How Characterization and Narration Influence the Themes of Shakespeare's Plays

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07 11 2021
How Do Characterization and Narration Influence the Themes of Shakespeare's Plays
Shakespeare's literature has won an unparalleled universal reputation right from the Elizabethan era to modern times. His works are still relevant in contemporary literature, and his legacy is alive in our schools, film, theatre, and television. Consequently, few dramatists can challenge his dominance because of such unrivaled literary prowess since his plays have been performed on professional and amateur stages alike and translated into numerous languages globally. Shakespeare's plays have been staged and recreated by various popular playwrights and producers, and they have expressly impacted other artists` works. Prominent dramatists and novelists like Tom Stoppard, Charles Dickens, William Faulkner, and Bertolt Brecht have been inspired by his poetry, characterization, narration style, and story plots to re-create and interpret his works befitting audiences of their times. All these literary works re-creations with the drive to immortalize Shakespeare's ingenuity in literature owe to his ability to use narration and characterization to influence themes in his plays.
As observed in Hamlet's opening lines, "who's there?", the sentence instantly sets the identity theme in the play. According to Paul Ricoeur, the "who is there" question must be countered in a narrative because it is the only way to reveal one's identity. Ricoeur further opines that the narrative identity notion pegs on the conviction that identities are conceptualized through narration. Though oblivious of Ricoeur's philosophy, Shakespeare ingeniously creates a story in the context of the "who's there" question to prompt an answer from himself, thus allowing him to use his signature narration technique to paint the play's identity theme. Shakespeare was a skilled artist that told his stories in clear and continuous proses to convey a message to his audience in simple but yet unanticipated ways. For instance, in Hamlet's second line, "stand and unfold yourself," he hits the audience with suspense to discover the characters' identities on stage. The use of characterization suspense ensures that the audience keenly follows the play since one needs to watch the entire play to discover his characters, or at least realize that the identities of some characters are partially concealed.
Customary to his works, we realize that every moment of Shakespeare's Hamlet is an occasion for characters to reveal their identities to the audience. Shakespeare executes this act through his excellent narration skills while keeping in touch with the audience. He employs performance cues while at the same time creating characters that remain visualized in the audience's minds throughout the play.
Moreover, Shakespeare mastered the art of anonymous characterization. He used characters that were well known to the audience in their minds but never really discovered their identities. Guildenstern and Rosencrantz were well known to Shakespeare's audience in his plays, but the audience never unearthed their identities since the two did not get the chance to share their stories on stage. For many years, their identities had been limited in Shakespeare's plays, until when Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead play premiered in 1966. Stoppard acknowledges the limited characterization of their identities in Shakespeare's Hamlet and gives them the main stage to unshackle Rosencrantz and Guildenstern from Shakespeare's restraining script, thus giving them an elaborate narrative identity. The usage of Hamlet's characters and some of Shakespeare's plotlines by Stoppard to set the context for Rosencrantz and Guildenstern's story echoes Ricoeur's narrative identity theory in this play. Therefore, according to Ricoeur, Shakespeare immaculately executes his narration and characterization techniques to perform Hamlet to his audience, who walk with him in space and time as the play unfolds, setting one of its themes, the identity theme from the onset.
Shakespeare's plays have greatly impacted numerous modern languages and cultures. A case in point, most often, English-speaking cultures unconsciously use expressions like "star-crossed lovers" without their Shakespearean origin consciousness. It is not easy to envision the English language advancement without the aphorisms and neologisms of the playwright's contributions.
While he existed during the Elizabethan era when English was quite flexible, Shakespeare's poetic sense and linguistic facility transformed English into a metaphorically rich language. As a renowned playwright, Shakespeare was focal to blending classical drama and native elements in his work. In Hamlet, with revenge as its other theme, Shakespeare portrays its ghosts by conveying a pompous narration to relay a tragedy centered on Seneca's style, the first-century Roman playwright. Yet, on the other hand, he narrates his profound apprehension of his soul's disposition. He narrates his conscience struggles by divulging the play's origins from the native land of mystery dramas and English miracles, which emanated from Christian rituals and illustrated Christian icons. Hence, Shakespeare's fusion of classical drama and native characterization in Hamlet births a tragedy in the play forcing the audience to be emotionally drawn to the performance and reflect on the atrocious deeds committed against citizens and the state. Ultimately, apart from Christopher Marlowe, Shakespeare's protégé predecessor, no other playwright from the Elizabethan era matched his prowess in combining classical and native strains to narrate and characterize his stories to illustrate well-defined themes in his plays.
In Hamlet, Shakespeare employs characterization to reduce Guildenstern and Rosencrantz to subordinate social roles, thus portraying them as subservient men. Shakespeare manages to use the two characters to influence the theme of freedom and submissiveness. From the text, when Queen Gertrude asks Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to find out the reason for Hamlet's sorrow, Guildenstern responds submissively and with a lot of deference that they both obey and are at the Queen's service and ready to be commanded. We observe their effort to appease the King and Queen as dictated by their roles` inferiority in this scene. The playwright intentionally portrays the two characters as giving up themselves and their powers to choose to be submissive and obedient to the monarchy, thus forfeiting their freedom. The characters are bound by their social class and the play's plot as Shakespeare expects of them; thus, they have no choice but to f...