Outline for Adamson's Questions of Identity in Renaissance Drama

In this post, I’m looking at how Adamson establishes her argument in Questions of Identity in Renaissance Drama: New Historicism Meets Old Philology, an article in Shakespeare Quarterly. While I’m reading this article specifically for the implications on King Lear, I plan to focus more on the argument as a whole in this post. More so, I’m trying to look at how the argument is framed rather than some of the finer technical points.

Broadly speaking, Adamson examines the way that the use of “what” as an interrogative pronoun is used to trouble conceptions of post-feudal identity. She does this by delving into some of the linguistic nuances of the matter, then hones in on King Lear as an example of a text in which this plays out. The article is divided into five parts.

Part one opens with an anecdote regarding a letter between a son and his father, in which the tensions between the two generations—and between social class as identity v. personal identity—are evident. This anecdote provides a concrete example of the conflict in action and gives readers a historical frame of reference for the things that will be discussed later in the essay. It also provides context for the attention to interrogative pronouns (“who” v. “what”) used in the following section by presenting a document that examples of this language can be pulled from.

Part two shifts to a somewhat more theoretical discussion. While less concrete than the first part, she keeps the discussion grounded with specific examples from texts, and with attention to different historical moments. The focus of this section is the evolving distinction between “who” and “what.”  She starts by giving the distinction between them in modern usage—something that is given little time, since it is assumed to be well understood. Then she moves back to their early modern usages, establishing the fact that “what” was often used to refer to personal identity and that it was, in many cases, preferred to “who.” She does this by presenting statistics on the relative usage of the two interrogative pronouns by early modern playwrights. Additionally, she sets up several sets of grouped examples that demonstrate the different possible meanings of the question, “What are you?” which could be asking for name, social status, occupation, or personal qualities.

The first two parts strike me as what Hayot would qualify as the unmarked introduction. They do not yet assert much that isn’t previously known or theorized, and do not set up an argument about a specific piece of literature. Rather, they lay out the terms of what is about to be discussed.

Part three introduces King Lear as an example. After making a few broader statements, Adamson narrows her focus to a single play. Drawing on her discussion of the varying uses of “what,” she begins to inspect the ways that the questions “What art thou?” and “Dost thou know me” (among other variations of “What are you” and “Who am I?”) are used to construct identity. In doing so, she pulls out several exchanges from the text and walks through them, detailing the ways that Lear and Kent establish their identities through a series of questions, the way that Oswald challenges Lear’s identity in response to Lear’s attempt to make him verify his (Lear’s) identity as king, and through Lear’s questions of his own identity directed at the fool. Later, she also draws on an exchange between Edgar and Edmund in which similar questions are used to discuss their own identities.  Much of this is done through concrete evidence pulled directly from the text and by close analysis.

Part three makes two main points. First, it shows the way that identity is discussed—and either accepted or rejected—as a unified entity, in which one’s social role is their self. Lear is seen moving away from this, as he slowly develops a personal persona apart from his social role as king. Kent and Edmund both, on the other hand, move back towards using social role as the basis of a single, unified identity. The second point is the idea that identity is not simply asserted by a single person, but is negotiated through dialogue.

Part four brings in a second example, The Duchess of Malfi, to show another text that handles similar question of identity, and in some ways creates a counterpoint to King Lear. In doing so, Adamson shows that there were many ways that the questions could play out, that Lear was not an isolated incidence of identity emerging through dialogue, and that just as many of the characters in Lear gravitated back towards feudal identities, many works also showed a movement towards personal identities. Notably, she uses it to illustrate a servant of the Duchess, likened to Kent, choosing a personal identity over a social one. She also notes on the fact that the Duchess is only known as the Duchess and, unlike Lear, never establishes a private identity, though this last point isn’t fully developed.

Part five serves as an unmarked conclusion. Here, Adamson sums up her argument and ties it into other scholarship in the field. She clarifies her ideas about the emergence of identity through dialogue and explains that, while several others are studying something similar, soliloquies are still thought of as the most important place that identities emerge. This puts her research in context and suggest its relevance, since she’s posing a counterargument to contemporary opinions. She also points out her argument’s relevance to linguistic history and the evolution of interrogative pronouns. By showing the relevance of her research, she puts it in context and gives readers a sense of her argument’s broader application.