Scripts, Transformations, and Suggestiveness of Emotions in Shakespeare and Chekhov

Abstract

Plays are simulations of social interaction that run on minds rather than on computers. Literary simulations depend on folk theory and have 3 properties that are useful to psychology: (a) They offer scriptlike themes and variations that depict narrative progressions with problem-solving motifs, (b) they enable us to experience emotions and their transformations as we try to understand them, and (c) they offer a greater possibility of insight into emotions than do some experiences of everyday life. In Romeo and Juliet, the successions of the script of falling in love are brought to consciousness. In Hamlet, the emotion line engages the audience in the experience of transformations of emotions. In The Seagull, actors depict emotions as giving rise to relationships among characters, with a suggestiveness that engages the audience. Modes of experience enabled by such simulations augment folk theory. The systemic thinking provided by imaginative literature enables us to understand how emotions initiate, maintain, and transform modes of relationship.