The Treatment of Character

Abstract

To many readers it may come as some surprise that the discussion of Shakespeare’s characters should be reserved for Chapter 6 of this book, rather than being the subject of Chapter 1. Throughout the history of Shakespearian criticism it has been upon the dramatist’s ability to create vital and convincing human beings that attention has principally been focused, and it is the characters of Shakespeare’s plays — Hamlet, Falstaff, Lady Macbeth — rather than his plots which live in the popular imagination, transcending, in the fullness of their conception, the dramatic context from which they derive. For many students of Shakespearian drama the character is synonymous with the play, and the meaning of the drama co­extensive with the experience of its central figures. It is for this reason that the discussion of Shakespeare’s handling of his dramatis personae, has been postponed until this relatively late stage. The earlier chapters of this book have been designed to demonstrate that the meaning of a Shakespearian play does not derive exclusively from the progress of its central figures; it is also a product of the kind of dramatic language that is employed, the disposition of the characters on the stage, the degree of distance between play and spectator, and the relationship between levels of action. The characters of a drama, however fully realized, are only one element of a complex structure, and an awareness of the context in which they function is crucial to an understanding of the meaning that they help to project.