The similarities may just be because both writers were attuned to the atmosphere of their shared late-Renaissance world, with all its confusion and irresolution. Montaigne and Shakespeare9 have each been held up as the first truly modern writers, capturing that distinctive modern sense of being unsure where you belong, who you are, and what you are expected to do. The Shakespearean scholar J. M. Robertson believed that all literature since these two authors could be interpreted as an elaboration of their joint theme: the discovery of self-divided consciousness.
