Shakespearean Tragedy: Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth

by A. C. Bradley

Shakespearean Tragedy, published in 1904, collects the Oxford lectures of A. C. Bradley and remains the most influential English study of the four tragedies. Two opening lectures define what Shakespeare meant by tragedy and how he built it, and the rest take up Hamlet, Othello, King Lear and Macbeth in turn, reading each as a drama of character. Bradley asks why Hamlet delays, how Iago's mind works, whether Lear is too huge for the stage, and what kind of imagination Macbeth possesses. A long series of notes examines textual and chronological puzzles. His method, treating the characters almost as real people whose motives can be reconstructed, was attacked by later critics, but readers keep returning to it for its patience and seriousness. It is available to read online in your browser on Vinteuil, with the first chapter free.