Shakespeare's Villains

Charney (emer., Rutgers Univ.) has written a useful guide to Shakespeare's villains. They reveal a repetitive nature in the drama and poems as creatures of will who are jocular, full of policy, vulgar, and murderous. Often villains appear linked to the author, always plotting and steeped in the secretive ways of the imagination. Charney devotes chapters to, respectively, Iago, Tarquin and Aaron, Richard of Gloucester, Shylock, Claudius, Macbeth, a trio from King Lear (Edmund, Goneril, Regan), Angelo, Tybalt, 'calumniators' (Don John, Iachimo, and Lucio), and 'tyrants' (Julius Caesar, Leontes, and Duke Frederick). He offers no grand synthesis of Shakespeare's symbolism of evil, and he is guided in his close readings mostly by Shakespeare critics of a couple of generations ago who are still foundational to modern study—Robert Heilman, Marvin Rosenberg, and Bernard Spevack. The strength of Charney's work lies in the amount of close detail captured in summaries of what each villain does and says. These will be especially valuable to readers less than familiar with the plays. … Summing Up: Recommended.