The Oxford edition of Antony and Cleopatra contains an introduction by Michael Neill that I've found to be very useful on several occasions, and it was again yesterday because it contains a passage that was largely responsible for the ideas regarding interactionism that I wrote about in yesterday's post. Here's the excerpt in question:

"'He whom you saw yesterday so boldly venturous,' wrote Montaigne, in a passage that might almost have been inspired by the vagaries of Antony's career, 'wonder not if you see him a dastardly meacock tomorrow next... We are all formed of flaps and patches and of so shapeless and diverse a contexture, that every piece and every moment playeth his part. And there is as much difference between us and our selves, as there is between our selves and another.' The 'self', in effect, is no more than the site of endless theatrical self-inventions and one should 'esteem it a great matter, to play but one man.' In Montaigne's analysis the self cannot be expected to 'hang together' in the fashion assumed by psychological naturalism, because it has no fixed and substantial existence."

I've mentioned a couple of times that I hold the opinion that the conflict that truly concerned Shakespeare was located in the audience, and not among the fictional (or historical) characters found on the stage. With this in mind, the dramas can be seen as unfolding in a way that includes every viewer and every reader directly in every action. They can become an endless resource for knowledge of both the self and the other. Or is that redundant?