In these externals the Elizabethans maintained a strict decorum. Yet the play does not reveal any difference between Rosalind’s and Corin’s speech insofar as breeding is concerned. References to fineness in speech, as in Twelfth Night (I, v, 311), place the character in a class rather than make him unique. Only in a few cases can we be certain that characteristic speech habits are used to individualize. The Hosts of The Merry Wives of Windsor and The Merry Devil of Edmonton have their tricks of speech; so does Corporal Nym. Edgar as Poor Tom alters his speech as an aid to his disguise. Other less certain instances are Osric in Hamlet and Thersites. But more important characters are not drawn in that way. Dogberry and Elbow both use malapropisms, but the characters are not distinguished by them. In fact, the linguistic twist tends to obscure the differences of character and emphasizes the likeness in type. The distinction between the two comes from Dogberry’s fatuous self-confidence and condescension in contrast to Elbow’s alternate deference to authority and scolding of Pompey.
If neither kind of motivation nor form of speech and gesture individualized the characters, perhaps the kind of action they performed did so. In modern drama this usually happens, for the action comes out of the character. But the narrative nature of Elizabethan drama, with its loose causation, makes this less possible. Plays based on the same narrative, for example, differ not so much in action as in character. Lear does contain a sub-plot, the Gloucester story, not present in King Leir. But this addition does not affect the character of Shakespeare’s Lear very much. In a number of scenes both Lear and Leir perform the same action, but there is a world of difference in the characters. Lear proposes the division of his kingdom upon entering, and then immediately questions his daughters. At Cordelia’s muteness his emotions mount in three stages: rejection of Cordelia, banishment of Kent, and dismissal of France. From the beginning Lear demonstrates authority and pride. Leir, however, reveals two reactions: delight at the flattery of Gonerill and Ragan, anger at the bluntness of Cordelia. But he does not have Lear’s intensity of emotional expression.
In their first realization of rejection, the two men repeat these differences. Leir mourns, repenting his folly, regarding Gonerill’s treatment as payment for his sins. This is the beginning in Leir of the grief that he shows throughout the play. Lear, on the other hand, demonstrates amazement, anger, scorn, all at a great height of intensity. This too is the beginning of the barely suppressed rage which finally drives him to madness. When, near the end, Leir’s request for Cordelia’s pardon emerges as grief, he is continuing the emotional quality he attained at the beginning. Lear, however, comes to that level of humility only after having passed through the fires of rage and madness. Of the central range of passion poured out by Lear on the heath, there is no sign in King Leir.
For it is mainly through the depiction of the passions that Shakespeare individualizes his characters. Just as the Elizabethan age envisions reason struggling with passion, so Shakespeare reveals the individual emerging through his passions. With the possible exception of Jonson, this was the general method of the other writers for the Globe company. By them too the generic type is rendered unique when passion is freshly portrayed.
A secondary means of individualization was the presentation of a character’s mind. Many of Shakespeare’s finest characters are distinguished by a profuse and keen wit. Rosalind, warm-hearted and merry, becomes the distinct figure she is through the play of her wit.[36] Octavius Caesar in Antony and Cleopatra is a man supremely guided by reason. In these cases wit or reason, rather than passion, controls the character. But in the gallery of Shakespeare’s portraits such characters are in the minority. Prepared as the actor had to be to render thought vividly, his main efforts had to be devoted to painting the varied passions of man.
The application of this interpretation will be more evident in an examination of Globe plays. For example, the faithful wife type appears in them with some frequency. In the prodigal son plays she is probably closest to a pure type. Luce in The London Prodigal does not wish to marry Flowerdale, but she is forced to do so by her father. After the marriage, when Flowerdale is revealed as a wastrel, the father commands Luce to leave her husband. She replies:
Luce. He is my husband, and his heauen doth know,
With what vnwillingnesse I went to Church,
But you inforced me, you compelled me too it: