The Role of the Literary Critic in Moral Education

I think Shakespeare wants to believe that theater and more generally kind of fiction, imagination can lead people to repentance like a sermon or a parable. We can see this so most clearly in Hamlet, right? The audience is visibly shaken by the player's representation of a man murdering his brother. And here I think Shakespeare's hopes about power of theater collide with his more fundamental commitment to the freedom of the human will.