Shakespeare was born in Stratford-upon-Avon, England, on April 23, 1564 and died on his birthday in 1616. His time precedes the Scientific Revolution which means very little was known about astronomy, nature, disease, chemistry and physics. It was a time when the most intelligent people still believed in witches, ghosts and mystical creatures. The Protestant Reform had challenged Catholicism's interpretation of scripture and the debate about how to believe in God came with intense consequence such as death for choosing wrong. It's important to remember these facts about Shakespeare's time while reading his plays. His characters capture the essence of this time through their thoughts and actions. Understanding Shakespeare's times clarifies the nature of his subject matter and why he wrote about the prevailing themes found throughout his work.
Shakespeare believed knowledge, especial certain knowledge, was an integral desire of human nature. In fact, Colin McGinn, a philosophy professor at the University of Miami, argues people "desire solid, reliable knowledge, a state of epistemological perfection, not false beliefs and shaky inferences." However, in the pursuit for pure knowledge human beings are often disillusioned, make errors and are often uncertain. During his time, people were beginning to question the world, but the answers seemed always unattainable. Furthermore, the ancient Greek skeptics were vindicated for putting forth the problem of how little humans in fact know about the world. Shakespeare's skepticism about the existence of pure knowledge introduced a new idea — other minds.
Through his plays he asks "How do we know what other people are thinking, feeling, and intending? Can we know these things?" The basic duality between a person's internal self and external, observable, self made Shakespeare question why a person is motivated to influence another person's thought and worldview. Shakespeare works out the dramatic consequence of the inability to know another person's mind in his plays. Many Shakespearean characters fall victim to their desire for the truth at the expense of unpredictable actions, motivations and thoughts of other people.
Shakespeare was very interested in issues concerning the self. He questioned a person's capacity to separate her personality from outward circumstances. Questions about the self permeate all of Shakespeare's plays: "How constant is the thing we call personality? How easy is it for someone to know his own character? Is character a gift from God or nature or neither? How solid is it? Is it a meta-physical essence or a social construction?"
In drama the audience watches a person or group of people undergo a personal change or remain the same over the course of time as a response to events. The character's self manifests on the Shakespearean stage and it's often in turmoil, uncertain of its self, and exceedingly messy. Through showcasing the muddled mind on the stage, Shakespeare attempted to dramatize how a mind can become fragmented through conflict with itself, that not everything is within a person's rational control and that self-knowledge is not always reliable.
Shakespeare was alive during a time when people strongly believed that everything is ordered with a purpose, planned and designed by God. Shakespeare questioned the nature of how the world works and what governs the unstoppable flow of event after event. The view of causation from a teleological perspective encourages the belief that all unfolding events have a deeply profound meaning. McGinn argues that the Shakespearean view of causation is "unruly, unpredictable, unintelligible, blind, weird, and even paradoxical." In other words, for Shakespeare the universe was a place of improbability with bizarre, unpredictable correlations and connections. His plays are intrinsically challenging and disturbing because they upset natural human desire for order and complacency.