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Palgrave Macmillan

Shakespeare’s Imagined Persons

The Psychology of Role-Playing and Acting

  • Book
  • © 1996

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Authors:
  1. Peter B. Murray
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Table of contents (7 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-viii
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  2. Introduction

    • Peter B. Murray
    Pages 1-22

  3. The Behaviorism of B. F. Skinner

    • Peter B. Murray
    Pages 23-37

  4. Character Formation and the Psychology of Role-Playing and Acting

    • Peter B. Murray
    Pages 38-56

  5. Hamlet

    • Peter B. Murray
    Pages 57-102

  6. Prince Hal — King Henry V

    • Peter B. Murray
    Pages 103-145

  7. As You Like It

    • Peter B. Murray
    Pages 146-172

  8. Absorbed Action: “Sure this robe of mine does change my disposition”

    • Peter B. Murray
    Pages 173-178

  9. Back Matter

    Pages 179-256
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About this book

Challenging our understanding of ideas about psychology in Shakespeare's time, Shakespeare's Imagined Persons proposes we should view his characters as imagined persons. A new reading of B.F. Skinner's radical behaviourism brings out how - contrary to the impression he created - Skinner ascribes an important role in human behaviour to cognitive activity. Using this analysis, Peter Murray demonstrates the consistency of radical behaviourism with the psychology of character formation and acting in writers from Plato to Shakespeare - an approach little explored in the current debates about subjectivity in Elizabethan culture. Murray also shows that radical behaviourism can explain the phenomena observed in modern studies of acting and social role-playing. Drawing on these analyses of earlier and modern psychology, Murray goes on to reveal the dynamics of Shakespeare's characterizations of Hamlet, Prince Hal, Rosalind, and Perdita in a fascinating new light.

About the author

PETER B. MURRAY

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