When Cleopatra asks Antony how much he loves her, he responds, as only a Shakespearean protagonist can, "There's beggary in the love that can be reckoned."
Cleopatra follows by asking him to chart the extent of that love, to which Antony responds again in what can only be described as sublime, "Then must thou needs find out new heaven, new earth."
Like the love of Antony and Cleopatra, Shakespeare's genius stretches to infinity.
Harold Bloom, the world's leading Bardolator, once wrote a book that was titled, Hamlet: Poem Unlimited.
Professor Bloom would concur that Shakespeare, who passed away 400 years ago this week, is equally unlimited.
The Bard's genius cannot be reduced to anything. He, like his greatest characters, Hamlet, Falstaff, Rosalind, and yes, Cleopatra, cannot be figured out, cannot be played upon like a flute or pipe, as Hamlet says to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, two of his many enemies.
I have always been baffled when people engage in the clichéd parlor game about who really wrote Shakespeare's plays.
Are people so afraid to recognize that genius exists?
And why is it that so many of these people want to believe that the Earl of Oxford or some other member of royalty wrote the plays?
Since when does royalty or socioeconomic class equate with the highest cognitive, imaginative and aesthetic gifts?
Don't people realize that genius springs or descends, as it were, from the heavens? Don't doubters realize that it is the closest thing we have to godliness, to an immaculate conception?
As Andrew Solomon wrote in his book, Far From the Tree, geniuses and other unique individuals don't necessarily have a whole lot to do with their biological parents.
And geniuses, like Shakespeare, like Hamlet, are not necessarily popular or congenial.
But that does not mean that they are not riveting, compelling and sublime.
Some years ago, the novelist Claire Messud chided a reporter who questioned her about the supposed need, out of a hackneyed Hollywood script, for protagonists to be sympathetic or likeable.
Messud pointed out quite correctly that Hamlet does not meet that absurd test, nor should any literary protagonist.
Indeed, Hamlet has no friends except Horatio. His own mother and girlfriend conspire against him. And Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, his boon chums from school, show no loyalty to the Prince of Denmark.
Among Shakespeare's myriad literary gifts, his major characters have a heightened state of consciousness. As Professor Bloom wrote years ago in Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human, the most sublime of Shakespeare's characters hear themselves speak and then change their behavior.
In addition to that "overhearing," Shakespeare's greatest heroes and heroines have what some might term a psychological realism or a complexity on the order of paradox.
They love to play, yet many of them seem to be doomed.
Years ago, when I studied with Professor Bloom at Yale, he said of Hamlet, "You wouldn't want to have lunch with him."
But perhaps, many of us would if Hamlet could be tamed by an equally sublime heroine.
Ophelia does not rank at the top of Shakespearean female characters, but there are women from other plays who could entice the melancholy Dane.
When, as a junior in college, I took a class in Shakespeare's Comedies & Romances, the teaching assistant, a brilliant woman named Marena Fisher, suggested to me that Rosalind might be older than Orlando.
I liked her theory, which made sense to me not only because Rosalind and Celia marvel at Orlando's muscles, youth and athleticism as a wrestler.
I also liked her theory because Shakespeare himself was younger than his own wife, Anne Hathaway.
And of course, it is said of Cleopatra that "Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale her infinite variety."
As anyone who has read my articles knows, Hamlet is my hero. No person, real or imagined, has ever seen so deeply into my soul. He, more than any other character in Western literature, understands what it is like to be depressed, psychotic and suicidal, and he is without a doubt the most paradoxical character ever written.
Thankfully, this Jewish Hamlet has been tamed.
My wife, Barbara, combines the wit and humor of Rosalind with the fierce love of Cleopatra. I am extraordinarily fortunate that Barbara, whom I met at a UCLA writing class 20 years ago, has subdued my melancholy with her wisdom and nurture.
Like Cleopatra, she is ageless, and like Rosalind, she loves to play.
Shakespeare too has an infinite variety. His plays have lasted 400 years since his passing. May they play on forever in new heaven, new earth!