Madness and Drama in the Age of Shakespeare. A Review Article

Extract

Duncan Salkeld's study of madness in the age of Shakespeare is conceived of as being against the grain of both traditional literary criticism and historiography. Noting that the critical contemplation of the inner life of Shakespearean character has been central (as far back as Coleridge) to previous approaches to the study of madness in Shakespeare, Salkeld argues instead that the “inner worlds of the mind of Shakespearean characterization are largely represented by external appearance, in language describing corporeal states.” Thus, the towering constructs of personality in Lear and Hamlet, for example, are turned inside out when critical attention is focused on the “materiality” of madness and its forms. This privileging of “external appearance” and “corporeality” over the imagined inner life of character is licensed by Salkeld's thesis that personal crises in the dramatic lives of Shakespeare's tragic heroes and heroines must invariably be read qua political crisis. The author writes that any “discussion of the internal life of a character then becomes a second order issue, and considerably more problematic when the historical specificity of these conditions is addressed” (p. 2).