The Human Condition: Width vs Height?

Today I was reading an introduction by Randy Malamud to T.S Eliot’s The Waste Land. Malamud explains that the prominent literary allusions in The Waste Land come from Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Dante. He goes on to quote Eliot as having said in one of his critical essays on Shakespeare and Dante that “gradually we come to admit that Shakespeare understands a greater extent and variety of human life than Dante; but that Dante understands deeper degrees of degradation and exaltation.” And thus, Eliot concludes that Shakespeare provided the greatest width of the human condition while Dante provided the greatest altitude and depth.

I cannot refute or support Eliot's claim as I am not familiar enough with either Shakespeare or Dante at this point, but I am engaged in the question as to whether it is more important to understand the width of the human condition or its height. First, what is the human life/condition? And then, can one understand without experiencing? My understanding has come from experiencing; and while I have experienced the depth of some parts of my humanity, I have (of course) only surfaced or never even touched others. While I lack knowledge and growth of all that I do not understand to be part of my humanity, my identity has been formed from the (nonphysical) places through which I’ve felt most intensely what it means to be human. Therefore, because I’ve reached the depth of my human life as the source of my (albeit unrounded) identity, I will confidently conclude that the depth of the human condition is more important than its width.