Some tips on writing essays on Shakespeare characters, including hints on sources, speeches and dramatic influences.
One of Shakespeare’s strong points is his ability to create vivid and memorable characters, and students are often asked to write essays discussing them. Taking apart a dramatic character is more difficult than it looks, however, and can often lead students into vague waffling instead of detailed analysis. Here are some pointers on make your character study more focussed and successful.
Role vs. Character
Though many of Shakespeare’s characters are psychologically convincing, bear in mind that they are only characters, not real people. Works like The Girlhood of Shakespeare’s Heroines (by Mary Cowden-Clarke) may have impressed the Victorians, but modern critics are more careful about ascribing “personhood” to a bundle of conventions and speeches.
Think about the character’s role within the plot: how do they advance the plays’s action? How do they relate to the overall thematic concerns? Are they part of a subplot, do their actions run parallel to those of other characters?
Dramatic characters are very rarely completely unique: they often fall into recognisable categories, such as the lover, the fool, the wily servant, the Machiavellian villain. Dramatists deliberately wrote to these character types, and actors would often become identified with a certain variety of role. Try comparing your character to those with similar roles in other Shakespeare plays.
Bear in mind that characters can be influenced by roles from other genres, such as the Vice figure in medieval morality plays (Richard II), or Capitano from the commedia del’arte (Sir Toby Belch in Twelfth Night). Identifying such influences can open up whole new ways of reading a character, and allow you to get a better idea to how original audiences may have interpreted them.
Sources
Though it’s not the most exciting form of criticism, source study can give a glimpse into the dramatist’s intentions. Try to find your character in the play’s known sources (if there are any), and pay particular attention to how they have been changed in the transition to drama. It’s not a precise science, but you can work on the assumption that if something from the source has been changed, it shows the way Shakespeare wanted to shape his material. The changes might be in actions, or in moral emphasis – Friar Lawrence (in Romeo and Juliet) and the Duchess of Malfi are both condemned by the authors of their source material, but appear as much more positive characters in the plays.
Speeches
Pay close attention to the speeches made by your character. Do they speak mainly in verse or in prose? If they use both, under what circumstances do they use each medium? Are they given long speeches to express their thoughts and feelings, or do they tend to speak in shorter bursts, responding to other people? Do they use a grand “high style”, or are they more down-to-earth? Look at their vocabulary: is it made up of lengthy Latinate or French-sounding words, or simple English ones? (Be careful when choosing examples of vocabulary, though, as English has changed a lot since Shakespeare’s time!) Do they have any identifiable verbal “tics”, or phrases they repeat? How does their speaking style make them appear: ridiculous, honest, plain, affected, elegant, illiterate? When making general statements about a character it’s always a good idea to be able to provide specific examples from the text itself.
