Shakespeare for the Seeker

The inner design of Shakespeare plays is invisible to a merely rational mind or a speculative intellect. This is why the analysis presented here will be wholly unconvincing to those who claim logic as the highest principle. It will appear to be no more than a proof based on selected instances. It can be easily ridiculed, particularly if taken out of context. Shakespeare illustrated this kind of incomprehension as the reaction of the young lovers who ridiculed the performance of "Pyramus and Thisby" in "A Midsummer Night's Dream". Similarly, irritated Hamlet did not grasp the message contained in "The Murder of Gonzago" and as the result fell into his own mouse-trap. In other words, there is no rational or intellectual means to provide a proof of the interpretation of the plays. Neither is it possible to identify the inner structure of the plays by applying scholarly methods based on aesthetic or linguistic criteria. It is possible, however, to enhance the "visibility" of the inner design of Shakespeare's plays by constructing a "contrast" play. Such a play would employ some of Shakespeare's characters and episodes. It would be based on an ordinary, simplistic, and moralistic theme; its action would follow a linear thinking pattern and psychological realism; it would contain a number of Shakespeare's symbols, but used at random. In other words, the play would be purposely sterilized by removing its inner content. Such a play would have to be written, at least partially, as beautifully as Shakespeare's plays. In this way the sterile content would be packaged in an attractive but meaningless container. Such a container would be decipherable by scholarly or intellectual inquiry: it would be accepted as one of Shakespeare's works. It turns out that such a sterilized play was purposely constructed. Its title is "The Two Noble Kinsmen". Its purpose was to demonstrate that the evolutionary progress achieved over the time span of several spiritual millennia belongs to the subtle areas of the human mind and is not detectable by ordinary intellectual, artistic, or scientific methods. The series "Shakespeare for the Seeker" consists of four volumes. Volume 4 presents the analysis of "Twelfth Night", "Measure for Measure", "Hamlet", "The Tempest", "The Merry Wives of Windsor", "A Midsummer Night's Dream", and "The Two Noble Kinsmen". No prior reading of the plays is needed to follow this analysis.