Why do we continue to experience many of Shakespeare's dramatic characters as real people with personal histories, individual personalities, and psychological depth? What is it that makes Falstaff seem to jump off the page, and what gives Hamlet his complexity? Shakespearean Character: Language in Performance examines how the extraordinary lifelikeness of some of Shakespeare's most enigmatic and self-conscious characters is produced through language.
Using theories drawn from linguistic pragmatics, this book claims that our impression of characters as real people is an effect arising from characters' pragmatic use of language in combination with the historical and textual meanings that Shakespeare conveys to his audience by dramatic and meta-dramatic means. Challenging the notion of interiority attributed to Shakespeare's characters by many contemporary critics, theatre professionals, and audiences, the book demonstrates that dramatic characters possess anteriority which gives us the impression that they exist outside of- and prior to- the play-texts as real people.
Jelena Marelj's study examines five linguistically self-conscious characters drawn from the genres of history, tragedy and comedy, which continue to be subjects of extensive critical debate: Falstaff, Cleopatra, Henry V, Katherine from The Taming of the Shrew, and Hamlet. She shows that by inferring Shakespeare's intentions through his characters' verbal exchanges and the discourses of the play, the audience becomes emotionally involved with or repulsed by characters and it is this emotional response that makes these characters strikingly memorable and intimately human. Shakespearean Character will equip readers for further work on the genealogy of Shakespearean character, including minor characters, stock characters, and allegorical characters.
Jelena Marelj holds a Ph.D. in English Literature from Queen's University (Kingston, Ontario), with a specialization in early modern literature. She is currently an adjunct professor in the School of Communications and Literary Studies at Sheridan College in Oakville, Ontario, where she has been teaching since 2014.
Dr Jonathan Hope is Reader in Literary Linguistics at Arizona State University, USA. and is author of Shakespeare's Grammar (Arden, 2003). He is a leading expert in his field and Linguistic Advisor to the Arden Shakespeare.
Michael Witmore is Director of the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington DC, USA. His book, Culture of Accidents: Unexpected Knowledges in Early Modern England (Stanford, 2001) was the co-winner of the Perkins Prize for the Study of Narrative Literature in 2003. He is also the author of Pretty Creatures: Children and Fiction in the English Renaissance (Cornell, 2007)
