Shakespeare as a guide to living life

John’s beat-up copy of the complete works of Shakespeare (a gift of sorts from his mother’s lover Popé) becomes his means of understanding life and people. For example, during his big “love scene” with Lenina, in chapter 13 of the novel, John expresses his desire for a pure kind of love that can only be consummated in marriage. He stammers fragments from The Tempest—words that the young prince Ferdinand speaks to Prospero’s innocent and lovely daughter Miranda:

O you,
So perfect and so peerless, are created
Of every creature’s best!

But Lenina, hardly comprehending such highflown language, responds this way:

‘Put your arms round me,’ she commanded. ‘Hug me till you drug me, honey.’ She too had poetry at her command, knew words that sang and were spells and beat drums. ‘Kiss me’; she closed her eyes, she let her voice sink to a sleepy murmur, ‘kiss me till I’m in a coma. Hug me, honey, snuggly…’

As John becomes violent, he searches his store of Shakespeare for words that express his anger and disappointment at finding his Juliet is a mere “strumpet.” From the love-smitten Ferdinand he turns to the the insanely jealous Othello: ‘O thou weed, who art so lovely fair and smell’st so sweet that the sense aches at thee. Was this most goodly book made to write “whore” upon? Heaven stops the nose at it…’
Why, do you suppose, does Aldous Huxley give his near-hero John Shakespeare and only Shakespeare as a handbook for life? What are the strengths and limitations of such a guide? What’s noble and what’s ridiculous about John’s approach to romance?