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Show 266 Jeremy Park "HE BRINGS HIS DESTINY WITH HIM": MORAL AGENCY IN SHAKESPEARE'S TRAGEDIES Jeremy Park (Mark Matheson) Department of English University of Utah honors college spring 2012 Shakespearean studies, especially as of late, have been concerned with the societal forces and energies that have shaped William Shakespeare, his thinking, and the plays he authored. Many analyze his plays examining how societal and external influences determine the actions and destinies of the characters within the plays. Many downplay or reject the idea that his characters have any legitimate agency, or the ability to affect their own destiny through moral choices. I have examined Shakespeare's high tragedies-Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth-and have found that Shakespeare depicts moral agency, the ability to make good ethical and moral decisions in spite of contrary forces, is an ideal that Shakespeare depicts as being possible to achieve. Shakespeare's characters are not free moral agents because they are free from influence, but because the influences that affect them do not determine their thoughts, actions, or destiny. Consequences to their words and actions may be predetermined by natural laws, legal codes, or even the exercising of the agency of others. Shakespeare even illustrates that characters are not determined by their own characters, habits, or emotions. These are just influences, however powerful they may be, that his characters can obey, succumb to, reject, or act against. Shake-speare's characters tend to make poor moral choices because they believe that they are prede-termined to act in such a way by providence; political, social, or familial influences; or their own character or previous choices. The tragedy is that the characters believe that they are predeter-mined to act immorally, which often leads to the loss of, or the failure to achieve, transcendence. Mark Matheson |
