There is a poem of D. H. Lawrence’s called ‘The Work of Creation’, in which he speaks of the creative process as it is experienced by God and also by the artist:

I quote this poem because it seems to me that the point Lawrence makes about the creative imagination is particularly worth stressing in relation to Shakespeare. Shakespeare criticism, as we all know, is a highly sophisticated business and a good deal of learning and ingenuity, not to speak of baring of the soul, goes into the interpretation of the plays. The tendency of these studies, whether by intention or not, often seems to be to encourage the notion that Shakespeare worked in each play according to a pre-formed and carefully articulated intellectual scheme which study can identify.