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What characterizes the Renaissance sensibility of the self? Two things, perhaps:
First: not the playing of roles, but the consciousness of playing roles, the consciousness that creates an ironic distance between role and role-player. Richard II is entirely expressed in his assigned role; Henry V seems conscious that he is taking up a role. (Hardly surprising for the son of a usurper.)
Second: not the playing of roles, but the tendency to stand to the side to evaluate one's own performance. Hamlet thus becomes his own dramatic critic: "What an ass I am" after a vengeful rant; thought causes things to "lose the name of action," he concludes after a series of thoughts.
Is this new? It's hard to think so, when we think of Augustine; surely he's a critic of his own performances. But the Augustine of the Renaissance (in contrast to the Augustine of the Middle Ages) was the Augustine of the Confessions.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Monday, February 13, 2006 at 05:33 PM
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