‘THE VISAGE OF OFFENCE’: A PSYCHOANALYTICAL VIEW OF FORGIVENESS AND REPENTANCE IN SHAKESPEARE'S PLAYS

ABSTRACT This paper attempts to explore some aspects of the psychological effort and achievement that constitutes the nature of forgiveness. It looks at forgiveness through the lens of different emotional processes shown in Shakespeare's plays. It aims to trace some lines of development in Shakespeare's thought. It argues that both forgiveness and repentance are hard‐won and precarious psychic states, and that both call for considerable struggle and pain. It suggests that shallower and less evolved states of mind may sometimes masquerade as forgiveness and as repentance, and that there are certain spurious short cuts to both. Shakespeare reflects both authentic and inauthentic forgiveness and repentance at various moments in his plays.