All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts.
I really fucking love that quote. I was thinking about it the other night at the gym and how it relates to typology. Obviously we can’t know what Shakespeare actually meant by this, but I interpret it as him expressing an intuitive understanding of MBTI - and really, who would have a more intuitive understanding of the different personality types and their interplay, than The Bard himself?
”All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players” is a recognition of the fact that everyone has different “parts” they play - an assertion that every person is a multidimensional being far beyond what we see in their current role. And that not everyone can play the same part, nor should we want them to.
”And one man in his time plays many parts” is a re-affirmation of this, and also shows that he had a tacit understanding of the 4 sides of the mind dynamic. In fact, any good author has to have an intuitive understanding of what we call MBTI/4 sides of the mind to write compelling, believable characters. Not that Shakespeare would have necessarily believed in a personality system like CSJ’s, but it’s clear he had a deep, intuitive understanding of the underlying mechanics of cognition.
Jung’s own description of Fi has a very interesting relation to the above quote from Shakespeare:
“Introverted feeling is continually seeking an image which has no existence in reality, but which it has seen in a kind of vision. It glides over all objects that do not fit in with its aim. It strives after inner intensity, for which the objects serve at most as a stimulus. The depth of this feeling can only be guessed—it can never be clearly grasped. It makes people silent and difficult to access; it shrinks back like a violet from the brute nature of the object in order to fill the depths of the subject. It comes out with negative judgments or assumes an air of profound indifference as a means of defense.”
In this context, we can understand Fi as an exploration of the archetypes of the collective unconscious. It is a journey within oneself to identify the archetypes that one resonates with, and express those to the fullest extent. To find one’s “parts” in the “play” of life, and perform them to the best of one’s ability.
This also helped me better understand my own Fe critic, which I still find somewhat mysterious. I realized that Fe critic is looking at the people around you, and understanding the part that they should be playing, and seeking to “enforce” that. Using Fe critic is essentially saying to someone “You are not playing your role in the play, and I don’t like that”.
After discovering this, I realized that I do this all the time. I can almost always tell when someone isn’t being genuine, and I will not hesitate to use my Se to “bully” them into being who they really are. Somebody pretending to be something they’re not offends me on a deep, unconscious level, and I refuse to tolerate it in my presence.
What can this tell us about what Shakespeare’s type may have been? I think that this could point to ENFJ, but it’s not a sure thing. We would have to have an understanding of how he used this knowledge outside of his plays.