster’s “to me” matters here. He’s not claiming an objective key to Shakespeare, he’s making a reader’s thesis grounded in how effects function: give an audience witches, ghosts, storms, prophecies, and you can externalize psychology before psychology had a name.

The intent is pragmatic: defend the supernatural as dramaturgical technology. In Macbeth, the witches don’t just “cause” ambition; they give Macbeth a language for it, letting desire masquerade as fate. Banquo’s ghost is fear with a seat at the table, a private guilt made publicly visible. Hamlet’s father’s ghost turns grief into a demand, forcing Hamlet’s hesitation to look like philosophy while it’s also terror of action. The supernatural becomes a stage-friendly shortcut to the interior.

Subtext: Foster is quietly pushing back against readings that treat Shakespeare’s magic as quaint period belief or cheap thrills. He’s framing it as sophisticated character work, aligning early modern spectacle with modern emotional realism. Coming from an architect, the phrasing “uses… elements” suggests craft: Shakespeare as designer, the uncanny as a material chosen for what it reveals. The line also nods to context: an era when ghosts and omens were culturally legible, making inner life communicable to a crowd in real time.