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William Shakespeare

Salomé

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Like I said, I agree with him in this case. I am somewhat Keirsey biased because his type descriptions really do match Jung's processes, even though it is never directly stated how they match.

The main part where I disagree with him is how he types celebrities and historical figures -- Shakespeare being one of the exceptions. It's just one of those rare cases where Keirsey doesn't create the mental image of the NT temperament being people of science.

Kiersey departs from Jung quite markedly. And from Myers, despite hijacking her 4-letter system derived from Jung's original work.

Jung was against typing people other than in a clinical context....
And Keirsey don't make any clinical applications in his populist works
 

The Ü™

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That's true. One thing I like about Keirsey is that he always has good reasons for every person he types, at least his son admits when he either made a mistake in typing or when he isn't sure about what the historical figure's personality type is.

One thing I'm actually wondering is would Shakespeare have made a competent scientist? Shakespeare obviously had a brilliant mind.

That's the problem, not all NTs would likely make competent scientists or mathematicians, that's a false stereotype, but they use the same strategic mentality on which the NT temperament is based in other fields.

And not all NTs have brilliant minds, either. Anyone who becomes famous is going to be considered a brilliant mind -- that's not exclusive to NT.
 

Mondo

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That's the problem, not all NTs would likely make competent scientists or mathematicians, that's a false stereotype, but they use the same strategic mentality on which the NT temperament is based in other fields.

And not all NTs have brilliant minds, either. Anyone who becomes famous is going to be considered a brilliant mind -- that's not exclusive to NT.

I agree with you there.
Taking personality type out of the argument, I've just noticed that people who are master wordsmiths also tend to have at least an above-average competence in the sciences and often way above-average. I just wonder if Shakespeare was a 'jack of all trades'.

In terms of temperament, as someone who knows a lot of math majors, pre-meds, and engineers- a lot of the skilled ones aren't NTs. In fact, looking at temperament alone- I would say that the most successful ones AND those who enjoy what they are doing are the SJs and NTs.A difference is that the SJs I know are more likely to go into business after college while the NTs are more likely to pursue a graduate degree in the field they are studying.

NFs and SPs can obviously be competent in these areas but don't always find so much enjoyment out of it. I don't know any NF engineers who actually went on to become an engineer after college, for instance.
 

Salomé

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I'm prepared to accept defeat on this one.

Cynicism and Idealism can and do co-exist in the same writer
I give you: Jane Austen, INFP

The NF tribe can have Shakey, but Schopenhauer an INFJ?
no, no, no, no, no! He's all about the NT.
 

dynamiteninja

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I'm prepared to accept defeat on this one.

Cynicism and Idealism can and do co-exist in the same writer
I give you: Jane Austen, INFP

The NF tribe can have Shakey, but Schopenhauer an INFJ?
no, no, no, no, no! He's all about the NT.

Jane Austen: INTJ
 

the state i am in

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I see no evidence of the NF preoccupation with self-actualization and growth in Shakespeare's psychological portraits.

His characters tend to move towards self-destruction rather than enlightenment.

He was iconoclastic and subversive.

He was sarcastic.

He loved to play with words and meanings.

Many of his plays rely for comic effect on social incompetence and the impossibility of human communication. He finds people largely ridiculous and unsympathetic.

He was cynical about both love and human frailty. His lovers are fickle at best, and not infrequently imbecilic.

He wasn't overtly religious/spiritual.

i agree. entp. way more oscar wilde than say virginia woolf. infps write feeling from thin air, their own invisible stuff/subjective experience. the Fe intuitive types are the ones who use context to fucking beat you down. dostoeyevsky, etc. Ti and Fe in a dominant intuitive understand powerfully what subjective life is made up of, and they use the critical tools in place (Ti!!!!) to find ways of arranging the context to articulate the forces in play to a very intense degree. infjs are very similar in this regard, the big telling difference is that they are a little bit warmer/more humane/more idealistic and they (most tellingly) have Ni instead of Ne. iambic pentameter would fucking piss me off, and he's just skipping along like stones rippling on a pond. dominant Ne, first and foremost. infps are different, their feeling pours out in ways that surprise you, you begin to see the links between the connections that are so decidedly unobvious, so individualistic, so private, it all first peeks then gushes out. like a neutral milk hotel song, something that cannot be said but only sung, etc. entps fucking flow.
 

BlueScreen

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He could write a sonnet without killing himself, that might exclude ENFP. Though he did send the common format to hell, which gives him some Ne-ness. I´m not minding ENTP as a typing. Now I think about it, his flow and style are quite ENTP. ENFPs seem to flatten it a bit more and lose some of that cocky but brilliant outrageousness.
 

heart

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I'm prepared to accept defeat on this one.

Cynicism and Idealism can and do co-exist in the same writer
I give you: Jane Austen, INFP

The NF tribe can have Shakey, but Schopenhauer an INFJ?
no, no, no, no, no! He's all about the NT.

Most people think JA was INTJ.
 

LunarMoon

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We're trying to type a guy for which we only have a rough assessment of his overall life. We're not even sure of his birthday, never even mind his function order. Assuming what we know about his life is true, he was almost certainly some form of genius so it's difficult to get a hint of his MBTI personality as the mind of a genius INFP would work somewhat different from that of a normal one. Likewise, as other posters have mentioned, a lot of the work that people in this topic are trying to guess his personality from was partially written by other people.
 

Kenneth Almighty

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Shakespeare

He's an ENTP, and get over it.

There's no way he's an INFP. The man went from a middle-class classics school to owning two theaters and having official court presence. In order to become famous, he wrote poems on an incessant basis for patrons, so he could move up the social order (T planning rather than F expression). He wrote his plays within two weeks, having to improvise on the fly (that's why you get Hamlet and pirates. BTW totally Ne). In addition, he acted out his own work, which suggests E. Finally, look at his plays: some were actually very controversial in their content. And, look at his cookie-cutter comedies he wrote: that just screams commercial appeal, something I doubt an NFP would allow. They'd go insane rather than write the same thing seven freakin' times.

He's either an ENTP or an ENFP, definitely Ne dominant. I'd say ENTP just due to the sheer pressure that he'd have to take. In a matter of fact, it's exactly the kind of pressure an ENTP would thrive in. ENFP has the benefit of Te but once again Shakespeare was primarily motivated for self-gain rather than some deep need to express oneself.
 

Robopop

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You know you're typing based on complete false stereotypes right:doh:. I guess INFPs are worthless, lazy, spineless, unmotivated, wimps right ?
 

Tom

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He's always seemed more ENFP than INFP to me, but I'd struggle to believe any other type.
 

Rhapsody

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Almost none of what you're saying precludes Shakespeare from being NFP.

The man went from a middle-class classics school to owning two theaters and having official court presence.

In addition, he acted out his own work, which suggests E.

I do agree that this points to E.

In order to become famous, he wrote poems on an incessant basis for patrons, so he could move up the social order (T planning rather than F expression).

once again Shakespeare was primarily motivated for self-gain rather than some deep need to express oneself.

NFPs need to eat and pay their bills, too (and are often ambitious, in spite of the stereotype otherwise). If NFPs only ever wrote out of a desire for self-expression, almost none of them would be professional writers. Fiction writing is hard effing work, and no writer is going to get recognition if they only write when they feel like it.

It's also possible to be motivated by self-gain and a desire for self-expression. The two aren't mutually exclusive.

He wrote his plays within two weeks, having to improvise on the fly (that's why you get Hamlet and pirates. BTW totally Ne)

Finally, look at his plays: some were actually very controversial in their content.

This could be any NP type. Being controversial/producing under pressure/coming up with bizarre ideas (like Hamlet + pirates) is not exclusive to ENTPs or even Ne-doms.

And, look at his cookie-cutter comedies he wrote: that just screams commercial appeal, something I doubt an NFP would allow. They'd go insane rather than write the same thing seven freakin' times.

An NFP could easily write the same story several times if that's the story they're obsessed with. And again, just because someone is NFP doesn't mean they would refuse to write for the masses.
 

the state i am in

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i don't really agree with the reasoning, but i definitely agree that shakespeare was an entp. has that entp flavor of skepticism, and he's attracted to the ideas of other entps like montaigne, machiavelli, bacon, donne, etc. feels very Ti Fe to me, he's too much of a technician to be otherwise.
 

Kenneth Almighty

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You know you're typing based on complete false stereotypes right:doh:. I guess INFPs are worthless, lazy, spineless, unmotivated, wimps right ?

No, I know a couple of INFPs who are brilliant, if a bit eccentric (if you think an INTP can be anti-authoritarian, you ain't see nothing yet). However, the INFPs I know aren't prone to overachieve, and in fact often call NTs and Js that very name: over-achievers.

Shakespeare was meritocratic in a society that wasn't.
 

Kenneth Almighty

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Although I admit, I'm somewhat willing to believe he could be an ENFP. Mark Twain exhibited semi-ENTP characteristics, yet you can easily see how he could be an ENFP based of his writing, in a final analysis.
 
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