Abstracts Language, Literature, and Linguistic

The Motivation of Characters in Othello, King Lear and Macbeth

by Roger Mae Smith

By examining the critical comment of some of the best known critics, who fall roughly into two groups, the philosophical or psychological on the one hand, and the realistic on the other, I have endeavored to gather the ideas they have advanced in regard to the motives of them main characters from three of Shakespeare's tragedies – Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth. It is evident that the discussion of motives has not been the main consideration of any one of them, though the problem has naturally arisen in the analyses of characters and explanations of plot and dramatic art. Consequently it will be my purpose to study these plays from the standpoint of the motivation of the characters, having in mind two objects: the determination of which motives Shakespeare took from the sources of the plays and which ones he himself attributed to the characters, and the determination of which group of critics, the psychological or the realistic, is more nearly correct in their contentions in regard to the motivation of characters in Shakespeare's plays.