Download Shakespearian Themes—The Questions Shakespeare asks in most

Shakespearean Themes
The Questions Shakespeare asks in most of his plays follow. Remember that he never
provides “answers” or “solutions” to these questions—he simply presents us with the
personal choices his complex, fallible and thoroughly human characters work out for
these universal human problems, dilemmas, and questions, and the consequences of
those choices. This list applies to the Histories, the Comedies and the Romances as
well as to the Tragedies themselves…
Shakespeare is like that, O ye precious comet-riders
So fire away! Fire away and fall back!
—spb 12/10/00
Shakespeare is interested in Questions of Identity:
Who am I? How do I know who I am? Who knows? Who decides? Self?
Others? God(s)? (In) Whom should I trust?
Questions of Role:
What is my role in my (this) situation? What are the roles I play? Why do I play
them? Which roles should I play? WHAT IS A MAN?
Questions of Relationship:
How should I relate to others? What are relationships? What are the real
(actual) relationships? HOW SHOULD I RESPOND TO (THOSE IN)
AUTHORITY? Whom should I serve? How should I serve?
(In Macbeth, Shakespeare explores ideas of Honor, Nobility, Rank, Duty, Loyalty,
and Power in multiple public and private relationships: marital and family
relationships, the relationships between friends, and love relationships, as well as
political, military, religious, and “business” [practical and/or self-serving]
relationships).
Questions of Judgment and Action:
While pondering the nature of Thought and Knowledge (What should I think?
What do I know? How do I know it? How do I know I know?), and Belief (What
should I believe? Why should I believe it? ) Shakespeare explores questions of
Judgment and Action:
What should I do? How should I decide what to do?
(In Macbeth, Shakespeare is especially interested in questions of Judgment and
Action, and questions about Imagination and Reality).
Questions of Time and Change:
What is Time? What is the nature of Time? How do certain events, situations
and people affect the times (“the Time”) in which we live? HOW SHOULD I
RESPOND TO CHANGE?
In the Tragedies, we see individual responses (the individual’s response) to these
themes in all “Kingdoms” (as above, the political, familial, social, religious, personal,
romantic, financial, medical, and military realms, to name a few…).
There is no “isolation” of themes or personal characteristics in Shakespeare; the
interrelation of all of the Bard’s themes leads to the tragic hero’s inability to cope with
some threats—to use the terms set out in the Princeton, “The predicaments in which
protagonists [the tragic heroes—spb] — men who would seem to be impervious to
temptation or folly in other situations — seem calculated to baffle, try, or torture
them. And opportunists or villains in tragedy choose their mighty victims and, like the
fates, appear to manipulate the machinery of the plot to destroy them with appalling
ingenuity. Indeed, the actions of these lesser persons and the movements of the plot
form an instrument finely adapted to the testing and laying bare of the nature of
heroism. The gods or fates, or the great tragedians, rarely select weak men for heroic
destinies. Since Aristotle, students of tragedy have debated endlessly the character of
the protagonist. Frequently, the traditional theory of the 'tragic flaw' (q.v.), Aristotle’s
hamartia, when applied to specific cases, simplifies and indeed prejudges this
character. Were it not for the protagonist’s 'flaw,' we are told— his folly, obsessions,
or crimes — he would not find himself the target of so menacing a concert of forces,
in heaven, society, other individuals, and in himself. Or at least he would be able to
master or transcend them.”