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O mighty poet! Thy works are not as those of other men, simply and merely great works of art, but are also like the phenomena of nature, like the sun and the sea, the stars and the flowers, like frost and snow, rain and dew, hail-storm and thunder, which are to be studied with entire submission of our own faculties, and in the perfect faith that in them there can be no too much or too little, nothing useless or inert, but that, the farther we press in our discoveries, the more we shall see proofs of design and self-supporting arrangement where the careless eye had seen nothing but accident!
The biological explanation of a phenomenon is the discovery of its own intrinsic place in a nexus of relations, extending indefinitely in all directions. To explain it is to see it simultaneously in its individuality (as a whole in itself), and in its subordinate position (as one element in a larger whole).
Shakespeare of all men has penetrated closest to the heart of man, and in the contemplation of his masterpieces we feel the possibility of absorbing something of the nature of mind and of life itself. The present study shall be based upon the premises contained in the above two mottoes — that adequate submission of our faculties to his work will enable us to discern elements of design and organic pattern, and that understanding of the pattern is to be obtained through tracing the network of relationships linking the elements to the work as a whole. No attempt shall be made to fit the data — that is, the words of the play — into a pre-formulated conceptual framework, but rather shall effort be focused upon tracing patterns which emerge from the play itself as crystallizations