From Medieval Community to Modern Individuality: Shakespeare's Reinvention of Personal Identity in the Characters of Hamlet and Falstaff

__INTRODUCTION__ 
1. Dynamic interrelations governing the generation of identities. 
Unless we are clearly warned by the writer that what we are going to read or to watch 
on stage is “pure fantasy”, our natural tendency, as readers or members of the public, is that of 
assuming both a great individuality and a great typicality about the characters of fiction and 
the environments where they move about. Indeed, it is fairly typical of writers to monitor 
reality in order to address actuality and draw attention alternately to the individual and the 
general, giving a more or less veritable account of their age, but it is likewise possible that the 
actual intention is to persuade, to depict a moral truth, or even fantasy. Certainly beyond 
question is the vigorous impact of context – that is, historical and political events, social life, 
changing fashions, cultural and scientific innovations – on the consideration of what the world 
means in the mind of readers and writers, naturally reflected in what is written and read. 
“There is no such thing as a human nature independent of culture”, Geetz writes, meaning by 
culture not mainly “complexes of concrete behaviour patterns –customs, usages, traditions, 
habit clusters” but rather “a set of control mechanisms –plans, recipes, rules, instructions...- 
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for the governing of behaviour.” According to this statement, therefore, humans themselves 
are to be considered as “cultural artefacts”, the outcome of a supple never-ending process of 
formation and expression of human identity, just like art is a human creation, in a coherent 
mode of perceiving and behaving within the world. In this sense, the forms of literature which 
are privileged and peculiar to a given age serve as main clue to achieve a fulfilling 
comprehension of the kind of reality that the writers living in that specific age have in mind, 
for we can grasp the complex interactions of meaning that unfold between the creation of 
1
C. Geetz, “The impact of the concept of culture on the concept of man”, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 
(Chicago/II./USA: The Atomic Scientists of Chicago), vol. 22, no. 4 (April 1966), pp. 2-8. 
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literary characters, the shaping of one‟s own identity, the attempt of shaping other selves, and 
the experience of being shaped by outer forces, namely “control mechanisms”. 
2. The dawn of characterization: the Middle Ages and the idea of „collectivity‟. 
Any discussion about the construction of personal identity and the rise of individuality 
must necessarily start from the medieval ideological system that lies behind the early literary 
representations of the „human‟, together with the developing phenomenon of consciousness 
which founded the grounds of the Medieval period and threatened the subsequent Modern 
Era. 
The Middle Ages were in fact originally characterized by a sense of eternity, stability 
and community which pervades all its literary works: customs of art and philosophy were 
somewhat conservative, and the idea of „personality‟ was intended in a less marked way than 
it would be today. Questions about what is to be a person, the value of a person in virtue of 
the essential singularity of his being, or in virtue of what is universal in him, of his relation to 
ethical categories, or in virtue of his relations to other people, or to God were to be embedded 
within that medieval mystical vision of the world which identified the aim of a person‟s being 
with its place in a public ethical scheme or social hierarchy. The literary forms which were by 
far the most significantly peculiar to that age as well as evocative of its pervasive religious 
spirit, were the cycles of miracle and morality plays, inspired respectively by the lives of 
saints and the episodes of the Old and New Testament. Coming into English from French and 
Latin, they best represent the English (and European) launch-pad of that progressive dramatic 
evolution of characters, which goes from germinal figures representing whole classes of 
people, aspects of a man, or principles, up to the formation of concrete portraits of palpable 
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particular individuals. In his exhaustive analysis of the history of English drama, Lombardo 
makes clear how the union of religious illustrations and human experience in the miracle play 
gave birth in the fourteenth century to an embryonic form of drama, where life was 
configured as stage and biblical characters as dramatis personae, which were traced, justified 
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and interpreted in their own actions. First and foremost characterized for the adoption of an 
authentic and real language (Vulgar, replacing the Latin of the earlier liturgical plays), the 
miracle play was certainly the greatest expression of a popular world, but merely following 
some bare essential lines: thought and moral conscience were still immature, and the 
impossibility of interpreting and amplifying the facts offered by the religious tradition was a 
strong limit, so it was still a “basic” type of reality. Then, the appearance of moralities marked 
a significant passage to a larger sense of freedom for the writer in structuring and organizing 
the subject, developing the plot, in the processes of characterization and psychological 
exploration. Though still deep-rooted in religion and supervised by the church, the morality 
play showed a new sensibility towards earthly actions as well as spiritual life, with regards to 
the tragic and sore aspects of the human condition. Hence, a more complex reality, made of 
inner feelings and passions, thought and reflection, resulting from the attempt of writers to 
outline the drama of consciousness, the vision of the transient man within the ranks of a 
superior and balanced order, the idea of death (a typically predominant theme among 
medieval writers in general). The edifying aim of the morality play was in fact to provide the 
audience with moral persuasion and exempla, in the metaphorical form of a conflict between 
the forces of good and evil for the conquest of the protagonist‟s human soul. So, just as the 
protagonist of a play embodied the whole mankind, the sequence „temptation-sin-final 
redemption‟ marking the action on stage exemplified, through the story of a single man, the 
2
I. Imperiali and A. Lombardo, “Poesia e poetica del teatro dal Medioevo al Rinascimento” in Storia del teatro 
inglese: dal Medioevo al Rinascimento (Roma: Carocci, 2001). pp.90-115. 
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same scheme previously offered by the miracle plays in terms of the history of mankind in a 
Christian perspective. In this view, it is important to stress the presence of „abstract‟ 
allegorical figures on the stage, placed as dramatis personae (but not yet as proper characters) 
alongside other „realistic‟ figures, in order to personify human qualities, vices and values. 
Moreover, it is noteworthy that the object of the representation is no more the biblical event, 
but man in general, „mankind‟, „every man‟. Indeed, it is right with The Summoning of 
Everyman that the mystery cycles of England reached their highest point, for it corresponded 
to the confluence of the two lines (the „particular‟ one from miracle plays and the „universal‟ 
one from morality plays): a story which is the symbol of the human tragedy but represented in 
the particular and individual features of one single man. In other words, here the moralistic 
and didactic intention appears to be subordinate to the creation of human characters that are 
placed in a universal situation, but at the same time, intended in a more concrete and 
particular nature. One could argue that there was still an extremely strict dependence on 
religion in these primordial plays to be properly defined as dramas, as well as a precarious 
relation with cultural life; nevertheless, it is undeniable that the medieval search for moral 
reality and its dramatic representation was the greatest inheritance conveyed to the 
Elizabethan drama, just as human nature began to stand out in all its amplitude and mobility 
of attitudes, feelings and thoughts, that would later find their major interpreter in 
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Shakespeare. 
3. From the Medieval to the Early Modern man: the „inner-outer‟ distinction. 
Certainly, the Canterbury Tales represents one of the towering achievements in 
Western culture, as far as characterization is concerned. Written at the end of the fourteenth 
3
 Ibid. p.104. 
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century, on inspiration of other literary works, like Boccaccio‟s Decameron, it shows a moral, 
social and psychological typicality. But the kind of typicality varies, as Chaucer painted an 
ironical and critical portrait of English society at the time (including social types like the 
Knight, the Parson, the Plowman, the Miller, the Prioress, the Monk, etc.), where he 
purposely chose to give his characters certain aspects of reality and exaggerated traits to help 
develop each of the characters' tales. Thus, when viewed more closely, one can determine 
whether each of the characters is convincing or questionable based on their personalities. As 
suggested by Medcalf, Chaucer‟s creation of a deep individuality and reality is particularly 
remarkable in the Wife of Bath: amusingly attractive, she gives a frank autobiographical 
confession in her prologue, boasting of how she has had five husbands, over whom she has 
gained dominance, and her tale serves to reinforce in principle what she has actually achieved 
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in practice. Indeed, it is right the audacity and the honesty of her character, along with the 
dynamic personality conveyed by her mannerisms and prejudices, to strike the pilgrims and 
give the reader the impression of being spoken to by a real person, to such a point that she has 
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been defined as “Falstaff‟s literary mother”. Still, even for the most highly regarded English 
writer of the Middle Ages, often considered as Shakespeare‟s authentic precursor, there are 
obviously significant limitations, as Chaucer had, unlike Shakespeare, no heroine who was 
both virtuous and fervently adventurous, or at least, somewhat more virtuous and adventurous 
– his prototypes being the Man of Law‟s Constance or the Franklin‟s Dorigen. However, the 
combination of humour and irony in Chaucer‟s natural style, is extremely important in so far 
as it contributes to create a sort of indecorous mirth, which permeates the whole work and is 
part of the essence of satire; in a sense, irony is the means by which the author released 
4
 S. Medcalf, “On reading books from a half-alien culture” in The Later Middle Ages (London: Methuen, 1981). 
pp.1-55: 29. 
5
 H. Bloom, “Henry IV” in Shakespeare: The Invention Of The Human (New York: The Berkley Publishing 
Group, 1998). pp.271-318: 284. 
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