Character, thought,
passion, emotion, form the raw material of which ethical or
metaphysical systems are made. The poet's contempt for formal ethical
or metaphysical theory co-existed with a searching knowledge of the
ultimate foundations of all systematised philosophic structures. The
range of fact or knowledge within which the formal theorist speculates
in the fields of ethics, logic, metaphysics, or psychology, is,
indeed, very circumscribed when it is compared with the region of
observation and experience over which Shakespeare exerted complete
mastery.
Almost every aspect of life Shakespeare portrays with singular
evenness of insight. He saw life whole. The web of life always
presented itself to him as a mingled yarn, good and ill together. He
did not stay to reconcile its contradictions. He adduces a wealth of
evidence touching ethical experience. It may be that the patient
scrutiny of formal philosophers can alone reveal the full significance
of his harvest. But the dramatist's exposition of the workings of
virtue or vice has no recondite intention. Shakespeare was no patient
scholar, who deliberately sought to extend the limits of human
knowledge.
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