I've written about the importance of the poetic aspect of Shakespeare's work a few times in the past, I know, but it's under-discussed as a central factor of his work in my opinion, at least in the commentary that I've been reading lately (which is excellent in other ways, however). My point today is the following: The evidence shows that Shakespeare took as much pride in being a poet as he did in being a dramatist (for example, the only works that he took the time to personally publish were the two long narrative poems, The Rape of Lucrece and Venus and Adonis), and this forced his play-writing to match the highest qualities of the best poetry. Among the most important of these qualities is its truth-finding nature, because if a poem does not contain honest and accurate thoughts on the human experience, it quite simply doesn't work as poetry. And the fact that Shakespeare was always concerned with making his writing do so also explains one of the central paradoxes of his career: The writer known for his unsurpassed verbal prowess is also the one whose work is the most realistic in its depiction of human nature.