Self-Esteem & Liking the World: What Is the Relation?

Self-Esteem & Shakespeare

There is a beautiful poem in which a man speaks of his feeling of "low self-esteem." It is Sonnet 29 by one of the greatest writers of all time—William Shakespeare:

When, in disgrace with Fortune and men's eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featur'd like him, like him with friends possess'd,
Desiring this man's art, and that man's scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee; and then my state,
Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate;
   For thy sweet love rememb'red such wealth brings
   That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

Eli Siegel lectured on the plays of William Shakespeare and on every one of his sonnets, and wrote the great, critical dramatic masterpiece, Shakespeare's Hamlet: Revisited, comprehending as no one before had, Shakespeare's intentions, the beauty of his art, and the feelings he had to himself.

Speaking of this sonnet, Mr. Siegel said that Shakespeare, "Like many other persons, would say he feels all alone. Everyone has felt like an outcast." Shakespeare beweeps his "outcast state", saying he wants things that others have, that he wishes he were "Featur'd like him, like him with friends possess'd,/Desiring this man's art, and that man's scope."

But then, he writes, "Haply I think on thee" and his feeling changes. Instead of feeling low, despising himself, he now feels "Like to the lark at break of day arising":

For thy sweet love rememb'red such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

Shakespeare is grateful for the existence of something else, and it makes all the difference in the world. "The sweet love" that he remembers, said Mr. Siegel, "is a sense of the true self of him," that in William Shakespeare that wants to like the world, that in him which was so greatly for art. Said Mr. Siegel:

I know that if a person [is] very sad, and thinks life is hopeless and there's nothing to it, if that person can like one thing honestly, and say so, the sun is...ready to move...Shakespeare feels that he has seen something enabling him to like the world.

In Aesthetic Realism, I met beauty, logic, kindness and science that is great, that I respect and love with my keenest mind and my grateful heart—and has the sun ever moved in my life! This tremendous, dignified opportunity to like oneself truly awaits people everywhere.

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