Abstract

I am not certain that I know what I am trying to describe or how to identify it. It is something that happens or perhaps does not happen in Shakespeare's characters, something about how they think, in particular how they think or do not think at a critical moment of decision or change. I am referring to Shakespeare's policy and practice of conspicuous omission, calculated evasion, silent avoidance—to something that Shakespeare does not give us, a reticence or restraint about the thinking of a character that we might have expected to see revealed. Sometimes I am inclined to say that what I am describing is inadvertent, inevitable. But then I am led back to concluding that what is there is there because Shakespeare...