Chapter 16 - Shame

Summary

Shakespeare’s works continually interrogate shame’s capacity both to repress the individual by reinforcing conservative social norms and to engender an enriched understanding of the self and the world. This chapter engages with critical interventions on shame by Leo Bersani, Gail Kern Paster, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick and Dan Zahavi to examine its function in a wide range of Shakespearean texts, focusing in particular on Coriolanus (1608) and the anonymously-published A Lover’s Complaint (1609). For Coriolanus, shame sparks a moment of insight in which he accepts an externalised version of himself; it provides a phenomenological experience that runs counter to his usual sense of self and to broader Roman values. In contrast, the shame of the abandoned woman in A Lover's Complaint highlights the gap between early modern ethical discourses and her own sexual and emotional experiences. In both works, however, it is the movement outside of the self that follows shame which offers the most radical and illuminating reorientation of subjectivity; this shift in perspective – inspired by love, desire and sympathy – enables characters to experience an othering of the self that is expansive rather than narcissistic.