Table Of ContentSHAKESPEARE'S IMAGINED PERSONS
Also by Peter B. Murray
A STUDY OF CYRIL TOURNEUR
A STUDY OF JOHN WEBSTER
THOMAS KYO
Shakespeare's
lntagined Persons
The Psychology of Role-Playing
and Acting
Peter B. Murray
Barnes & Noble
Books
First published in Great Britain 1996 by
MACMILLAN PRESS LTD
Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS
and London
Companies and representatives
throughout the world
A catalogue record for this book is available
from the British Library.
ISBN 978-0-333-64836-0 ISBN 978-0-230-37675-5 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/9780230376755
First published in the United States of America 1996 by
BARNES & NOBLE BOOKS
4720 Boston Way
Lanham, MD 20706
ISBN 978-0-389-21015-3 hardcover
ISBN 978-0-389-21016-0 paperback
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data applied for
©Peter B. Mun·ay 1996
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1996 978-0-333-63448-6
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of
this publication may be made without written pem1ission.
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Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this
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10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
05 04 03 02 01 00 99 98 97 96
Contents
Acknowledgements vii
1 Introduction 1
2 The Behaviorism of B. F. Skinner 23
3 Character Formation and the Psychology of Role-playing
and Acting 38
4 Hamlet 57
5 Prince Hal - King Henry V 103
6 As You Like It 146
7 Absorbed Action: "Sure this robe of mine does change my
disposition" 173
Appendix: The Psychology of Habits 179
Notes 199
Works Cited 215
Index of Names 245
Index of Subjects 251
v
For Karen
Acknowledgements
I want to express my gratitude to a number of people who have contrib
uted to the development and completion of this book. These include sev
eral of my faculty colleagues at Macalester College who have read and
advised me regarding the material on psychology. Henry R. West, a col
league in philosophy, read my discussions of Aristotle's writings on the
psychology of behavior; Sears Eldredge, a colleague in dramatic arts, read
the chapter on the psychology of role-playing and acting; and Walter D.
Mink, a colleague in psychology, read the chapters on behaviorism and
the psychology of role-playing and acting. Irwin Rinder, a sociologist and
the psychologists Roxane H. Gudeman, Lynda LaBounty, and Charles C.
Torrey have each read the chapters on psychology and have also team
taught courses with me that included much of the material on psychol
ogy. Charles Torrey and Lynda LaBounty have, in addition, advised me
extensively during the writing of the book, Charles especially on the psy
chology of role-playing and acting, and Lynda especially in my efforts to
understand B. F. Skinner's radical behaviorism. In this connection, I am
also indebted to the late Kenneth MacCorquodale, a close associate of
Skinner, for his generous praise of my interpretation of Skinner's work.
In the field of English I want to thank Richard Wertime for encourag
ing me after reading an early version of my ideas about the psychology
of role-playing and acting in Shakespeare. And I want to thank Thomas
D'Evelyn for his careful reading and his suggestions for revisions of the
manuscript. Giles Gamble, my colleague in Shakespeare studies at
Macalester, has read and re-read every part of the book, and I am very
thankful to him for the great help and encouragement he has given me
over the years.
I am grateful to Macalester College for a special leave for research that
was supported through money from a grant provided to the College by
the Mellon Fund. I am thankful to the staff of the Macalester College
and University of Minnesota libraries, especially James Summerfield at
Macalester, for their assistance in obtaining materials for my research.
I also want to thank Charmian Hearne, the editor at Macmillan who
took an interest in my work and has shepherded it through the process
of publication.
I owe a debt of gratitude as well to the people who have helped me by
doing the word-processing for the manuscript, Marit Enerson, Diana
vii
viii Acknowledgements
Lundin, and more recently Rhonda Isaacs, who has seen me through a
series of revisions.
Finally, I want to thank my wife, Karen Olson Murray, for her unflag
ging interest and support as a scholar in helping me to think through
the ideas the book presents and as a writer in helping me to edit the
manuscript.
The author and publishers wish to thank the following for permission to
reproduce copyright-material:
Benziger Publishing Company, for the extracts from StThomas Aquinas,
Summa Theologica, trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province,
3 vols (1947-8).
Everyman's Library, David Campbell Publishers Ltd, for the extracts from
The Essayes of Michael Lord of Montaigne, trans. John Florio, 3 vols.
The publishers and the Loeb Classical Library, for the extracts from
Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria, trans. H. E. Butler, 4 vols (Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard University Press, 1921-2).
Macmillan, for the extracts from Aristotle, The Nicomachean Ethics, trans.
Martin Ostwald (1962).
Oxford University Press, for the extracts from The Dialogues of Plato, trans.
B. Jowett, 2 vols (1937).
Routledge, Chapman, and Hall, for the extracts from William Shakespeare,
As You Like It, ed. Agnes Latham; The First Part of King Henry IV, ed.
A. R. Humphreys; Hamlet, ed. Harold Jenkins; King Henry V, ed. J. H.
Walter; The Second Part of King Henry IV, ed. Andrew S. Caimcross; and
The Winter's Tale, ed. J. H. P. Pafford.
In quotations, all texts using Early Modem English spelling have been
modernized in spelling and typography.
1
Introduction
According to the conventional wisdom of literary theory, it is not appro
priate to respond to characters in literature as if they were real people.
Today, in the context of post-structuralist theory, some critics question
whether art does or can create stable representations of the world, whether
language as a medium is used or even can be used to create characters
that seem to behave in ways that accord with human psychology.1 I think
the conventional wisdom and the post-structuralist views turn us away
from important modes of response to Shakespearean drama that depend
on construing characters much as if they were real people.2 In this study
I will argue that Shakespeare's plays invite us to construct his characters
as imagined persons, and I will explain how the psychology of his time
and ours can be used to support this thesis.
I want to make clear what my thesis does and does not entail. I will not
argue that Shakespeare's characters are psychologically realistic in every
way. In addition, my view is not that Shakespeare designed his characters
to be subjected to psychological analysis, but that the intelligibility of their
psychology was implicitly important to him as part of the basis for the
audience's responses to his plays. My analysis is thus intended to help us
respond to the plays, not to make psychology appear to be the subject of
the plays for its own sake. In creating a character, Shakespeare drew on
his dramatic, literary, and historical sources, and also, no doubt, on his
observations of other people and himself. In addition, it is likely that some
characters were partly shaped by unconscious projections from his own
psyche. Thus as he shaped characters he may not have thought analyti
cally about psychology at all. Some of Shakespeare's characters can be
construed as approaching an illusionistic realism at times, and most can
be construed as psychologically coherent, but for some there are episodes
when there is little or no psychological coherence or realistic motivation.
Also, characters sometimes say things that seem more appropriate as
utterances of the actor or dramatist. Finally, the use of such conventions
as the actors speaking verse precludes any notion that Shakespeare's theater
depended on inducing the audience to believe that what they beheld in
the playhouse was actual rather than fictional behavior.
It has been argued that many elements of Shakespeare's dramaturgy
lead the audience away from responding to his characters as we would to
1
