Shakespeare, the first and still greatest psychologist of the modern (post-Medieval) era, shows us in his plays the psychological evidence leading to and confirming three great discoveries. First, that the moral emotions of shame and guilt, along with the moral value systems they motivate (shame and guilt ethics), although intended to prevent violence, actually stimulate violence, toward others (shame) or the self (guilt). Second: with the scientific revolution, the traditional sources of moral authority (custom and tradition, God and religion, and beliefs consisting of assertions unsubstantiated by evidence) lost their credibility. Thus, Hamlet could find no answer to his question: What should I do? Third, violence can be prevented by replacing the moral emotions of shame and guilt with love, the emotion that transcends morality, making it unnecessary and redundant, and replacing moral value judgments and commandments with psychological understanding and evidence-based knowledge – thus restoring relationships and trust.

In King Lear and Coriolanus Shakespeare shows how parents who shame their children motivate them to commit violence that ultimately consumes the parent and child. To call this a perversion of parental love is virtually an understatement. Lear shames Goneril and Regan by loving Cordelia more than he loves them – so they bring about the deaths of both Lear and Cordelia. And Gloucester shames Edmund, who has his father’s eyes gouged out – an atrocity committed by American murderers we have seen – since people feel shamed in the eyes of others. Coriolanus shows how a mother’s teaching her son to achieve honor through violence ultimately rebounds on her and the very community she meant him to protect.

Both Othello and Macbeth show how men can be shamed by other people into committing murder, and how guilt can motivate self-murder. Othello felt humiliated when Iago deceived him into believing Desdemona had made him into a “cuckold.” When he discovers she has actually been faithful, he feels so guilty he punishes himself by suicide – as many such murderers still do. Iago shames Othello into ruining himself because he felt Othello had shamed him. Lady Macbeth shames Macbeth into murdering Duncan, which finally leads to so many murders that she feels guilty enough to kill herself; and he feels so exhausted he longs for death as the only face-saving way to rest in peace – again, like many murderers we have seen.

In his history plays, Shakespeare shows how the hierarchical shame- and honor-based political system called monarchy leads to an endless cycle of violence. But he also shows us through the character of Falstaff and his famous speech about honor how debunking or satirizing honor has no effect on honor- and shame-driven personalities. In the context of current US politics, this can explain the inability of the two sides to hear one another. Henry V, often celebrated as a national hero, becomes a killing machine when he ascends to power, pursuing wars that are as futile as they are bloody. In contrast, Henry VI, the exception that proves the rule, adheres to the guilt ethic of Christianity, which renders him powerless to protect himself from the violence generated by the shame culture in which he lived. Richard III shows the power of shame and humiliation to stimulate violence on a scale that ultimately consumes him as well.

Hamlet dramatizes a problem that began during Shakespeare’s lifetime, when the scientific revolution was replacing the cognitive basis of the Medieval world, faith (in God and the devil, good and evil, ghosts and witches), with that of modernity, which bases knowledge on doubt: take nothing on faith, believe only what you can prove or disprove with empirical evidence. This paralyzed Hamlet, for he could not find a credible answer to his question, “What should I do?,” since no empirical test can prove what one should do. For him “the time [was] out of joint,” for both shame and guilt ethics had lost their credibility, yet he knew of no credible alternative. The resulting moral nihilism made him unable to organize his behavior, which is incompatible with ongoing life, as the play shows. Troilus and Cressida shows the same problem, which still haunts the modern world.

Timon of Athens shows how basing one’s behavior on a shame ethic ultimately motivates killing everyone, even at the cost of one’s own life. Timon, whose self-esteem and pride were dependent on giving lavish dinner parties and gifts to his friends, feels overwhelmingly shamed and unloved when those same friends refuse to offer him the slightest help when he is unable to pay his bills – in response to which he declares war on all of Athens, enlisting Alcibiades to carry out this mass slaughter. This is a pattern demonstrated by the most violent prison inmates, who say they have “declared war on the whole world,” as well as by the “suicide bombers” of modern-day terrorism, mass murderers who commit “suicide by cop,” and so on.

Shakespeare shows how violence can be prevented by replacing retribution, or revenge, with “restorative justice”: renouncing punishment toward others and the self, thus transcending both shame and guilt ethics, and giving violent offenders the opportunity and means to restore to the community what they had taken from it, thus reconciling with their community. In Measure for Measure, Duke Vincentio conducts a psychological experiment showing how the “retributive” apparatus of the state produced an attempted (judicial) murder and rape, whereas the Duke’s approach prevented all violence, by individuals and the state. The Tempest and The Winter’s Tale illustrate the same principles and outcome. The Merchant of Venice, however, shows how severely restorative justice is compromised when the primary cause and constituent of violence is ignored, and attention is paid only to its symptom or consequence (Shylock’s anger at Antonio’s anti-Semitism).

Starting with the story of a man, a successful publisher, who like Othello kills his wife and then decides to kill himself, we find that Shakespeare’s plays are the richest source of insight into what motivates violence, toward others and also toward oneself, and what is needed to prevent violence. In contrast to Shakespeare, the mental health system has directed its attention almost exclusively to suicide, and relegated homicide to the criminal justice system. But that system asks only how evil are people who have committed murders and how much punishment they deserve – not what caused them to commit murder, and what we can do to prevent such behavior before it occurs. Criminology is of little help, because most violence is not criminal, and most crimes are not violent. More than experts in any of those fields, Shakespeare illuminates the thoughts, feelings, and social forces that drive people to kill others, themselves, or both.

Antony and Cleopatra dramatizes the fact that there is room only for war, not love, in an extreme shame culture, such as the Roman Empire. Their suicides were motivated partly to avoid being shamed in Octavian’s “triumph” in Rome, but more importantly because it was only by dying together, and in response to each other, that they could avoid being separated from each other. Enobarbus illustrates the fact that guilt feelings also motivate suicide, so guilt is no solution to the problem of violence. Ironically, the main losers in this tragedy may have been the putative victor and his associates, who were incapable of love, and hence life, on the scale and intensity that Antony and Cleopatra achieved with each other.

Shakespeare’s plays dramatize the difference between the opposite and antagonistic moral emotions of shame and guilt, the moral value systems those emotions motivate (shame ethics vs. guilt ethics), and the shame and guilt cultures that are organized around those feelings and the values they inspire. His shame-driven personalities in their preoccupation with honor and dishonor differ from his guilt-ridden characters who feel compelled to punish themselves, but both are driven to violence. The difference lies in the object of violence, namely, others or the self. With Othello and Lady Macbeth he also shows how the same person can experience both emotions but at different times and with opposite results. Through his plays, by his focus on the actions and thoughts of his characters, Shakespeare shows us in vivid terms the relationship of both shame ethics and guilt ethics to violence.