This is the final draft of the paper that was published as: Culpeper, Jonathan (2000) An approach to characterisation: The case of Katherina in Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew, Language and Literature 9 (4): 291-316. There may be minor errors and infelicities. © Culpeper. 1 A cognitive approach to characterisation: Katherina in Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew Jonathan Culpeper Abstract In this article, I argue that literary characterisation can be fruitfully approached by drawing upon theories developed within social cognition to explain the perception of real-life people. I demonstrate how this approach can explain the construction of Katherina, the protagonist in Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew. Specifically, I introduce notions from cognitive theories of knowledge (especially, schema theory), and impression formation. Using these, I describe 1) the role of prior knowledge in forming an impression of a character, and 2) how various types of impression are formed. Prior to my analysis of Katherina, I outline the kind of SHREW schema the Elizabethans might have had knowledge of. Then, in my analysis I argue that the textual evidence in the first part of the play is largely consistent with this schema, and thus Katherina is largely a schema-based character. However, I show that as the play progresses a number of changes create the conditions for a more complex and personalised character. As a consequence of this analysis, I claim that Katherina is not, as some critics have argued, simply a shrew, or an inconsistent character, or a typical character of a farce. Keywords: characterisation; character; gender; impression formation; schema theory; social cognition; Shakespeare; stereotypes; Taming of the Shrew 1. Introduction Given the importance of characters in discussions of literary works - both by the lay person and the professional - one might suppose that the study of characterisation would have attracted much attention. However, as Chatman points out, ‘It is remarkable how little has been said about the theory of character in literary history and criticism’ (1978: 107) (see also van Peer, 1989: 9). Moreover, most recent research on characterisation has dwelt on prose fiction. In two special journal issues on literary character (Poetics Today, 1986, and Style, 1990), only one article addressed the issue of character in drama. One of my aims in this article is to show how theories from social and cognitive psychology can be applied to literary texts, and more particularly play texts, in order to explain how characterisation works. An assumption behind this aim is that discussing characters in terms of psychological theories developed for real-life people is a valid enterprise. This is contrary to the thinking of early structuralist and semiotic critics who argued that character has a purely textual existence (e.g. Weinsheimer, 1979) (see also Chatman, 1972; Culler, 1975: 230-8). More recently, however, stylisticians have accepted the idea that we bring our real-world knowledge of people to bear when we interpret fictional characters (e.g. Toolan, 1988: 92; Emmott, 1997: 58). In fact, recent structuralist critics have also acknowledged that this is an issue in need of investigation. Margolin (1989), in an article on ‘state of the art’ structuralist approaches to character, notes scholars’ dissatisfaction with ‘rather reductive, functionally oriented schemes of character’ (1989: 10), and adds: Plainly speaking, I suspect that the scholars who expressed the dissatisfaction with the current state of affairs feel, like Wallace Martin, that ‘our sense that [many] fictional characters are uncannily similar to people is not something to be dismissed or ridiculed, but a crucial feature of narration that requires explanation’ (Martin, 1986: 120) (Margolin, 1989: 10)