Introduction

Abstract

The variety of approaches to the plays studied in this book will not, I hope, obscure my central interest in characterization. I do not wish to propose definitive criticisms of the plays or the characters I discuss; rather, I offer ‘readings’ of the characters from different perspectives. In reading, reading about, and teaching Shakespearean drama, I have found myself constantly drawn back to the question of how what happens in the plays — in the many senses of the phrase — is interesting to me chiefly in what it tells about Shakespeare’s characters. Thus, despite my discrete emphases in the following chapters upon such apparently incongruous subjects as Shakespeare’s use of language, ritual, narrative, psychological and social motivation, I have kept before me at all times the idea that these matters, however vitally evident, are also ways of seeing character. They function, in a sense, as the means through which dramatic character may be critically observed and, in each case, propose a different angle of observation of the same general subject.