Bradin Cormack explores various plays—including “Hamlet,” “Macbeth,” and “Antony and Cleopatra”—in which Shakespeare approaches the problem of characterization by analyzing the basic shape of action itself. Cormack is the author of “A Power to Do Justice” and co-editor of “Shakespeare and the Law.” He is professor of English at Princeton University. His talk was the 2013–14 Ridge Lecture at The Huntington.