Shakespeare : Construct-A-Character

“Differentiate between the direct and indirect characterization Shakespeare uses in order to construct his characters.”

Through characters talking and praising other characters, Shakespeare indirectly portrays his characters before they even make an appearance in his tragedy. The biggest and most obvious example of such is in portraying Macbeth, the play’s namesake. The very first characterization was indirect, was through drawing a parallel from the very famous lines of the three witches reciting, “Fair is foul, and foul is fair,” (1.1.12). to Macbeth saying, “So foul and fair a day I have not seen,” (1.3.36) two scenes later. This signifies a foreshadowing and a comparison of power from the non-mortal witches to the very much mortal Macbeth. This as well as seeing how on many occasions have there been characters who have praised him for his bravery, a grand theme of a passage that the Captain speaks of in the second scene of the first act, have given already give us a peek into the character that is Macbeth. From this we expect him to be heroic, to be valiant, to be charismatic, and yet we have not even formally met him.

Shakespeare uses direct characterization through

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One thought on “Shakespeare : Construct-A-Character

  1. Thanks for posting your response. Good use of examples and seamless embedding of quotes. Well done! 😀

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