"When Shakespeare begins his exposition thus he generally at first makes people talk about the hero, but keeps the hero himself for some time out of sight, so that we await his entrance with curiosity, and sometimes with anxiety"
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Bradley is pointing to a sly piece of stagecraft that doubles as a moral argument: Shakespeare manufactures desire for the hero before granting us the hero. The audience is primed the way a jury is primed-by testimony, rumor, and selective framing. People "talk about" the central figure first, which means the hero arrives already burdened with expectation. Curiosity is the bait; anxiety is the hook, because the delay invites a question that is never neutral: will the person match the story we have been told?
The subtext is that character is not revealed in a vacuum. It is socially produced. By letting other voices sketch the hero in advance, Shakespeare dramatizes how reputations are built and how a community's language can pre-judge an individual. When the hero finally appears, we are not meeting a blank slate; we are watching a collision between presence and preconception. That collision is where tragedy often begins.
Bradley writes as a Victorian-era judge turned critic, and you can feel the courtroom instinct in his attention to "exposition" and "awaiting". He treats Shakespeare less like a poet of spontaneous inspiration and more like a strategist of evidence and timing. The method he describes also flatters the audience: it assumes we are active participants, forming theories, weighing credibility, bracing for the moment the accused-or the anointed-walks into view. In a theater, as in law, suspense is authority: whoever controls the order of appearances controls the story we think we are seeing.
The subtext is that character is not revealed in a vacuum. It is socially produced. By letting other voices sketch the hero in advance, Shakespeare dramatizes how reputations are built and how a community's language can pre-judge an individual. When the hero finally appears, we are not meeting a blank slate; we are watching a collision between presence and preconception. That collision is where tragedy often begins.
Bradley writes as a Victorian-era judge turned critic, and you can feel the courtroom instinct in his attention to "exposition" and "awaiting". He treats Shakespeare less like a poet of spontaneous inspiration and more like a strategist of evidence and timing. The method he describes also flatters the audience: it assumes we are active participants, forming theories, weighing credibility, bracing for the moment the accused-or the anointed-walks into view. In a theater, as in law, suspense is authority: whoever controls the order of appearances controls the story we think we are seeing.
Quote Details
| Topic | Writing |
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