Poor Painted Shadows: "Non-Shakespearean" Characterization in Shakespeare

Abstract

abstract:Critics' selective reading has produced a widespread, long-lasting equation of Shakespearean characterization with naturalism, depth, complexity, interiority, and individuation. This critical consensus is worth challenging to reconsider the history and merits of alternative models of characterization that were current in early modern drama and attractive to the author most singled out as superseding them. In fact, across his career, Shakespeare amply employs "artificial" rhetoric, "shallow" characters, and speaking styles or narrative parallels that connect multiple "individuals." These characterizations undercut the character effects in which Shakespeare's literary strengths purportedly lie but nonetheless yield theatrical dividends, including appealing non-naturalistic psychologies and narratives. This essay outlines how such examples reveal the value of under-examined period representational norms often seen as "non-Shakespearean" that Shakespeare shared with his contemporaries. It notes the breadth, frequency, and utility of such characterization in Shakespeare. It then examines Shakespeare's use of Lylian characterization to de-individuate characters, connecting them through overlapping styles of thought in The Two Gentlemen of Verona. Finally, it argues that Lylian techniques persist well beyond Two Gentlemen, in plays later in Shakespeare's career (As You Like It), more popular (Richard III), and universally admired for their characters' alignment through improbably similar experiences (King Lear).