Simulation of Substance and Shadow: Inner Emotions and Outer Behavior in Shakespeare's Psychology of Character

Although in post-modern discourse doubt has been thrown on the value of ideas of emotions and character, I argue in this paper that a cognitive approach to Shakespeare enables us to see these matters a comprehensible way. Plays such as those of Shakespeare are simulations that run on minds. As we run one of these simulations we take on the goals of a protagonist, and run his or her plans—as depicted in the play—on our own cognitive system. Because of the suggestiveness, which Eastern literary theorists have called dhvani, of Shakespeare's work, his plays enable us to explore not just understandings of others, but of ourselves. Shakepeare's poetry along with processes such as empathetic identification, invoke our own memories and emotions in relation to contexts that the plays offer. Although plays are artificial, in running them as simulations they enable us to understand in ourselves, and also in others, more of the real relations between substance (inner goals and experience) and shadow (outer behavior) than is often possible in ordinary life.