SHAKESPEARE'S IDENTITIES

A critical study explores the significance of identity in Shakespearean drama.

The predecessor to this work, Identity in Shakespearean Drama, was first published in 1983 and, according to Driscoll, “suffered for being a few years before its time.” Despite the book being out of print since 2005, the author asserts that time “does not seem to have diminished the value of its ideas or withered the freshness of its approaches.” The earlier work drew on Jungian approaches to interrogate identity in Hamlet, Twelfth Night, Measure for Measure, King Lear, and The Tempest. Those chapters have been “re-thought and revised.” The new volume boasts additional chapters examining Othello and The Merchant of Venice, the latter of which originally formed part of Driscoll’s 1971 University of Wisconsin, Madison, dissertation but was banned on account of the “discussions of father-daughter incest” and gay sexuality being “too outré” for the era. An addendum entitled “Integrity of Life in The Duchess of Malfi” has also been included, which allows the author to explore the dramatist John Webster’s “fundamentally different existentialist assumptions” from those of Shakespeare. Calling on Jung as “a guide and a provocateur of re-thinking,” Driscoll sets out a complex definition of identity that is founded on grouping meanings of the term into four categories: “real, social, conscious, and ideal identities.” In doing so, he creates the means to critically unpack some of Shakespeare’s most captivating characters.

In his opening, the author draws attention to footage of cultural critics Jordan Peterson and Camille Paglia discussing the “cultural quagmires” of contemporary literary studies— specifically, the academic abandonment of Jung, among others. In response, Driscoll asserts contentiously: “The quick answer is that the Western canon was derailed by political and social forces spurred by the Vietnam War, 1970s sexual liberation, and the civil rights movements whether racial, feminist, or LGBT.” References to Peterson and Paglia could be interpreted as a grasping attempt on Driscoll’s part to revive outdated work by aligning it with the ideas of critics “popular among today’s college age viewers.” On the contrary, the author’s exegesis remains fresh and thought-provoking. His scrupulous examination of the shifting identities of Shakespeare’s protagonists can make for illuminating reading: “The change in Othello’s conscious identity commences as he begins to see himself, his race, origins, and age through his tempter’s eyes. Iago succeeds because he, with his racial animosity, so readily carries the projection of Othello’s own shadow.” For those who are largely unacquainted with Jung, this will prove a particularly novel interpretation of Shakespeare. Aimed at academic readers, Driscoll’s approach is predictably jargon heavy: “Archetypal images and mythic patterns, then, achieve psychic adaptation and equilibrium by correcting the cultural hubris or imbalance of a specific time and area.” Despite the occasional typo often involving the use of an apostrophe, this work is a thoughtfully conceived and well-researched study. But the author’s blustering about how literary studies looked to new horizons in the 1970s will be considered admirably forthright by some readers and disappointingly short-sighted by others. This book is sure to ruffle some feathers in academia.

A convincing and enlightening, if occasionally contentious, examination of Shakespeare’s dramas.