Performance, Subjectivity and Slander in Hamlet and Much Ado About Nothing
Piette, Adam
Early Modern Literary Studies 7.2 (September, 2001)
Abstract
Erving Goffman’s The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life and its theory of the theatricality of team-generated subjectivity is used to analyze scenes from Hamlet and Much Ado in order to suggest that Shakespeare both questions the validity of private subjectivity and dramatizes such scepticism as a consequence of slanderous forces in early modern courtly culture. Subjectivity in the early modern period could be defined, in Goffman’s terms, as the internalization of the slanderous secrets of the enemy team. Interiority is however also defined by Shakespeare in terms of social damnation through sacrifice to social networks of slander and misrepresentation.
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