But the dramatist
idealises or generalises human experience; he does not reproduce it
literally. There is nothing in the Shakespearean canon that runs
directly counter to the idealised or generalised experience of the
outer world. The wicked and the foolish, the intemperate and the
over-passionate, reach in Shakespeare's world that disastrous goal,
which nature at large keeps in reserve for them and only by rare
accident suffers them to evade. The father who brings up his children
badly and yet expects every dutiful consideration from them is only in
rare conditions spared the rude awakening which overwhelms King Lear.
The jealous husband who wrongly suspects his wife of infidelity
commonly suffers the fate either of Othello or of Leontes.
VI
Shakespeare regards it as the noblest ambition in man to master his
own destiny. There are numerous passages in which the dramatist
figures as an absolute and uncompromising champion of the freedom of
the will. "'Tis in ourselves that we are thus or thus," says one of
his characters, Iago; "Our bodies are our gardens, to the which our
wills are gardeners." Edmond says much the same in _King Lear_ when he
condemns as "the excellent foppery of the world" the ascription to
external influences of all our faults and misfortunes, whereas they
proceed from our wilful, deliberate choice of the worser way.
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