Does anyone actually read Shakespeare?

I shouldn't care but I am simply stunned when I read stuff like this:

The case for Ryan running: In politics, and especially in presidential politics, you can’t choose your moment. It chooses you. “There is a tide in the affairs of men,” etc. This is Ryan’s moment.

Never mind the actual politics of it. Let's focus on Shakespeare. The first thing to ask here is who said this? And when did he or she say it and what did it signify in the context of the play? The words are Brutus's and they are the words he uses to talk himself and Cassius into disaster. Brutus's  decision to take the current ends with him committing suicide in his tent.

Here is the whole thing:

We at the height are ready to decline.
There is a tide in the affairs of men
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
On such a full sea are we now afloat,
And we must take the current when it serves,
Or lose our ventures

The big clue here is fate. Whenever a character in Shakespeare starts to believe in fate, you can bet your bottom dollar this guy is cooked.  If there is one thing we know Shakespeare did not believe in, it was fate.

Bonus item, for the very same reason we can be sure that history is not "a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury and signifying nothing".

And, as you've probably already guessed, it is also not Shakespeare's view that all the world is a stage.