‘Not to be Altered’: The Author-Character in Shakespeare and Middleton

This article builds on the critical suggestion that there is a special relationship and no small amount of linkage between William Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale and Thomas Middleton’s The Lady’s Tragedy, in order to suggest a shared interest by the playwrights in characters who work to place themselves in an authorial role, shaping the narrative of their respective plays. Focusing on Leontes and Paulina in The Winter’s Tale, and the Tyrant and the Lady in The Lady’s Tragedy, this article suggests that each of these characters is intensely interested in making and refashioning narrative. By viewing these characters as author-characters, we can reassess both how the playwrights depict an individual desire for control, as well as the performance opportunities that this desire opens up. The author-character thus affords new ways to consider the embodiment of narrative on stage.