About Richard Harp

Richard Harp is Chair of the Department of English at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. His academic specialties include English Renaissance literature, Irish literature (ancient and modern) and the Bible as literature. He was founding co-editor of The Ben Jonson Journal, published by Edinburgh University Press. Dr. Harp has published seven books and more than 45 essays and presented dozens of conference papers.

Abandoning Virtue, Abandoning Human Nature

By |2017-03-09T11:02:26-06:00November 1st, 2016|Categories: Virtue, William Shakespeare|

William Shakespeare’s women display virtue while being tested in extreme situations not of their own making. One of the greatest of them, Viola in Twelfth Night, is in extreme circumstances to which she must apply the virtue of patience. That “patience is a virtue” has been proverbial since the Middle Ages—Chaucer’s Franklin in The Canterbury Tales [...]

Virtue Is Not Boring

By |2022-09-29T11:36:01-05:00October 27th, 2016|Categories: Virtue, William Shakespeare|

Language…most shows a man. —Ben Jonson Aristotle’s famous statement that virtue is a mean between two extremes is generally not quoted in its entirety. He does indeed say, “In respect of its substance and the definition which states its essence virtue is a mean”—that is, a mean between two opposed vices. Courage is a mean between [...]

Eros and Economics in “The Merchant of Venice”

By |2015-10-31T17:05:55-05:00October 3rd, 2015|Categories: Culture, Faith, Featured, Literature, Love, William Shakespeare|

 Fy on Love without Money! —John Wodroephe, The Spared Hours of a Soldier, 1623 A perennial question for some persons of every generation is: Shall I marry for love or for money? It is typical of the open-minded Shakespeare that he finds nothing wrong with marrying for both. There is in him no niggardly stinginess, no [...]

Go to Top