Reading Henry IV (1 & 2) past couple days. Following up on yesterday's comment:

Shakespeare is intent on thematizing the inescapable riddles & conundrums of lived experience. Thus these plays I'm reading hinge throughout on surprise, the overturning of expectation (most prominently, Prince Hal's overturning his playboy reputation, "to mock the expectation of the world").

His deep contemplation of experience renders his plays close to infinitely interpretable, infinitely accessible. Thus if there are any secret or hidden aspects to them - hermetic in the true sense - these are quite minor effects (topical references hidden, say, out of political caution), compared to the larger, thematic moral mysteries which his characters enact.

I don't think there's a hermetic (in the sense of trobar clus) bone - nay, fingernail, sirrah - in his body.