The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 17.0431  Wednesday, 10 May 2006

From: 		David Schalkwyk <
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Date: 		Wednesday, 10 May 2006 09:28:50 +0200
Subject: 17.0426 Characters
Comment: 	Re: SHK 17.0426 Characters

The question about character seems to me not to be so much whether we 
*should* read the speeches in Shakespeare's plays as signs or marks of 
character, but whether we have any choice NOT to do so.

We are trapped at every point (calling the words on the page "speeches" 
is just one such trap) to see the bodies on stage and what they say or 
the marks on the pages as if they were people ("real" is a red herring 
here). To try not to see "character" in these representations is like 
trying not to see the duck-rabbit drawing as either a rabbit or a duck, 
or not to see the following mark as a face:  :-) . (;-))  It can be 
done, but it requires a peculiar degree of effort.

Wittgenstein has a very pertinent discussion of the kind of aspect 
seeing that informs our reading of character in the _Philosophical 
Investigations_, pp. 193 ff..

David Schalkwyk

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