William Shakespeare- INFJ? | INFJ Forum

William Shakespeare- INFJ?

foureyes

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Aug 15, 2009
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MBTI
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I think so.
Anyone agree?
edit: I had made areally long post explaining why but it got deleted so. . .sigh
 
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Immediately off the top of my head, as soon as I saw the words, a loud (silent) NO flashed through my mind. Whoa I don't know why though.

I would really have to know more about Shakespeare to have an informed opinion.

And I just saw this cutie:m073:aww it's sweet!
 
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I don't think Shakespeare is INFJ. I dunno, it just doesn't click with me. I know some other sites list him as INFP.
 
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I read his bio a while back I don't think we know enough about him to determine his type with certainty.

There aren't any contextual clues either.
 
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I read his bio a while back I don't think we know enough about him to determine his type with certainty.

There aren't any contextual clues either.
Yeah, I know but I just thought from the way he writes . . .
Oh wells, I guess I could wrong. :)
 
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I don't think you can tell anyone's type from the way they write creatively, quite frankly. It's creative, it's made up. And as much as authors may put a bit of themselves into their characters they also incorporate other sources, people, and inspirations. Attempting to sort through that mess would be a major psycho-analytical failure.
 
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I don't think you can tell anyone's type from the way they write creatively, quite frankly. It's creative, it's made up. And as much as authors may put a bit of themselves into their characters they also incorporate other sources, people, and inspirations. Attempting to sort through that mess would be a major psycho-analytical failure.
I was just going with my intuition but whatevs; I guess I was wrong.
. . . :)
 
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A lot of us like to see ourselves sharing traits with the people we admire, and that collides with intuition.

That's why you'll see a lot of type-wars concerning popular or historical figures, each camp trying to claim the celebrity for their own. They're probably all right, in a sense.
 
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A lot of us like to see ourselves sharing traits with the people we admire, and that collides with intuition.

That's why you'll see a lot of type-wars concerning popular or historical figures, each camp trying to claim the celebrity for their own. They're probably all right, in a sense.
Thanks for suspecting me an INFJ! That was like one of the best compliments, I have ever recieved! :)
 
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No...

his writing it so precise, and while he was wonderful with hidding meaning, his themes don't ring a bell.
 
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He is typed as an XNFP on many many sites, and I agree with that.

And I honestly hope people aren't naive enough to think that precision is a good enough reason to discount someone from being an NF. That's just ridiculous. Shakespeare was certainly capable of being precise with his work, but his main talent was the fact that he demonstrated a deeper understanding of human nature than any other artist ever. That points to him being some kind of NF.
 
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I want to say INFP, but I don't know much about the man's life. Nobody does, really.
 
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He is typed as an XNFP on many many sites, and I agree with that.

His work rings strongly of Ne and Fi. He's constantly pulling random barely related images (Ne) to describe a deep wellspring of emotion that he cannot put into words (Fi).

I think he was more Ne than Fi (ENFP) because of the amazing amount of creativity in his poetic imagery and desire to work in a highly public sphere - the theatre, but it is highly possible that he was more Fi than Ne (INFP) due to the volume of his work and the fact that so little is actually known about him. It's a tough call, but clearly NFP, not NFJ.

NFJs are more direct in their assertions (Fe and Ti), more likely to see and accept the simple beauty in the moment (Se), and more likely to focus on what could be (Ni). His work focuses almost entirely on describing how each character feels in the exact moment that they feel it. Nope, he's definitively not an NFJ of any sort.
 
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I don't know, a lot of the issues he tackles in his work seem relatively J-ish at least and some of the off-the-wall stuff that happens could be N-ish. He was most likely an introvert as a writer.
The F is the thing that's hard to jusitify. He could easily be T, but then some plays such as 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' seem so fantastical and 'Romeo and Juliet'/ 'Othello' deals so effectively with emotional torment (actually, so do 'Hamlet' and 'Macbeth', but in a darker way) that he could well be a F.
However, he could be a completely different type who just wrote work that was similar to the INFJ thought pattern by sheer chance, who knows?

(This is a pretty interesting thread as I'm studying 'Macbeth' in college)
 
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I think he could be a T. He was good at observing and understanding human nature and reflecting it back through his art. Doesn't mean he necessarily felt the things he wrote about. Too often, an author's work is mistaken for the author. As an example, if I'm writing something "feeling," it may be more a reflection of what I've observed when others describe their feelings. But the fact that I can write as if it's a personal experience may lead someone to think it's a personal piece of work. So, judging type based on talent and writing style is tricky.
 
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I think he could have been! To write about people the way he did takes both compassion, observation and tolerance. My favourite piece is this, though it's not really connected to INFJ but more Buddhist in its attitude.

Puck:
If we shadows have offended,
Think but this, and all is mended,
That you have but slumber'd here
 
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