ABSTRACT
The popular titles of all of Shakespeare’s tragedies—Titus Andronicus to Timon of Athens—are from character names. The tragedies also have in them significant unnamed characters: the fool in King Lear, the grave-digger in Hamlet, the porter in Macbeth. Like Shakespeare’s plays of English history, the tragedies are also “historical” and many character names derive from sources. In Romeo and Juliet, Harry Levin notes, “Shakespeare balances the rival claims with symmetry and objectivity by making them metrically equivalent: Montague/Capulet, Romeo Montague/ Juliet Capulet”. Shakespeare’s hand on the names in Julius Caesar is light, perhaps because of the familiar historical subject matter. Name origins are especially varied in Hamlet, deriving from languages as different as Latin, Italian, French, German, and Icelandic. Shakespeare’s intention is to suggest with his names universality for his drama: Denmark is a microcosm for the world.
