Shakespeare's views about goodness are less easy to disentangle from his images than is his general attitude towards evil. That is, he has fewer pictures of goodness and these nearly all show it in its relation to evil.

One thing is clear, from his plays and images alike—that he is ever conscious of the strange mixture of both good and evil in our life and being, of the necessity for the presence of both to make up the fabric as we know it, for

The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together.

Not only that, but the one actually produces or gives birth to the other, and too much goodness may even make it easier for evil to flourish and escape punishment, as when York, the ‘loyal father of a treacherous son’, is pictured as a pure and silver stream, from whence Aumerle

Bolingbroke tells York,

to which York answers bitterly,

On the other hand it is clear that evil continually calls out good, affliction produces patience and other virtues, war and danger are the trumpet calls to courage and endurance, as Harry the king perceives so clearly when, before Agincourt, he makes the rounds of his camp and reflects on the ‘ soul of goodness in things evil’.