Shakespeare's Greatest Characters

The England of Shakespeare's lifetime was a brutal, bloodthirsty place. One did not play fast and loose with didacticism in Elizabethan or Jacobian England unless one had a death wish. He was far too cautious. And we know this because Shakespeare remained alive to continue to write. His plays were not mirrors of those governing the country at the time but ostensibly the complete reverse - implicitly praising the sitting monarch.