The Present Status of Things

I am currently on Chapter 40 and, therefore, a bit off schedule. It appears that the second surge of my Shakespeare obsession is poorly timed: I spent the last week reading Antony & Cleopatra, watching two fulls versions of Hamlet, and one version of Julius Caesar instead of reading Moby-Dick. But, perhaps it was not all for naught! I'm sure you noticed too, but right after the informational chapters about whales and whaling ships, the style shifts to theatrical and the writing, in several places, all but certainly intentionally emulates Shakespeare. Take for instance, Ahab's "aside" in Chapter 37. When broken into iambic pentameter, it could double in tone and sound for Lear on the hearth, or Macbeth discussing "vaunting ambition" in his bedchamber:

This lovely
Light, it lights not me; all loveliness is
Anguish to me, since I can n'er [FN1] enjoy it.
Gifted with high perception, I lack the
Low enjoying power; damned, most subtly and
Most malignantly!

...

They think me mad--Starbuck does, but I am
Demoniac, I am madness maddened[FN2]!
That wild madness that's only calm to comprehend
Itself! The prophesy was that I
Should be dismembered; and-- Aye! I lost this
Leg. I now prophesy that I dismember
My dismemberer[FN3]. Now, then, be prophet
And fulfiller one.

___________
FN1: Contracted words like "n'er" were often used by versified dramatists to fit sentiments and words into the metered line.
FN2: "I am mad north by northwest" -Hamlet
FN3: "O, that we then could come by Caesar's spirit,/ And not dismember Caesar! But, alas,/ Caesar must bleed for it!" -Julius Casaer (II, i). Comparisons between slaying Caesar and slaying Moby-Dick?