Shakespeare’s Momentary Lapses of Reason

The Paradox and the Absurd

Abstract

In Shakespearean drama reason at times falters and becomes ineffective in coping with the events. Its limits appear as temporary but dramatic reminders of the necessarily curbed scope of human understanding. Instances of ‘reasonless’ and meaningless phenomena abound in the plays and present themselves mostly in the forms of paradox and the absurd. In the selective recourse to paradoxes in Shakespeare, this article will focus on the tragedies—together with a potentially tragic instance in a chronicle play—which most blatantly expose the limits of reason. I believe that these momentary lapses demonstrate recurring structures of containment characteristic of Shakespeare. Demonstrating the ways paradox and the absurd are contained in Shakespearean drama also entails an overview of the fundamentally different handling of these concepts in the Theatre of the Absurd.