We can put the issue in the starkest terms: are Shakespeare's works moral? The question sounds inexcusably quaint. Surely, at this late date in the history of criticism, we no longer discuss artists in such Sunday school language? We expect art to shock or appal (or in the cant phrase, ‘confront’). We do not expect it to edify. In fact, however, we have not made up our minds. It is true that words like ‘transgression’ feature everywhere in recent critical writing, and sometimes it appears as if the critics have decided the devil does indeed have the best tunes. It is also undeniable that much recent criticism focuses on politics rather than morals. Yet if épater le bourgeois is one aspect of contemporary discourse about literature and art, so is a renewed emphasis on the ethics of the imagination. For Martha Nussbaum the imagination supplements and corrects the work of moral philosophers. Literature provides a thick description of moral problems that philosophy treats in the abstract. Ethical philosophy skates over real existential complexities. In order to think clearly about moral choices one has first to feel them adequately.