This essay examines early modern conceptions and
representations of the passions in relation to issues of selfknowledge
in texts ranging from Renaissance psychology to
Shakespearean tragedy –with a particular focus on Macbeth.
Considered in essence processes of the mind, the passions were
believed to manifest themselves through material symptoms such
as bodily effects, facial gestures and discourse. Accordingly, the
early modern philosophy of man saw in the study of these
material manifestations a vehicle to access the soul. By tracing the
methodologies for translating the material side of human
experience –words, gestures, bodily sensations and signals– into
less material truths, early modern philosophy and theatre
explored the certainties about inwardness as a necessary
dimension of the self, as well as the uncertainties about the
ultimate essence of such interiority. In this, Shakespeare’s
Macbeth, for its constant focus on outward appearance and
rhetoric, stresses the need to focus on matter as a vehicle to
explore interiority. And yet –and in keeping with the principles of
earlier Renaissance humanists– the play acknowledges the utter
impossibility to know the ultimate essence of the inward self.