I remember once watching Much Ado About Nothing. In case the audience couldn't tell that Prince John was a bad character he was dressed all in black, with long shaggy hair. Often we connect certain things with good and bad. White is good, black is bad. Male is strong, female is weak. etc.
In Antony and Cleopatra 2:5 Shakespeare makes an interesting comparison about good and bad, "The good and bad together." This goes along well with Carl Jung's idea of the shadow. The shadow could be loosely defined as the 'bad part' of a person. Jung argues that the good and bad parts (or rather the more calm and domesticated part of a person and the wild and untamed parts) must be combined in order to create a complete person.
The combination of good and bad does not only apply here, it applies to all of life. There's a poem I'm reading in another class that talks about taking little doses of the bad (like poison) until you become immune to it and it doesn't overpower you. Good and bad, right and wrong, they seem very black and white, but Shakespeare plays with these archetypes, creating questions about what they really are. As he poses in sonnet 121"All men are bad, and in their badness reign." Yet, he also provides many instances of people being good for the right reasons. Shakespeare uses archetypes in his works to make them more thought provoking and meaningful.
