The Bard on the Brain by Paul M. Matthews and Jeffrey McQuain, Dana Press, £24.50/$35, ISBN 0972383026 Reviewed by Eleanor Case
SAMUEL JOHNSON described William Shakespeare as “the poet that holds up to his readers a faithful mirror of manners and of life…His persons act and speak by the influence of those general passions and principles by which all minds are agitated…” Quite fitting, then, that neurologist Paul Matthews and literary scholar Jeffrey McQuain chose Shakespeare as a guide to understanding the mind.
Shakespeare investigated how the human mind works 400 years ago, whereas brain scientists today have the…
