Appearance vs. Reality | Alex Aronson (essay date 1970)
Alex Aronson (essay date 1970)
SOURCE: "Shakespeare and the Ocular Proof," in Shakespeare Quarterly, Vol. XXI, No. 4, Autumn, 1970, pp. 411-29.
[In the following essay, Aronson surveys Shakespeare's plays and concludes that "the choice between the eye and the mind, between the ocular proof and spiritual awareness which Shakespeare's characters are compelled to make, is of the very essence of his tragic vision."]
I
If there is any psychological validity in Blake's dictum—"As a man is, so he sees"—and if it is true not only of the ordinary man, for instance the reader of Shakespeare's plays and the spectator in the theater, but also of the characters he created, then it suggests a criterion by which to judge the thoughts, speeches, and actions of men and women on the stage. For "as a man sees, so he is" seems the natural corollary to Blake's dictum. A man's sense-perceptions, his responsive contact with the outside world...
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