Just as it’s too easy to compare Hillary Clinton with Lady MacBeth, it’s too easy to compare Eliot Spitzer, the recently disgraced governor of New York, with the devious and difficult Richard III.

The dastardly British king was the first Shakespearean character who came to mind as I watched Spitzer’s tragedy unfold. And when I read yesterday’s Wall Street Journal editorial, which discussed Spitzer’s thuggish behavior and proclaimed the whole sorry saga as Shakespearean, ol’ Richard’s ghost practically tap danced across the winner’s podium during my nightly dream of horse-show glory.

Never one to ignore an obvious clue from my subconscious about a tip for an interesting essay, I picked up my historic reference manuals and started to dig. There are so many brilliant characters who display so many tootsies of clay: Richard III. King Lear. MacBeth? Henry VIII?

None of the characters captured what I was looking for. (However it was a useful bit of background research for my Hillary Clinton piece, which I shall write at the appropriate time.) Spitzer’s example of “pride goeth before the fall” is a straightforward one, and I wanted the appropriate verses and character to support that argument.

King Richard III was evil incarnate. His twisted body represented his soul, and after his murderous and treacherous climb to the top, his bloody demise on the battlefield was a fitting end to his scheming nature. He offered no remorse, no redemption for his behavior, only lamentations that he couldn’t continue fighting.

Not quite what I needed. Where Spitzer offered apologies, Richard would rather have sliced off his own tongue.

Then it came to me: I didn’t need a character, I needed a proclamation. Spitzer’s tale of woe doesn’t embody a character, it embodies a concept.

I searched further and came across a soliloquy offered by Cardinal Wolsey, the ambitious and ruthless cardinal who was the prominent advisor to King Henry VIII. While Henry ultimately was responsible for his own problems, Wolsey helped plant the seeds. He encouraged Henry’s first divorce from Queen Katherine, skewered rivals and schemed with France behind the King’s back.

However, in the end, Wolsey received his due.  He died with a sorry reputation, and an even sorrier heart. When I read Wolsey’s near-death confession, which is a treatise on the corruption of unbridled ambition, I knew I’d struck essay gold:

Wolsey: “…I charge thee, fling away ambition.

… that sin fell the angels; how can man then,

… the image of his Maker, hope to win by it?

Love thyself last; cherish those hearts that hate thee.

Corruption wins not more than honesty.

… in the right hand, carry gentle peace,

To silence envious tongues.

Be just and fear not.

Let … the ends thou aim at be thy country’s,

Thy God’s and thy truth’s.

Then if thou fall …

Thou fall a blessed martyr.

Had I but served my God with half the zeal

I served my king, he would not have …

Left me naked to my enemies.

The brilliance of Shakespeare -- and the reason why the classics penned by “dead white male Europeans” should still be taught to little, middle and large ears at every school in the country -- is that every theme resonates now: Greed. Ambition. Pride. Lust. Honor. Mercy.

In 2008, who has just been left naked to his enemies?  Whose prideful, “I’m above the rules” behavior” has led him into a downward fall?

Yes, Spitzer’s is an abject lesson for everybody who doesn’t understand what Shakespeare and those before him understood. Human nature doesn’t change. We cherish the tender mercies; abhor dishonesty, greed and ruthlessness; and we honor truth and integrity.

C.S. Lewis knew it. Wrote about it and applied those arguments to the Divine.

Now there’s an idea for a column …