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Was Shakespeare an economic thinker? To Karl Marx, who freely quoted the playwright in confirmation of various assertions in Capital, at least Shakespeare's characters were. Prior to claiming that money is a “radical leveler…[that] does away with all distinctions” (Marx 1967, I, p. 132), for instance, Marx famously cites Timon's diatribe on gold from Timon of Athens (1607):Gold, yellow, glittering, precious gold!Thus much of this, will make black white; foul, fair;Wrong, right; base, noble; old, young; coward, valiant.… What this, you gods? Why, thisWill lug your priests and servants from your sides;Pluck stout men's pillows from below their heads;This yellow slaveWill knit and break religions; bless the accurs’d;Make the hoar leprosy ador’d; place thieves,And give them title, knee and approbation,With senators on the bench; this is it,That makes the wappen’d widow wed again:…Come damned earth,[Thou] common whore of mankind.

This article combines Mead's notion of sociality with his implicit theory of morality. Specifically, it uses Mead's emphasis on temporality to analyze decisions made by key characters in the cinematic adaptation (Amazon TV) of Philip Dick's novel, The Man in the High Castle. Using a selective and subversive method to read into this adaptation, I regard Mead's view of morality as complex and as distinguishing between a morality in the specious present and a morality grounded in sociality. The paper links Mead and Mead's pragmatic emphasis to varieties of characters representing immoral foils (e.g., Nazis) and everyday lives to show how morality can emerge from a variety of standpoints, locating Mead's position as distinct from moral absolutism and moral relativity.