Over the last twenty years or so, post-structuralist attacks on the 'subject' have led to the questioning of many traditional assumptions about the nature of character in literature and drama. The very concept of character has been held to carry politically reactionary implications. More recently, however, theoretically sophisticated critics have felt a need to salvage this concept while continuing to reject what is often called the bourgeois, liberal humanist view of the subject. In this article I would like to explore two related aspects of character in Shakespearian drama that seem to me to be particularly relevant to the current debate. The first is that of character as an 'effect' of verbal interaction. The second concerns the problem of a character's agency. I will then test the claims made by discussing part of Measure for Measure 2.2.

Recent studies by Jean-Christophe Agnew, Douglas Bruster, and Lars Engle have shown that the rapid expansion of the market into a pervasive, 'placeless' phenomenon in later sixteenth century England was beginning to affect the entire tissue of social existence, above all in the fast-growing capital. As dramatists were well aware, the mushrooming London theatres were both an expression of this accelerating market economy and a site in which to reflect upon it in their explorations of human behaviour.