I don't know what Melville thought of Shakespeare, but we can trace a stylistic line through Meridian, Moby Dick, Macbeth. All three have a mad project of egot

I don't know what Melville thought of Shakespeare, but we can trace a stylistic line through Meridian, Moby Dick, Macbeth. All three have a mad project of egotistic ambition, sooth-sayers of doom, and great helpings of gore along the way to the catastrophe foretold. Sooth-sayers are of course, always correct, whether they appear as a trio of witches, world-weary Parsee, or a decrepit "disordered Mennonite".