Shakespeare and Cognition: Aristotle's Legacy and Shakespearean Drama (review)

In his opening chapter, called "Aristotle's Legacy," Arthur F. Kinney tells us that all knowledge begins with the senses, or, more specifically, with our perception of "objects" (3). For Kinney, Aristotle's legacy is derived precisely from his "singular use of the senses for the cause of later knowledge" (4). Using Thomas Aquinas's critique of Aristotle, however, Kinney highlights how Aquinas's "sense of cognition grow[s] out of Aristotle" via the introduction of a "mental word" that can eventually take the place of an object. Aquinas adds that "this referential way of establishing meaning can be expanded to permit objects that are absent or never even seen" (5). Thusly does Kinney establish his theoretical departure point, one which recognizes that "[h]owever intuitively sophisticated Shakespeare may or may not have been in understanding how the human brain functions — how men and women perceive and conceive — his plays often rely securely on stage properties both seen and unseen" (24).

Kinney's second chapter on "Shakespeare's Crowns" is effective in establishing the importance of an object's absence. He reminds us that the crown, which Caesar thrice "put by with the back of his hand" (Shakespeare qtd. in Kinney, 26) is necessarily unseen by the viewing audience, as the ceremony is recounted to them (us) only through Cassius's hearsay. Distinguishing between crown, the Roman laurel wreath, and even, the biblical diadem — Kinney reminds us that the unseen crown has the opportunity to evoke a wide range of symbolic meanings, from one simply "theatrical" (30) — that is, as a device used to uphold social differentiations between the ruling elites and mobbing plebs — to one symbolizing tyranny and the unbridled quest for power (Kinney notes the case of Macbeth, both Richards, and Henry IV and V, along with Brutus). Whether domestic or imperialistic, the crown possesses "temptations[,] . . . dangers, and . . . consequences" (38). Finally, in biblical terms, the crown (that is, the thorny diadem of Christ) also raises a discussion of a king's (spiritual) duty to his people. By invoking a plethora of images concomitant with certain objects (such as a crown) during the Renaissance, then, Kinney seeks to "transhistorically recov[er] early significations of the plays" (xvi).

The third, fourth, and fifth chapters of Kinney's book deal with Shakespeare's "Rings, Bells, and Wills" respectively, emphasizing the inability of Elizabethan audiences to see these objects, and the ramifications this lack of sight has on their perception (that is, their cognition) of the play. The chapter on bells, for example, examines the "cultural range of sound along varying neural pathways in the mind's ear" (my emphasis, 99), while the chapter on "Shakespeare's Wills" examines the social and obligatory skepticism associated with the interpretation of texts. Discussing the real world ramifications of Shakespeare's actual will, for example, Kinney reminds us that the room for interpretation directly affected how wills, and subsequently, how those of Shakespeare's plays which incorporated them, might have been perceived: "Cognitively, then, in Shakespeare as in his larger culture, the peculiar flexibility or indeterminacy of wills meant they could favour, inhibit, restrict, punish, instruct, cheat, empower, protect, confine, enlighten, demoralize, politicize, betray, or encourage" (127).

Kinney deftly handles his textual and historical material; however, the introduction of scientific evidence for the sake of "bringing the plays back to the experience they [Shakespeare's plays] knew at the Curtain, the Fortune and the Globe" (xvi) seems a bit forced. Over the course of his middle four chapters, only once does Kinney introduce an extended quotation related to the cognitive sciences, this by brain scientist John J. Ratney (54). For a book that has the word cognition in its title, the absence of any sort of cognitive discussion over the course of 104 pages makes its title somewhat misleading. The most salient portion of his discussion on cognition, in the scientific sense, comes as Kinney maps out the neurological happenings...