In the last days of a devastating civil war, President Abraham Lincoln's thoughts turned to passages in William Shakespeare's "Macbeth." It was his favorite Shakespeare play. In a letter to an actor, Lincoln acknowledged that he hadn't read some of Shakespeare's works at all. Others, like "King Lear" and "Hamlet," he knew well.

But "nothing equals Macbeth," he wrote. "It is wonderful."

Wonderful is a strange word to use for dark and bloody "Macbeth." Since Russia's sociopathic war against Ukraine began nearly four years ago, I have often thought of "Macbeth." Lincoln would understand why.

As is usually the case with truly deep people, Lincoln vocalized only a small portion of what he thought. Witnesses tell us that he related a fitting passage from "Macbeth" to the end of the war. But i

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