Did shakespeare believe that humans life had a meaning?

Answer 1

Nobody knows what William Shakespeare believed. Certainly it is impossible to ascribe the sentiments expressed by characters in the plays to him. Some people like to look at the sonnets as expressions of Shakespeare's feelings, and they might be or they just as easily might not be. One thing is for sure, Shakespeare had a remarkable knack of being able to put himself into the skins of his characters, people of all ages, races, sexes and social standing, imagining what such people might think and feel and expressing those thoughts and feelings in the most astonishing way. He can imagine the weight of the cares of a king, and those of a brothel-keeper. He knows the way it feels to be a young person oppressed by parents and an elderly one oppressed by his children. What this tells us about him was that he was a person with a gift for empathy and imagination. Inferior writers with less imagination think that writers can only draw from their own experience (Mark Twain was one such) but Shakespeare had an imagination which transcended that. Knowing this, it is difficult to imagine that he was anything but compassionate toward all human beings. He accords a certain amount of dignity even to the butt of his jokes, as he does with Malvolio and Shylock.

One of his imaginings is of a man who believes that his own life has no meaning at all. Macbeth describes the emptiness of his life in the speech "Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow creeps in this petty pace from day to day. And all our yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle! Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player who struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more. 'Tis a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." Hamlet has a similar speech ("What a piece of work is a man") although it is drenched in irony as Macbeth's is not. On the other hand we have Lear's compassionate "Take physic, pomp! Expose thyself to feel what wretches feel that thou mayst shake the superflux to them and show the heavens more just," which surely affirms the value of all humans. And one might also look to that extraordinary life-affirming and compassionate man, Duke Senior in As You Like It.

In short, it is difficult to believe that anyone as empathetic and compassionate as Shakespeare must have been did not believe in the value and importance of human existence.