Shakespeare’s Marginal Characters: An Alternative to Dominant Tudor Ideology

Abstract

This paper explores marginal characters in Shakespeare’s plays that offer a valid alternative to the power- craving aspirations of their ideological authorities. Special attention in the research is paid to the role of the nameless murderers in Richard III, nameless servants in King Lear and soldier Williams in Henry V. The common denominator for these marginal characters is the fact that they willingly disobey their superiors’ orders and unequivocally decide to follow the voice of conscience rather than the voice of authority. Shakespeare introduces marginal characters to point to the notion that rebellion against the dominant ideology has to start from the individual level in order to inspire a global act of resistance. It is our aim to prove that Shakespeare's genuine idea was to subvert and not glorify Tudor's Golden Age. The theoretical framework of the paper relies on the critical insights of Greenblatt, Eliot, Leggatt, Rudnytsky, Fernie, etc.