Melville's Shakespearean Masquerade of Evil: "The Confidence-Man"

This essay explores the influence of Shakespeare on Melville’s conception of evil, from the oscillation between innocence and corruption in Typee, through the tragic grandeur of Moby-Dick, to the satirical skepticism of The Confidence-Man. Melville’s lifelong engagement with Shakespeare, evident in his marginalia and in the ongoing dialogue with the playwright, sets his work in a tradition that both ridicules and admires villainy while exposing its paradoxical ties to truth. The Confidence-Man, the most overtly Shakespearean of Melville’s novels, stages a “masquerade of evil” through its shapeshifting, devil-like protagonist, who recalls Shylock and Autolycus yet unsettles the role of villain by pretending to reject Timon’s misanthropy. Timon of Athens thus emerges as a key intertext, alongside The Winter’s Tale, whose shifts from tragedy to comedy offer a striking contrast: where Shakespeare turns tragedy into redemption, Melville drives his masquerade toward indeterminacy and overarching obscurity.