Shakespeare's Doctor Characters

Abstract

Doctors are commonly seen characters on the stage in the sixteenth and seventeenth century. In Shakespeare's plays there are nine medical practitioners, among which six of them are professional physicians. This thesis is to explore how Shakespeare deploys the conventional traits and dramatic functions of stage doctors in his own doctor characters to serve different dramaturgical themes. Physicians in the sixteenth and seventeenth century occupied the top of the hierarchy of medical practitioners. They strove to maintain their social and intellectual superiority, and were often perceived as profit-oriented and avaricious. Stage doctors share certain traits, such as deferent, conservative and greedy. Doctors usually play minor parts in plays and some of them are assigned the tasks of poisoning by court members. The stereotyped correlation between a doctor and treason involving poisoning helps to shape a doctor character of this kind. The outcome of a crime, whether a doctor kills or not, serves as genre markers of the plays: when a doctor kills it turns to be a tragedy, when he does not it tends to be a comedy or tragicomedy. Shakespeare uses doctors' conventional traits and their social and intellectual authority to assist the flow of the plot. In "The Merry Wives in Windsor", Dr. Caius' pompousness and arrogance, as well as his social and intellectual authority being ridiculed, contribute to the comedy of the play. The nameless doctor in "The Two Noble Kinsmen" successfully cures the Jailer's Daughter and reinserts her into her expected social position. His authority is normalized and endorsed, indicating the consolidation of a society. In "Macbeth", which is full of medical images and metaphors, a doctor appears near the end of the play as a concrete manifestation of the decline of the political body of Scotland. Key Words: physicians, stage doctors, genre marker, body politics, disease.