SOURCE: Brewer, Derek. “Some Examples from Shakespeare.” In Symbolic Stories: Traditional Narratives of the Family Drama in English Literature, pp. 112-47. Cambridge, England: D. S. Brewer, 1980.

In the following excerpt, Brewer analyzes the dynamics of the Shakespearean family drama, using Hamlet, King Lear, and Cymbeline as representative examples.

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Twelfth Night gives us an imaginative world with no significant parent-images. By contrast Hamlet and the late Romances are obsessed with them. If any one has trouble with parents Hamlet has. He is the only protagonist (Horatio is a shadowy ‘split’ and certainly not a sibling-figure). As usual, the general point of view being from protagonist to the rest, the emerging adult is central and parent-images marginal to him. It is unusual for Shakespeare that the story figures a mother-image. It is less unusual that there are two father-figures, as the actual literal level of the text makes clear...