Shakespeare and the Individual

I'm teaching Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet right now and I am more greatly impressed each time I teach Shakespeare with the value of the individual in his work. The glimpses we get of individual human nature and struggle in plays like these remind me that all of us struggle and it's only through trying to understand one another and help each other out that we can demonstrate that we truly value the individual.

Let us use our minds and abilities to serve one another, to fight against a culture that is so wrapped up in looking out for number one that all of its values have seemingly fallen victim to the bottom line. To quote Hamlet:

What is a man/If his chief good and market of his time/Be but to sleep and feed? A beast, no more. (IV, iv, 35-37)

Let us aspire, then, to be better than the beasts, to work toward the greater good by giving not just lip service, but true service to others. Because, to quote Hamlet again:

He that made us with such large discourse,/Looking before and after, gave us not/That capability and godlike reason/To
fust in us unused. (IV, iv, 38-41)