What were William Shakespeare's core values?

Answer 1

There are two ways of finding out what Shakespeare's values might have been: by examining his life, and examining his works. The problem with examining his life is that we do not know as much about it as we would like to. The problem with examining his works is that they were written to meet a public demand, and were subject to censorship, so they had to support socially acceptable values whether or not Shakespeare himself held those values. Nevertheless, we know that Shakespeare was a diligent and hard worker. We know that unlike some of his contemporaries, he was a peaceful man, not fond of controversy or conflict in his life. We know that he valued money, as he was very careful with it, and also that he valued social status, because of the effort he put into getting himself a coat of arms.This latter point is reflected also in his works. Unlike some of his contemporaries like Dekker, Heywood and Middleton, Shakespeare did not hold ordinary people up as praiseworthy. In fact he more often depicted them as venal, stupid and vicious, in such plays as Henry VI Part 2, Julius Caesar, and Coriolanus. So Shakespeare seems to have thought not only that it was better to be socially superior, but that socially superior people were in fact better than their inferiors.