Striking an optimistic note, Kerry, 72, highlights Jacques’ speech from As You Like It which begins, “All the world’s a stage, / And all the men and women merely players,” and runs through the seven ages of man. The secretary breaks ranks, citing the comedies as his “greatest inspiration”, explaining that they offer more than the opportunity to laugh: “The great strength of the comedies is that they recognise the fallibility of mankind and yet they are eternally optimistic.” Kerry’s boss, Barack Obama, lists Shakespeare’s tragedies among his favourite books on his Facebook page. Lincoln was fascinated by Macbeth and in 1994 another onetime secretary of state, Henry Kissinger, turned to Hamlet when delivering a eulogy at the funeral of Richard Nixon, quoting: “He was a man, take him for all in all, I shall not look upon his like again.” The Bard’s tragedies have tended to resonate with America’s political class. In the 1,700-word essay, published on the British Council’s website, Kerry calls Shakespeare the UK’s “most enduring ambassador”. Michelle Terry as Rosalind with Simon Harrison as Orlando in As You Like It at the Globe Theatre in London, last year. Rosalind’s success in the play, and with us, the audience, demonstrates just how important this personal rapport can be.” “Edward R Murrow, the great American journalist, summed it up by noting the real crucial link in the international exchange is the last three feet, which is bridged by personal contact, one person talking to another. Kerry adds: “She epitomises for me the vital power of personal relationships in international diplomacy.

Rosalind has been played memorably by Vanessa Redgrave, Maggie Smith and Juliet Stevenson. In workaday prose rather than fancy verse, she ends the play alone on stage chatting with us, her friends.” She inspires great affection, and the audience is granted the unusual sight of her as a woman getting the epilogue – the final press conference, as it were. “As she brings concord through her force of personality, the triumph of a dislocated society restored is Rosalind’s triumph. “Then, she decides to ‘weary you, then, no longer with idle talking’ and succeeds in bringing about a resolution, creating couples from singletons and marriages from love affairs. “She brings her unique understanding of everyone’s particular situation and interests to bear with patient preparation and negotiation, extracting commitments from all parties to an acceptable end game,” Kerry writes. She brings her understanding of everyone’s situation and interests to bear with patient preparation and negotiation John Kerry He makes the case that the mercurial Rosalind, who survives her father’s banishment, looks out for her cousin Celia and finds a way to marry Orlando, could make a good fist of such a job. His headaches have included negotiating with Iran and Russia, easing Britain’s exit from the European Union and attempting to resolve conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria. Kerry recently became the most travelled US secretary of state in history, flying more than 1.2m miles and setting foot in 88 countries.

Kerry, a Vietnam war veteran and longtime Massachusetts senator who was beaten by George W Bush in the 2004 presidential election, belongs to a long line of American politicians – including Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and John F Kennedy – who have revered Shakespeare. “She navigates her own personal traumas of exile, banishment and disguise with tenacity, patience and good humour.” “Rosalind, who ‘promised to make all this matter even’, stands out as perhaps the greatest diplomat in all literature,” Kerry writes in an essay commissioned by the British Council.

But when John Kerry, the US secretary of state, decided to single out a character from the works of William Shakespeare, he made a surprising choice: Rosalind, the quick-witted and cross-dressing heroine of the comedy As You Like It.

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