Critical Approaches to Shakespeare: Some Initial

Observations
[This document has been prepared by Ian Johnston for students of English
366 at Malaspina University-College. It is in the public domain, released
May, 1999]
[This text was last revised on November 19, 2001]

Introduction
An earlier introductory note to some basic principles of
literary interpretation ("On Scholarship and Literary
Interpretation"), stressed that literary interpretation or
literary criticism is, in many ways, an anarchic
conversational activity with the practical purpose of
enriching our shared understanding of a particular text. The
value of any particular interpretative observations, or of a
methodology upon which those observations are based, is
judged by the results, as adjudicated by a group of
intelligent conversationalists who have read and thought
about the text under discussion. Hence, there is no one
privileged way of organizing and presenting one's views. As
that previous note mentioned, there are some basic rules
about how the conversation should proceed, but these do not
require a shared adherence to a single way of reading a text.
In fact, the conversational basis for really useful literary
interpretation finds its justification in the contrast between
different ways of reading a text or some portion of it,
because conversation is the best forum in which such
differences confront each other and the participants profit
from a discussion of the results of such different readings.
However, in spite of the above remarks, there are some
favorite ways of reading fictions, each of which stresses
certain elements of the work over others. These may be
called, I suppose, common approaches to or entries into the
works, preferred ways of making contact with something
that is going on in the text, so as to organize one's comments
and get the interpretative conversation going. As we shall
see, these methods are not mutually exclusive, although with
some works one or more may be more practically useful than
another.
The purpose of this document is to review a few of the more
common of these critical approaches to Shakespeare's plays.

This introductory comment should help students reflect upon

their own critical practices as they read, discuss, and write
about Shakespeare's texts. This is important, because one of
the great values of studying Shakespeare is that such an
endeavour can lead to a much wider and fuller
understanding, not just of the works themselves, but of
literary interpretation generally. Such an understanding
becomes all the more likely if students are prepared at times
to experiment with new ways of reading a text, leaving
behind for a moment their preferred methods and seeing
how different approaches might work.

The Challenge of Shakespeare's Work

Shakespeare's work offers an extraordinarily rich resource
for the literary interpreter because it includes such a huge
variety, from lyric and narrative poetry to many different
forms of poetic drama. Some of the plays seem deeply rooted
in specific political realities, while others are clearly much
closer to romance, science fiction, or pastoral. The works
include scores of complex characters, major and minor,
whose psychological make-up invites analysis, but they also
explore complex social, political, and moral ideas.
Sometimes these ideas are very explicitly present, almost in
allegorical form (for example, the witches in Macbeth or
Queen Margaret in Richard III), at other times they are more
deeply buried in the actions and decisions of particular
characters. Moreover, the texts present these elements in an
amazingly rich poetic style, full of evocative metaphors.
Here indeed is God's plenty.
As a preliminary caution, we need to remind ourselves that
when we are reading Shakespeare's plays, all we have are
the words the different characters utter (along with some
minimally useful stage directions) and the actions they carry
out. We have no reliable notion in most cases of the tone of
voice the character uses, any gestures or movements which
might accompany these words, and no clear idea in most
instances whether or not the character really means what he
or she says. Generally, we have no direct information about
what characters look like, how old they are, or how they
move. Unlike, say, a novel in which there is often an
omniscient author reliably to inform us of a character's
intentions, tone, appearance, inner thoughts, and so on, a
Shakespeare script leaves an enormous amount up to us.
Hence, it will not be uncommon for us to find widely
different possibilities in a single person or speech
(depending upon how we see and hear the character in

action). For example, the age difference between Hamlet's

father and mother, if it is really significant (of the same
magnitude as the age difference between Juliet's parents),
may prompt certain interpretative possibilities which are far
less likely if we see the two of them as roughly the same age.
That is one reason (by no means the only one) why we must
reject the notion that there is one authoritative way to read
a particular work. A dramatic script by Shakespeare has no
single determinate meaning. Rather, it contains a range of
possible interpretative meanings. Our job as interpreters is
to explore some of these possibilities, to evaluate them with
respect to each other, and, if possible, to come to a sense of
some of the major alternatives. This process will require the
ability, one mark of a growing sophistication in the literary
interpreter, to hold simultaneously in one's imagination
different possibilities (even contradictory options), while at
the same time remaining open to other options.
One serious limitation of a college course in Shakespeare is
that we do not have much opportunity to see many
productions of specific works. While reading Shakespeare
can obviously be an enormously delightful and rewarding
experience, we need to remember that he did not write to be
read, but to be performed (that is, to be seen and heard).
This point is particularly important to recall if we drift into
the habit of reading these plays as if they were novels. For
we may then find ourselves objecting to something which we
would hardly notice (or would accept readily enough) in a
fine production (e.g., some of the coincidences on which
much comic actions depends, the time frame in Othello or
Hamlet, sudden changes of mind, like Lady Anne's in
Richard III, and so on). Plays tend to present a vision of
reality far less immediately naturalistic than traditional
novels, simply because an audience at a play brings a set of
evaluative criteria different from the ones people use when
reading naturalistic fiction in the solitude of their domestic
dens (more about this later).

The Approach Through Character Analysis

The most obvious way to begin an interpretation of a
Shakespearean play (and also the most popular) is by
evaluating the characters. Any play involves characters in a
particular setting, doing particular things. The plot will
develop a conflict, which will usually inflict pain or distress
on some people (comically or otherwise), and will lead to a
final resolution of sorts in which some characters may die or

be punished severely, while others survive or triumph or get

substantially rewarded. Hence, one clear entry into such a
work is to put the characters on trial: Who is good? Who is
bad? Why do certain people act in certain ways? Do any of
the characters change? Where are my sympathies as I make
my way through this play? As an interpreter, I am, in
essence, the judge, and how shall I apportion my verdicts?
Interpreting a play by analyzing the characters in it, judging
them, and coming to some final evaluation of them is a
natural way to approach Shakespeare for three main
reasons. The first is that these are plays, and they inevitably
feature active characters more or less recognizably like
people around us. That, indeed, is the chief appeal of the
genre. So it is entirely natural to treat the play as we treat
life itself, by responding to the people we see, the actions
they carry out, the words they use, and the decisions they
make. On the basis of these observations we will come to
some conclusions about their characters and will discuss the
play in those terms. The second reason is that Shakespeare
is famous, more than anything else, for his astonishing
ability to create interesting, complex, and natural
characters. Unlike many other dramatists whose characters
do not invite very complex investigation (e.g., many writers
of situation comedies who rely upon stock characters very
similar to those in other plays), Shakespeare has the ability
to fill a play with scores of characters, each of whom talks in
a language and acts in a way which indicates a sharply
focused individual personality with a very particular
response to experience. Hence, it is, once again, natural to
treat them as fully realized people whose conduct (amusing
or not) requires an evaluative judgment.
Then, too, the fact that we are dealing with plays always
keeps the approach through character analysis alive,
because theatre productions depend upon individual actors,
and individual actors need to reflect upon the motivations
for their characters. They have to, in a sense, discover their
human qualities and become the stage people whose lives
they enact. Thus, the dramatic tradition of continuing to
mount Shakespeare productions ensures that the analysis of
character will remain a powerful force in the interpretation
of the plays.
The third major reason why character analysis is an
important approach to Shakespeare's plays is (as Harold
Bloom has repeatedly pointed out) that Shakespeare's
characters are often intrigued or puzzled by their own

characters. That is, they make their characters part of the

dramatic "problem" of the fiction we are exploring. When,
for example, Hamlet or Macbeth or Othello starts to wrestle
with his own character, trying to understand his own
motivation, feelings, and actions, that moment places the
nature of the character as an essential element in the work
(in a way that is markedly different from texts in which a
character's personality does not create particular problems
for him). In other words, the plays themselves put character
analysis directly on the table.
The approach to a Shakespeare play which places the
analysis of character at the centre of the process was
particularly strong in the nineteenth century, and the
literary interpretations from that period often illustrate the
strengths and weaknesses of that approach. The great value
of character analysis is that it always reminds us that,
whatever else we may want to talk of, the central concern is
particular human beings. Whatever else King Lear is about,
it is centrally about a suffering old man, whose unique
character brings upon him almost unimaginable suffering.
Whatever we make of Hamlet, we cannot forget that the
people in the play drive Ophelia insane and lead her to
suicide, and that she is an innocent and loving young
woman. Focusing upon the characters in the play always
keeps us in touch with a major reason why Shakespeare
matters--his works constantly illuminate human nature in all
sorts of moving ways.
That said, however, treating the interpretation of a play as
primarily (or exclusively) a matter of evaluating character
can create problems, particularly if we get into the habit of
thinking that that is all there is that matters in the text. One
major problem, of course, is that in many instances we do
not know enough about a character to arrive at a sufficiently
full understanding of his or her personality. We know almost
nothing of Hamlet's childhood, or Bolingbroke's inner
thoughts, or Lady Macbeth's sexuality. Thus, key elements
required in any full character analysis are missing. Of
course, we can speculate on such matters (we have to if we
want to arrive at a full understanding of the personality), but
such speculations can often end up in inconclusive and often
trivial debates, because there is not enough evidence. So we
can find criticism by the analysis of character degenerating
into explorations of the girlhood of Shakespeare's heroines,
endless arguments about whether or not the Macbeths had
any children, how old Hamlet might be or whether he is
really insane or not, whether Falstaff is a coward or not, how

black Othello really is, or what Antony and Cleopatra really

talk about when they are alone together.
A second problem which can arise by an overemphasis on
character analysis is that we may forget that Shakespeare's
characters, as well as being keenly drawn individuals, also
have social and family positions. They are kings, sisters,
daughters, servants, widows, generals, fools, dukes,
property owners, workers, and so on. So they carry with
them, not merely their individual personalities, but a host of
social and political attitudes, commitments, and
responsibilities, and they are, to some extent,
representatives of social, political, and gender types. Hence,
their interactions are more than just clashes of particular
personalities.

The Approach Through Thematic Analysis

That last point about how dramatic characters are also, to
some extent, representatives of social types is a reminder
that their dramatic impact includes more than their unique
personalities. For they bring with them, for example,
political and gender meanings which inevitably have a
bearing on the impact of a play and make it, not just a clash
of people, but a clash of or an exploration of ideas or themes
which the characters and their actions develop, explore,
qualify, or undermine. This fact gives rise to thematic
analysis.
A thematic approach to Shakespeare's work will tend to
focus first on some guiding idea which a character in action
either expresses overtly or exemplifies. For example,
Richard II is not simply a particular person; he is also a king.
That gives him particular social and political power and
responsibilities. When Bolingbroke rebels against Richard,
the action immediately calls attention to an important idea:
the tension between legitimacy and fitness to rule or,
alternatively put, the justification for usurping an unfit but
legitimate king. Richard II is, among other things, very
clearly an examination of this idea--not simply because the
point is discussed in the play, but, more importantly, because
the action of the play forces us to consider this idea from
many different perspectives.
Thematic interpretation will tend to see the works primarily
as explorations of particular social, political, or moral ideas.
This does not mean that the work is of interest merely as a
philosophical working out of some issue, some rational

investigation of what an idea means or where it logically

leads. What it does mean is that the thematic interpreter will
tend to call attention to some guiding idea or theme in the
work and explore how the action of the play develops our
understanding of that idea (often the point will be to
complicate our understanding of an apparently simple issue,
without necessarily resolving it). Richard II does not resolve
the issues surrounding legitimacy and fitness to rule, but by
the end of the play we have come to understand many of the
complexities that the issue raises (Henry IV, Part 1 does the
same with the notion of honour). We have come to this
understanding, not by being told of those complexities, but
by having witnessed the consequences in action of
characters who have been caught up in a drama in which
this issue is something they have had to deal with in action.
Similarly, when we follow the sufferings of Ophelia in
Hamlet, we are, to some extent, dealing with the issue of
how women are treated in Elsinore, an issue which
transcends the uniqueness of Ophelia's character. And we
can push the issue even further to argue that the play is, in
large part, about gender relations generally.
Thematic criticism is particularly useful in reminding us that
these plays are about more than the particular characters,
that there are social, political, gender, religious, and moral
issues at stake and that, as we proceed through the play, we
do need to attend to how the drama is putting pressure on
our understanding of those ideas in the context established
by the play (and beyond). Macbeth, for example, is more
than the story of one particular ancient Scottish warriorking. It is also clearly about the nature of evil in our world,
about loyalty, and other matters as well. If we fail to attend
upon these issues, because we are overly concerned with,
say, Lady Macbeth's motivation, then we are missing some
essential elements in the play.
At the same time, however, thematic criticism has its
dangers, particularly if the approach becomes too ham
fisted, that is, if the interpreter simply forces onto the text
the working out of a particular idea and makes the play a
relatively simple allegory. An interpreter who insists, for
example, that King Lear is only or exclusively a debate
between two contrasting views of nature has taken an
important element in the play and made it the total
experience of the work, forgetting that there's a suffering
old man at the centre of the action and that that man, in all
his human particularity, is our main emotional contact with
what is going on. An interpreter who insists that Richard III

is principally a confirmation of the providential vision of

history may well miss important ways in which the play may
be subverting that idea or developing alternative visions.
In other words, if the danger of character analysis is that it
can get bogged down in trivial unanswerable questions
about details of the lives of particular men and women, the
danger of thematic criticism can be that it gets crudely
reductive, turning a complex work into the simple
illustration of a particular idea or dogma. This is presumably
the form of criticism practiced by many of those who would
dismiss Shakespeare on the ground that his works are
patriarchal, conservative, and bourgeois (i.e., which
reinforce a narrow and unwelcome ideology).
It's true that some plays invite a strongly thematic approach
in which the characters are little more that signals for a
particular idea and their conflict is the working out or
illustration of some ideological message outside the play.
Such a work of literature we call allegory. While many of
Shakespeare's works (like King Lear) have what appears to
be an allegorical framework (and can be usefully interpreted
to some extent in terms of that), in most of his plays the
complexity in the characters tends to undercut any simple
allegorical approach. The one possible exception in the plays
we study is The Tempest, which, for reasons we will discuss
when we get to that work, seems to invite allegorical
treatment (although there is much debate about which
allegorical treatment is most appropriate).
In some sense, interpretation which focuses on character
appeals to our desire for the unique particularity of each
moment in the play and the ways these help to define rich
memorable characters; interpretation which focuses on
thematic analysis appeals to our desire for more general
coordinating issues throughout the work. There is no reason
these cannot work well together. In fact, that makes good
sense. For in Shakespearean drama, as in life, ideas and
actions are constantly at work, sometimes reinforcing each
other, sometimes contrasting each other. Sometimes a
simple action will undermine a beautifully coherent idea
(that happens all the time in Shakespeare); sometimes a
simple action will confirm an important human truth.
For that reason, a good deal of interpretation involves
testing possible themes against the perceived actions of the
characters. Is The Tempest really an exploration of
colonialist attitudes? That's an interesting idea. How does a

close reading of the play, together with a careful

examination of the characters' actions, confirm or repudiate
that suggestion? Is the first History Cycle calling attention to
the marginalization of women from the political process? Or
does the dramatic effect of these particular female
characters challenge that idea?
Reading a number of Shakespeare's plays encourages this
often fertile union of character analysis and thematic
interpretation, because he is fond of returning to dramatic
conflicts between pairs of opposite types: the valiant warrior
(Othello, Hotspur, Antony) pitted against the devious
manipulative schemer (Iago, Henry IV, Octavius); the
expressive poet-prince (Richard II, Hamlet) pitted against
the shrewd political pragmatist (Bolingbroke, Claudius); the
intelligent, loving young woman (Rosalind, Viola) having to
deal with the sentimental, poetical bachelor (Orlando,
Orsino), and so on. These conflicts may present uniquely
drawn characters in action, but there are recurring thematic
issues which help to coordinate all of Shakespeare's work
until it starts to become, for the avid reader, one long work,
ceaselessly exploring major issues through the experiences
of unforgettable characters.

The Approach Through Poetic Symbol

Another common approach to a particular play focuses on
the imagery, either on some obviously important symbol
which recurs throughout the work or to some image pattern.
Such poetic components in the language obviously can
contribute in a major way to our understanding of what is
going on. In some sense, of course, because we are dealing
with poetic drama and have only the language to examine,
interpreting both character and theme will often require
detailed attention to particular patterns of imagery, symbol,
and other significant language.
For example, however we assess the character of Hamlet, it
is difficult to miss how much of his language, especially in
his soliloquies, is infused with images of death, sickness, and
corrupt sexuality, so much so that the patterns in the
imagery invite us see in them a pattern in the personality or
an indication of a major thematic concern of the play, the
sickness in Elsinore, or both. Similarly, when we read
Twelfth Night, we can hardly miss the importance of money
as a touchstone of character, since the actions of giving and
taking money occur so frequently. Similarly, in this play and

in many others, music functions as an important symbol

against which characters are tested.
Music, in fact, is a particularly important element to watch
for in the study of the plays. Is there any music in the play?
Where does it come from? How is it received? Does it have
any transforming power? In many of Shakespeare's plays
the active power of music or its absence is a decisive
indication of the emotional health of particular people or
situations (e.g., As You Like It, Henry IV, Part 1, Twelfth
Night, the Tempest, King Lear, and so on).
In general, approaching a play through symbolic patterns
requires more practice and confidence for most students
than does character analysis, simply because discussing
nuances of motivation and feelings of people whose actions
we are witnessing is easier to carry out (or we have had
more practice at it) than attending to the more sophisticated
task of responding to the nuances in the poetic images and
figures of speech. Still, it is frequently an excellent exercise
to seize upon some obvious symbolic element in a play or
some frequent or predominant image and, by attending
carefully to the pattern of that element in the work, to see
how one may come to understand things more clearly. In
fact, paying close attention to the poetic imagery and
symbolism in a play is one of the best ways to develop the
skills of close reading on which the best criticism depends.
This approach to a work is particularly important when one
is dealing with a specific production of one of the plays, for
the particulars of the set design and the costumes and
furniture will often (in a good production) bring important
symbolic elements to bear on our reaction to the actions we
witness.
Shakespeare is famous for the extraordinary richness and
variety in his imagery, which seems to come from many
different quarters with an accurate sense of specific details
of that activity (sailing, warfare, glove making, the law,
education, and so on). These have encouraged all sorts of
biographical speculations about his lost years. But there are
some which are particularly frequent and important, for
example, metaphors involving clothes (especially as they
determine rank and value and a sense of identity and gender
differences) and acting (the most convenient metaphor for
expressing any tension between outer appearance and inner
reality).

Some Other Interpretative Approaches

There are a number of other ways of approaching an

interpretation of a Shakespeare play, but many of them tend
often to involve a good deal of material outside the text and
so, for our purposes, they are less useful. Psychoanalytic
criticism, for example, sees the text as an expression of the
inner psychological problems (the neuroses) of the artist.
Thus, it strives to link details of the life with details of the
work. In Shakespeare's case this is very difficult to do, since
we know virtually nothing personal about the man.
Nevertheless, with a good deal of speculation about
neuroses he must have suffered psychoanalytic interpreters
have gone to work on the plays. Alternatively, psychoanalytic
criticism may direct its attention onto particular aspects of
the text (e.g., the interaction of the characters) or onto
specific themes (e.g., Oedipus Complex) explored in the
work or onto certain aspects of the language of particular
psychoanalytic interest.
Mythic criticism approaches the plays with an emphasis on
the structure of the story, seeking to link it to common forms
for popular stories (archetypal plots and characters). Mythic
critics often tend to stand back from the text a good deal,
less interested in the finer details and ambiguities of the
language than in the broad structural similarities between a
particular play and other works. There is thus often a
tendency in mythic criticism to eradicate (or dull) the
significant particularity of a work into order to insist upon
its structural closeness to certain styles of story telling.
Mythic criticism is perhaps most frequent in interpretations
of the final plays (what some critics call the Romances),
probably because these plays seem to move away from the
more naturalistic styles of earlier ones and to involve more
ritual, pageant, and common mythic symbols and motifs.
Historical criticism (as mentioned in the previous article "On
Scholarship and Literary Interpretation") generally will seek
to root the play in its historical context, explaining what
goes on in the fiction with reference to political, cultural,
and biographical facts of the age in which it was produced.
Hence, it will frequently tend to make the play an illustration
of the age or limit our understanding of the play to what we
can confirm in its historical context. One particularly
interesting element of historical criticism involves
comparing Shakespeare's treatment of a story with the same
story in the source book which he used (for Shakespeare
derives almost all his plots from other books, often following
the originals very closely). In itself this may not provide
much immediate interpretative assistance, but the

procedure helps to establish at least two things: first,

Shakespeare's amazing imaginative power at turning some
mundane prose description (like Cleopatra on the Nile) in
the source into the most moving poetry and, second,
significant discrepancies with the source which may provide
useful interpretative clues for an understanding of the play.
No particular approach to a play has any special privilege
(as mentioned before repeatedly), but in English 366 we will
be concentrating on the first three outlined in this note,
simply because those tend to be the most immediately
rewarding way (especially for relatively inexperienced
readers of Shakespeare), since they begin and end with the
text itself and do not require constant reference to theories
of meaning outside the text. Our primary task here is to
increase the fluency with which we read and interpret that
text. However, it is almost certain that some of the other
interpretative methods will arise in the seminars, and we are
free to explore where those lead. In every case, we measure
the value of whatever methodology is employed by a very
practical gauge: Does it enrich our understanding of what is
going on in this text or not?

The Importance of Irony as an Interpretative

Tool
Whatever the particular entry into a particular text, our
major interpretative method will involve exploring the full
range of irony as we continue our examination of whatever
we have selected as a starting point. Hence, it is important
to clarify somewhat the meaning of this key interpretative
term.
In common practice, the word irony is applied to some
expression or action in which there are at least two levels of
meaning: the obvious surface meaning and a second implied
meaning which may be quite different from the first. The
second meaning, in other words, undermines the first
meaning or qualifies it; in some cases the second meaning
may entirely contradict the first (when that happens and
both speaker and listener are aware of the second meaning
contradicting the first, we call the irony, which is very strong
and obvious, sarcasm). In a more general sense, irony can
also mean ambiguity. An ironical expression is one in which
we cannot be sure precisely what is meant because there is
a range of possible meanings.

For instance in Sonnet 138, when Shakespeare writes

"Therefore I lie with her and she with me," the word lie
carries an obvious ironical sense manifested in the two
possible meanings, to lie in bed with and to tell an untruth.
Which one is the correct meaning here? The obvious answer
is that they are both equally correct, and the ironical double
meaning captures the emotional paradox the speaker of the
poem is experiencing, that his sexual life with his love is
based on mutual duplicity, for when they have sex together
they are deceiving each other. Earlier in the same poem the
word vainly functions in the same manner, meaning both in
vain and from vanity. The double meaning captures well the
ironic tension at the heart of the speaker's feelings: he
knows his love is a self-defeating activity, but he cannot stop
because his vanity prompts him.
Irony in this sense is a vital part of most creative writing,
because it is one of the best vehicles for capturing the
complex nature of human feelings in an experience in which
contradictory impulses are involved. The ironical resonance
of particular words enables to writer to express and
symbolize accurately paradoxical states of feeling. The effect
is quite opposite to the scientific use of language, where the
precise clarity of all terminology is essential to the style (and
where, thus, irony is not welcome).
But irony can function in other ways apart from the different
meanings of particular words. Images and metaphors are
inherently ironic, because they evoke a range of
associations. Understanding how they function requires a
close attention to the various tensions inherent in any
comparison. When Shakespeare, in an earlier sonnet,
concludes the poem with the line "Lilies that fester smell far
worse than weeds," the image puts into play a number of
complex suggestions. Lilies obviously suggest purity, a
dazzling whiteness appropriate for the highest innocence,
but the flower also conveys images of death. The word
"weeds" suggests something unwelcome and common, but at
the same time something vigorous and healthy. And the
interplay between these two images is made all the more
complicated by the addition of the word "festers," a word
strongly suggestive of a disgusting, fatal infection
(underscored by "smells"). If, as interpreters, we want to
sort out the speaker's feelings as expressed in that line, we
have to negotiate our way through all sorts of ironic
possibilities. We will hardly arrive at a single, simple, and
clear "translation" of the images. But if we share our

responses, we may clarify our understanding of the effects of

the irony at work.
Such verbal ironies are compounded in drama by other
forms of irony. The most common is called dramatic irony,
which occurs through an uneven distribution of knowledge.
We, as readers or spectators, often know much more about
what is going on than any of the characters. Thus, when a
character says something, the utterance will often have two
levels of meaning: what the character thinks it means and
what the audience, with a fuller understanding of the entire
situation, understands it to mean. Dramatic irony may often
be funny. In fact, in many comedies much of the humour
comes from what is called an uneven distribution of
information. The audience knows everything, members of
the story all know a part of the truth (and what any one
particular character may know may change in the course of
the play), and a great deal of the comic confusion will
involve various misunderstandings, mistaken identities, and
so on, which arise from the incomplete distribution of
information (Shakespeare's plays involving twins are the
most obvious example of this).
Often our reaction to a play depends upon this ironical
uneven distribution of information. In Richard III, for
example, we have privileged insight into Richard's intentions
(he tells us what he's all about and what he is going to do
next). So we are aware that the things he says to various
other people (statements which they take as the truth) are,
in fact, lies or are true in a way which the victims do not
understand. Beyond that, of course, we also know that
Richard himself is also caught in an ironic situation, because
he thinks everything will work out for him, but we know that
it will not.
The tragic effect depends upon this last form of dramatic
irony called tragic irony. This feature emerges because the
readers or the audience knows the outcome of the story
(that is the reason tragedies commonly use plots with
familiar endings, like Julius Caesar or Hamlet). In the course
of the play, the tragic hero will frequently reveal his
understanding of the situation and his way of dealing with it.
We constantly measure that against our knowledge of how
the story is going to end. Much of our imaginative sympathy
for Lear or Macbeth, for example, emerges from our
fascination with watching them become more and more
driven towards their destructive end as the tragic irony of
their situation becomes more and more intense. Our

response would be quite different were we totally unfamiliar

with the ending.
Beyond that, of course, plays are constantly requiring the
reader or the audience to reassess an earlier understanding
of a character or an issue. We see a character do or say
something, and we make up our mind about that person or
issue on the basis of that incident. Then, the character will
do or say something else, and we have to reassess or qualify
our earlier judgment. Or someone else will act in a way that
calls the same issue into question, and we have to qualify
our earlier assessment of that issue. Paying close attention
to a Shakespeare play requires, above everything else, a
very close attention to the way in which our powers of
judgment are constantly challenged by every event. If we
use the term irony in the widest possible sense to describe
this process of adjustment and readjustment to the
situations as they unfold, then an awareness of the ironical
effects of dramatic action and language will be our most
important activity. And most of our useful discussions about
a play or a part of it will focus on the extent to which we see
irony at work and how we assess that.
Shakespeare deliberately forces us to do this, sometimes
very explicitly. In 1 Henry IV, for example, many characters
mention the word honour and discuss what they mean by the
word. Then, they act upon that understanding of the word.
The reader or audience is pushed and pulled through
different conceptions of the word and different actions
(sometimes in the very same scene), to the point where it is
very clear that one important point of the play is an ironic
exploration of that word really means. Rarely will
Shakespeare arrive at or offer a clear and magisterial
definition of a concept: he leaves that for us to sort out. In
the case of 1 Henry IV, whatever our understanding of the
word honour when we started reading the play, by the time
we have finished, we have been forced to review a wide
range of possibilities (and to experience in action the
consequences of those possibilities). We are not, however,
given any final authoritative "answer" (if that is what we are
looking for).
In a similar way, a play can, in the action and presentation,
often introduce irony to undercut what seems like a firm
affirmation. This is a common feature of the endings of
Shakespeare's plays. Is the ending of The Tempest an
unqualified comic celebration, or is it muted? Is there any
irony present, and, if so, how strong is it? To what extent

might we want to claim that the reconciliation achieved is

fragile or illusory? Is it so muted or undercut with irony that
it registers as, in fact, a defeat? Similarly, is the end of
Macbeth or King Lear a happy triumph for the forces of good
or something more complex, shot through with ironic
deflations of the reassuring final actions? One important
difference in tone between Twelfth Night and As You Like It,
for example, comes from the sense many (perhaps most)
readers or viewers get that the ending of the latter is
unironically celebratory, whereas, by contrast, the ending of
the former is undershot with complex ironic resonance
which qualify the apparently "happy" comic resolution of the
conflict.
In particular scenes, the staging can be a source of complex
ironies. When Hamlet lectures his mother on her morally
deficient character, the body of Polonius (whom Hamlet has
just killed) is lying on the stage throughout the scene.
Shakespeare, it seems, wanted Polonius killed early in the
scene so that, when Hamlet attempts to take the moral high
ground and lecture his mother on her corrupt character, we
have to match that element in his character against the ease
with which he has just killed and discarded the father of the
girl he claims to love (and the chief political figure in the
kingdom after the monarch). The presence of the dead
Polonius really qualifies our response to Hamlet's claims that
he is a moral agent.
Similarly, in Henry IV, Part 1 Shakespeare deliberately has a
serious military encounter between Prince Hal and Hotspur
take place alongside a parody of that in a similar encounter
between Douglas and Falstaff. The first is full of heroic talk
and brave action; the latter is full of cowardice and evasion
and humour. As audience we are forced to evaluate military
combat by the contrast between the two. This play, in
particular, is full of such ironic contrasts, as we move from
the world of the court, to the taverns, to the camp of the
rebellious nobles (as we shall discuss).
Irony can be a slippery business, because once we sense it is
present, we know we are on difficult ground. How deep do
the ironies penetrate? Is there any firm ground on which we
can rest an interpretation? And in some writers, where
ironies seem to be present everywhere (e.g., Montaigne), we
can often find ourselves losing confidence in the possibility
of any firmly shared meaning. One of the great problems
with Hamlet may well stem from this point: all energizing
senses of goodness and sympathy seem to be qualified so

strongly and persistently with ironic counterweights, that at

the end we are not sure how to sum up what we have
experienced. It is difficult, for example, in this play not to
feel some sympathy for almost every character and yet, at
the same time, to judge each character as significantly
deficient in some way or another.
Interpreting Shakespeare requires us to be alert to the
possibility of such ironic complication and to the ways it can
affect our understanding of the play. In fact, many of our
discussions will focus squarely on that issue. Is this speech
or this action to be understood literally? Does the character
mean what he says? How is this action or speech qualified,
or undercut, or contradicted by other elements in the scene
or in the play? How does the presence of irony (in varying
degrees) affect our response to the play?
Shakespeare's plays and poems offer a fertile ground for the
consideration of these questions, since they range from
works that seem unambiguously affirming (like, perhaps, As
You Like It, and many of the sonnets) to others which offer
limited ironic possibilities (like, say, Twelfth Night), all the
way to the other end of the spectrum where some works are
so pervasively ironic that we have the greatest difficulty
deciding finally what they might be claiming, if anything,
about experience (like, for example, Hamlet, All's Well That's
Ends Well, Troilus and Cressida, or Sonnet 94).