Shakespeare’s Renaissance Realism

This chapter illustrates William Shakespeare’s Renaissance realism, an intermediate mode between medieval and modern. Locally, this may imitate reality naturalistically; but in its larger coherence, it adopts multiple-perspective viewpoints that are often related morally or psychologically rather than causally. Shakespeare’s comedies even combine allegory with illusionistic representation. The chapter then turns to Shakespeare’s tragedies, particularly examining Hamlet. In Shakespeare’s Renaissance realism, what may seem gaps are really transitions between perspectives. Realism through relational mirror images seems to have been quite accessible to Renaissance audiences. Direct and indirect mimesis were not conflicting opposites but complementary, mutually supportive perspectives. Shakespearean mimesis could ‘suit the action to the words’, combining indirect with direct representation, ‘external’ metaphors with subjective introspection.