The Individualization of Shakespeare’s Characters through Imagery

Summary

The degree to which and the means by which Shakespeare individualized the style of speech used by his various characters are still unsettled. This question is of practical as well as theoretical interest—especially for actors of Shakespearian roles and for translators of Shakespeare. This is particularly true of the Soviet theatre which, as I have noted elsewhere, strives for the maximum individualization of Shakespeare’s characters.

Rowe, Shakespeare’s first biographer (1709), and Alexander Pope maintained that even if Shakespeare had not indicated the names of the characters speaking in the text, we would have been able to recognize them. Although the great dramatist’s English has since been covered with “the dust of ages”, many modern readers ‘instinctively’ feel that Hamlet, for instance, speaks differently from Ophelia, that Othello’s style of speech is different from Iago’s. Wherein, exactly, does this difference lie? Strange as it may seem, this question has not been thoroughly studied to this day.

Shakespeare's language, as everyone knows, is exceptionally rich in imagery. “Every word with him is a picture”, Thomas Gray wrote of Shakespeare. This suggests the hypothesis that the 'natures' of the characters may in some measure be reflected in these pictures. In real life, in our every-day speech, we quite probably usually compare the things we talk about with that which is particularly near and comprehensible to each of us. In literature the case is evidently often different, for in inventing a metaphor the poet or writer may disregard his personal inclinations in favour of the aesthetic canons of some definite 'school' or 'tradition'. In plays the characters frequently speak in the language, and hence the images, of the author. Hypotheses alone, like 'instinctive' feelings, are far from sufficient.