Four and Five, I will also show that each playwright has a different style in constructing the consciousness of the characters’ minds with regard to the ←26 | 27→thought-action continuum, and I will argue that this difference in style will affect the reading and characterisation process.
In order to achieve the above goal, I will proceed in a manner similar to that of Palmer in his Fictional Minds (2004). I will decode the actions of the characters in the playscripts and in so doing will establish a link between their thoughts and actions. Specifically, in drama, the actions10 of the characters are indicative of what goes on in their thoughts. Everything that goes on in a character’s mind is manifested in its speech and actions.
I would like to use the terms action-based and thought-based characterisation statements, while discussing the construction of characters’ minds. Depending from where on the thought-action continuum the description of a character’s thoughts or actions is located, either of the aforementioned terms can be used. The diversity of thought-based and action-based information given about a character can influence the readers’ reading. A very important, influencing factor is the number of previous exposure readers have had to the character. It is important how complete the image is that readers have constructed of the character: have they already encountered this persona during the course of the narrative? How much information has the authorial agency given them so far? Have the other characters commented on the character already introduced and, if so, to what extent; or is this the first set of information on this particular character the readers encounter? These factors all matter in the construction of the characters’ minds at any given point in the play.
I will also trace the transition between intramental and intermental thinking. More often than not, it is an intramental thought that develops into or becomes engaged in an intermental one. Thus, the main premises I will consider are social, ideological or even shared physical context which initiate an intermental action or thought. Important in this regard is the notion of group norms, also mentioned by Palmer:
Social norms are always liable to be transgressed by individuals, and the fatal words are a potentially norm-breaking intramental action. Such dissent is characteristic of many aspects of the relationship between intermental and intramental thinking. (2004: 228–9)
Group norms and their transgression form a very important part in the dynamics of a play and in the construction of characters’ minds. I believe that such breaking of norms occurs when certain characters establish intermental thinking with ←27 | 28→other characters, based on not only similarities but also on differences in their mindsets. This means that a certain character or group of characters share different mindsets with another character or group, but that there is an incompatibility between them on the grounds of one or several frames.
Through this kind of analysis, I will try to show how some passages of a play demonstrate fictional minds in action, how they show the reader the characters’ emotions and dispositions, and how fictional minds and their thoughts are made public and open for everyone to read and interpret. I will also show that characters in these passages are engaged in intermental thinking and will trace how the dynamics of drama develop when two or more characters that engage in intermental thinking and act as intermental units share many mindsets but differ in one specific respect. In fact, it is such a difference in mindset that pushes them towards an intermental action, often of a competitive or disruptive nature. In so doing I hope to be able to provide more insight into the reading, decoding and reconstructing of fictional minds in the genre of drama.
I will show that a major part of characters’ consciousness construction is shaped through their interaction with the other characters and it is here that we can make use of the concept of intermental thinking. In the course of reading and interpreting a play, usually certain characters are put into the same groups. Depending on how complex the structure of the narrative is and how complex the characterisation in the play, these groupings can range from a traditional constellation of “bad versus good” characters, to more complicated categorisations and groupings. However, the dynamics of most plays are even more complex than this. The dynamics of a play arise from various constellation of conflict between the groups, between the characters and between the characters and the groups.
In order to show how the playwright puts different characters into a specific group and determines an intermentality amongst them, I will have to first clarify how they construct the consciousness of every single character. Then I will study the intermental links present in the playscripts and elaborate on why certain characters establish intermental links and why certain groups are formed. They might share the same secret or knowledge, they might belong to the same social and organisational group or they might take a similar stance and outlook towards one or more of the other characters in the same scene or within the play. In order to determine what it is that makes certain characters form a group with others, the first logical step is thus to start with individual character traits of single characters and then to categorise characters according to their shared features. Consequently, my approach can be said to start out as internalist, but it expands and grows to an externalist method with regard to characters, because ←28 | 29→I begin by analysing how individual character’s minds are reconstructed and then how they connect in the network of groups within the storyworld and build a collective consciousness. I believe this new framework will provide a different approach to drama and lead to a richer understanding of playscripts.
1.5 My Corpus
In this book, I am concentrating on late-Victorian plays. This does not mean that the model I am suggesting will not work for drama of other literary eras. The scope of this study, however, forces me to limit myself to a fraction of the possible pool of material and for that, I decided to use the very specific social realist plays of the late-Victorian period. The first and very obvious reason for my decision is that since I am framing my methodology within Palmer’s theoretical premise, this social realist corpus will also keep me within the same framework. The second and more elaborate reason is that this type of drama proves to provide the perfect ground for an outlook that is set to deal with intramental as well as intermental aspects of characters in drama.
Victorian drama, in general, is one of the most rewarding areas of research today. The popularity of drama increased especially in the late Victorian period, leading to an improvement in its production quantity and quality wise. Before, the theatre was “wrongly, dismissed as sub-canonical, at least until the 1890s, when the self-conscious literacy of Wilde and Shaw elevated it to [a]; verbal sophistication” (Auerbach 2004: 3). This sophistication can also be traced in the complexity of the construction of characters and their relationships in the plays, which is important to my approach, since I want to analyse the construction of characters and further focus on their interrelationship.
The fact that all the social realist plays examine socio-political issues makes them interesting for this study too. On the one hand, it makes it possible for me to trace the individual characters within a highly social context and thus to employ the externalist approach towards characterisation. On the other hand, it is precisely due to the socio-political nature of the context that these individual characters often operate in groups and provide ample ground to study the intermentality between them.11
Furthermore, late-Victorian plays are well-suited to a study that analyses playscripts since they were written not only with the purpose to be performed ←29 | 30→and staged but also to be published. Up until 1891 very few playwrights published their plays:
… one of the results of the Anglo-American Copyright Law of 1891 was the publication
