This is not to say that we can't discern Shakespeare's attitude on some subjects. It is only to say that doing so is a complex, lengthy, and painstaking effort that requires, paradoxically, not trying to discern Shakespeare's attitude. Instead, we learn Shakespeare's mind as a secondary result of getting to know his plays. If you immerse yourself in Shakespeare's work the way you would surrender yourself to a conversation, not pursuing an agenda but simply hearing what is said, you eventually get to know, from a thousand repeated explicit or subtle suggestions, how Shakespeare viewed certain issues, or, at least, to which views he inclined. You may notice, for example, that every man in Shakespeare who is prone to soliloquy rather than to conversation falls prey to unfounded jealousy of his wife or lover, and this may lead you to suspect that Shakespeare thought isolation bred tormenting delusions. Or you may come to recognize a sympathy for woodlands in the very quantity and variety of sylvan plants that spring up in Shakespeare's dialogue, whether these plants are directly described as part of the imaginary landscape, or whether, as happens more often, they function metaphorically to describe some human experience. In The Winter's Tale, Perdita speaks of "pale primroses, / That die unmarried ere they can behold / Bright Phoebus in his strength -- a malady / Most incident to maids."
So, we may ask, in this day of angry crowds demonstrating and, sometimes, looting in cities across America, in the wake of the latest police murder of a black man --
