Shakespeare and Allegory

Abstract

Shakespeare’s art is much influenced by dramatic and nondramatic allegory and reflects many of its characteristic structures and techniques of representation: for example, characterological projections and mergings, mindscapes, insets, binary pairings and twinnings, myths, and intertextuality. The thematic, conceptual structure and texture of numerous Shakespeare plays are so strongly allegorical as to issue in metareadings that are essentially allegorical as well. Shakespeare’s plays also incorporate features derived from the allegorical morality plays, notably the figure of the Vice and the symbolic forms of dramatic positioning. Together with appropriate definitions of ‘allegory’, the intertextuality of Shakespeare’s writings with the allegory of Spenser’s contemporary Faerie Queene is further critical for recognizing the extent and complexity of the allegory in Shakespeare’s plays.