"Knowing Minds in Shakespeare"
Abstract
This paper will try to suggest Shakespeare's answers to the following questions: Can one know one's own mind? Can one know the minds of other persons? If the answer to both questions is "yes," is there a difference between the kinds of "knowing" involved in these cases? If the answer is "no," in either or both cases, why should that be? Before discussing these issues, I offer a defense of talking about literary characters as if they were persons. In the first part of the paper—on knowing one's own mind—I discuss two characters. The first, Shylock, seems to know his own mind pretty completely. The paper shows how the play complicates this. The second character discussed in the first part is Hamlet. Here the analysis shows that this character has no stable self to know. The second part of the paper—on knowing the mind of others—begins with what I take to be successful cases. The first is Edgar's entry into his father's consciousness in the mock-suicide. My second example of successful knowing of another focuses on some moments in the relationship of Antony and Cleopatra. The paper then turns to considering cases of knowledge of another person that are epistemologically successful but do not involve love of or care for the other person. Characters who are seen to exemplify this are Hal in the H4 plays, and Iago. I come to three final conclusions: that knowledge of others and self-knowledge are seen by Shakespeare as on all fours with one another; that neither sort of knowledge necessarily involves love; and that knowledge of others only takes on ethical value when it does involve this.
