Even though how he exactly does it is now lost to posterity, but does William Shakespeare qualify as the greatest literary character creator of all time?
By: Ringo Bones
Despite were still in awe in Shakespeare’s power of character creation, his methodology on how he does it seems lost to posterity. And unlike more contemporary literary geniuses – like Tom Clancy for example – who had managed to release a book stating their creative methodology of character creation that also includes their specific inspirations – the great Stratfordian bard was derived the fortune of releasing one. Nonetheless, the cast of characters that Shakespeare wrote are not types or allegorical abstractions, but living men and women with the mingled qualities, often the inconsistencies, of life itself. His characters seem so real that they often mislead readers into taking them for actual historic characters whose motives, actions, and mental states can be analyzed like those of Julius Caesar or King Henry V. The sort of magic that has cast too strong a spell on unwary readers, yet it is just this magic that carries us to Arden with Rosalind or let us revel at the Boar’s Head with Sir John Falstaff. It is, no doubt, too much to say that Shakespeare’s range of characters has universal qualities.
But it may not only be me that finds it strange the kind of characters that are absent from the Shakespearean Characters’ gallery. Despite of his plays containing more Biblical references than his contemporaries, Shakespeare never did a portrait of a saint. Given that the age he lived in is often called the age of voyage and discovery, none of his characters had ever led men beyond the far horizon akin to Christopher Columbus, Ferdinand Magellan, Vasco Da Gama or Sir Francis Drake. Weirder still, there are no Shakespearean Characters based on a popular outlaw and rebel – such as Robin Hood. And yet Shakespeare’s range of characters far exceeds that of the most gifted of his contemporaries.
Shakespeare’s gallery of women characters was especially impressive, where extremes are represented by the likes of Cleopatra and Dame Quickly. His heroines have been much praised for their practical qualities, their tenderness, and their readiness to forgive. Something more might be said of their infinite variety.
When it comes to the retinue of his created characters, Shakespeare has been accused of a lack of democratic sympathy. No doubt he disliked the common herd; but of his sympathy with the individual commoner there can be little doubt. He laughs at the impudence of bully Bottom in The Midsummer Night’s Dream, and the officious stupidity of Dogberry in Much Ado About Nothing – but with a kindly laughter; these too are men and brothers. He appreciated at its true worth the homely wisdom of the common man – as seen in the shepherd Corin – for example in As You Like It, or in Hamlet’s gravedigger. Most of all he paid homage to the common man’s trait of loyalty, embodied in old Adam in As You Like It, and in Gloucester’s tenant in King Lear, ready to succor his blinded master, “come on’t what will”. Homely wisdom and enduring loyalty are permanent qualities in human nature, and it is this recognition of the permanent that gives Shakespeare’s characters their perennial appeal.
