On the Image of Doctors in Shakespeare’s Plays and the Ideological Evolution of Shakespeare

Abstract

Because the doctor profession has a special and important position in human society, the role of doctors has come into the field of literature from time to time as a unique image that bears special social significance and carries the writer’s aesthetic ideal. With the development of society and the evolution of writers’ thoughts, the image and connotation of doctors in literary works of the same writer in different periods are also changing. This paper intends to analyze the image of doctors in Shakespeare’s early comedy The Merry Wives of Windsor, the mid-term tragedy Macbeth and the later legendary drama Pericles, Prince of Tyre focusing on the specific social and historical situation of drama creation, and points out that the image of the doctors in Shakespeare’s plays is a kind of character carefully set by Shakespeare, carrying the author’s own ideology. The image of doctors in the works of different periods reflects Shakespeare’s own ideological development process.