Shakspeare was not preoccupied by any theory of the universe which denies the facts or tries to shut them up in a private meaning, as theology does. His creative genius reflected a Creator's mind. So he accepted all that is permitted to exist, without extenuation, instinctively acknowledging the right of God to make men as they are, if so He chose, out of complex motives and passions whose roots are hidden in each man's ancestry, and whose drift the man himself cannot anticipate, as he was not consulted. This admission of all the facts of human nature did not disable his preference for pure and honest things. All that is lovely has a good, report made of it in his lives, and all that is odious appears in its habit as it lived. Thus he moralized, as Nature does by letting all her creatures breed and show their traits. She pastes no placards upon things which advertise themselves to every observer. All our infirmities have the freedom of Shakspeare's verse to display themselves at pleasure. He is not standing by with a showman's stick to designate his creatures to us who have eyes of our own, and know what is ugly and pleasant when we see it. No perfume is added to the violet, no gilding to the rose. "The image of a wicked heinous fault" lives in its eye.
Now this impartial observation cannot shield the poet's ideal from the hurts which are inflicted by the discrepancies of life: the real seems to be no legitimate child of the ideal, but a changeling with low-born traits. The noble lover of goodness cannot help being pained at the contrast of circumstances with his thought, and there moves over his nature a deep seriousness from this cloud, beneath which his imagination broods upon the landscape. It raises a suspicion that Deity itself must find omniscience annoying and provocative of gloom; for all the worlds and the ages keep on inflicting this incongruity upon the divine source of all ideal things. The poet must manage to recover from this mood, to reassure his heart with the faith that the One who calculated and devised the aberrations which sustain His system must exist in eternal serenity.
When many human characters are contemplated by a superior observer, an impartiality kin to that of the mind who created them sets in. But it cannot remain a colorless, judicial attitude, nor can it deteriorate into indifference. Good nature is an element in the superiority of a good observer. He may make use of wit, comedy, and irony, but his essential mood can only be described by the word "humor;" that is, the quality of being reconciled with all that is observed. The poet would fain conciliate, but without complicity; for he can never give up the gravity of his ideal. Now to be perfectly impartial to all would be too great a strain for a finite mind. It would weary of the incessant balancing, of the exigency of moderation. The mind yields from this in unconscious self-defence, and passes into a mood that conciliates itself. The gravity is precipitated by the infusion of a smile. And although this lighter ingredient appears upon the surface, it is the record and announcement of the serious affair below.