Shakespearean Tragedy: Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth (Penguin Classics)

Customer Reviews:

Literary criticism which is in and by itself great literature .......2006-09-10

In his opening chapter Bradley defines for us the essence of Shakespearean tragedy. He points out that Tragedy involves the fall of a great hero, but that this fall does not come as random event or as willful act of God , but rather through the results and consequences of the action of the hero himself. He points out too that the effect of this fall is not to leave us in despair or depression, but rather to leave us with a sense of the wonder, mystery and greatness of life i.e. that paradoxically Shakespearean tragedy has an effect on its audience which is uplifting. And this though the hero invariably is killed at the end.
Bradley points out also that the death in tragedy is not the slow crawling death of an illness, but comes out of a sudden violent effect of the action. This too sharpens our sense of wonder and mystery.
The heroes of tragedy and their stories somehow give us a feeling of life and its terrible end which magnifies our feeling of 'greatness' while somehow leaving us more humbled.
I do not know if the paragraphs written above translate Bradley in a completely accurate way.
I do know his writing is inspirational, moving and uplifting. The criticism of the plays makes you want to know and read the plays more.
This is the kind of Literary criticism which is great literature in and by itself.

Speaking to 21st century readers...........2002-08-09

A.C. Bradley wrote these lectures in 1904, and the book has gone through at least 26 printings. It is significant that the Folger Shakespeare Library has republished these lectures. They are hugely important and vibrantly written. I am sure my father read these in college, and I know my son did, too. I'm glad I finally got around to them! You will be, also, for all the reasons that other reviewers have noted.

Still hugely important.......2001-04-10

(Amazon should spell Macbeth's name correctly - not as "MacBeth"!) This has for almost a century been, and continues to be today, one of the most important books on Shakespeare's best and most popular tragedies. For much of the time since around 1930, it has been severely criticised: on the grounds, chiefly, that the author is too much inclined to respect or have sympathy for the heroes (which he is), and that he treats them too much like "real" people (which he does, and which they aren't).

Yet, for all that, Bradley's approach to the heroes as though they were characters we all know has revealed a great deal about what Shakespeare has made those characters, and those who see the characters as complex and psychologically worth exploring identify a more significant aspect of Shakespeare's interest in humans and his art than do many of Bradley's opponents. Moreover, the detail of his examinations of the texts makes it possible to probe much with him, even if one continues to question or quarrel with him on the way (and he is not infrequently demonstrably wrong). Thus this remains a work of criticism which is inspirational and searching even if at times quite wrongheaded; and every serious reader of Shakespeare (including actors and directors) should read this book and own it. - Joost Daalder, Professor of English, Flinders University, South Australia

A wonderful writer on a great subject.......2000-01-12

I am so glad this book is still in print (it was first published in 1904, I think). My original copy was second-hand and it would be awful to think I couldn't get another! Bradley is so illuminating on Shakespeare's intentions, and on the characters of his great tragic figures. If nothing else, read his brilliant discussion of Macbeth - it will convince you that, for a perspective on human nature, for conceiving a dramatic character whole, Bradley was as great a critic as Shakespeare was a playwright. Don't miss him!

Brilliant Shakespearean criticism.......1999-12-15

Bradley offers some of the most eloquent, complete, and balanced criticisms of the tragedies that I have yet read. Unlike so many literary critics of today, Bradley does not disdain to view Shakespeare's characters as actual people, which lends his view of the works a sense of import and meaning which so few critics manage to convey. These lectures are necessary reading for anyone at all who wishes to understand Shakespeare's tragedies better, actors, directors, and academics alike.

Four Great Tragedies: Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth (Signet Classics)

Average customer rating:

The Best of Shakespeare in One Book
best
An excellent collection with great footnotes

Four Great Tragedies: Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth (Signet Classics)
William Shakespeare
Manufacturer: Signet Classics
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0451527291

Customer Reviews:

The Best of Shakespeare in One Book.......2003-06-19

Having a love of literature, and being an English Lit. major has given me the oportunity to read most of Shakespeare's works. Shakespeare's talent and genius has surely endured and his beautiful writings are essential to mankind not only in the classroom but throughout our lives. His tragedies speak the loudest to me, as they are charged with drama, emotion and memorable quotations. Having to choose a favorite book of all time I would say, "Othello." Yet Hamlet is my second favorite drama of Shakespeare's, and Macbeth also holds strong. I do not care for King Lear but having Shakespeare's 4 greatest and most popular tragedies in one book is a collection worth having.

best.......2000-06-24

4 of his best i strongly recomend this group of storys.

An excellent collection with great footnotes.......2000-03-14

Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth are Shakespeare's greatest works. These fantastic stories, coupled with strong footnotes, make for superb reading material. I would recommend this book to beginning and master Shakespeare readers.

Four Tragedies: Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth (Bantam Classics)

Average customer rating:

Shakespearean tragedy -Greatness is all
Tragedy!
excellent edition of great tragedies
This book needs footnotes!
for shakespeare fans

Four Tragedies: Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth (Bantam Classics)
William Shakespeare
Manufacturer: Bantam Classics
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0553212834
Release Date: 1988-01-01

Book Description

HAMLET
One of the most famous plays of all time, the compelling tragedy of the young prince of Denmark who must reconcile his longing for oblivion with his duty to avenge his father’s murder is one of Shakespeare’s greatest works. The ghost, Ophelia’s death and burial, the play within a play, and the breathtaking swordplay are just some of the elements that make Hamlet a masterpiece of the theater.
OTHELLO
This great tragedy of unsurpassed intensity and emotion is
played out against Renaissance splendor. The doomed marriage
of Desdemona to the Moor Othello is the focus of a storm of tension, incited by the consummately evil villain Iago, that culminates in one of the most deeply moving scenes in theatrical history.
KING LEAR
Here is the famous and moving tragedy of a king who foolishly divides his kingdom between his two wicked daughters and estranges himself from the young daughter who loves him–a theatrical spectacle of outstanding proportions.
MACBETH
No dramatist has ever seen with more frightening clarity into the heart and mind of a murderer than has Shakespeare in this brilliant and bloody tragedy of evil. Taunted into asserting his “masculinity” by his ambitious wife, Macbeth chooses to embrace the Weird Sisters’ prophecy and kill his king–and thus, seals his own doom.

Each Edition Includes:
• Comprehensive explanatory notes
• Vivid introductions and the most up-to-date scholarship
• Clear, modernized spelling and punctuation, enabling contemporary readers to understand the Elizabethan English
• Completely updated, detailed bibliographies and performance histories
• An interpretive essay on film adaptations of the play, along with an extensive filmography

Customer Reviews:

Shakespearean tragedy -Greatness is all .......2005-10-28

To have the four great tragedies together raises the question of what the essence, the real heart of Shakespearean tragedy is.
In Aristotle's definition of Greek tragedy the overweening pride of the hero(hubris) and tragic fault( hamartia ) lead to his eventual destruction. The audience watching this is in the course of this purged of pity and fear.
In Shakespearean tragedy there is as in Aristotle a hero who is larger than the ordinary man. The hero too has a great flaw and comes to a destructive end. But the doubt and hesitancy of dreaming Hamlet, the great ambition for kingship of Macbeth, the blind filial love of Lear seem more emotionally complex than that of the Greek heroes. And the language in which the story of their respective downfalls is told is too more rich, complex, and ambivalent than that of the clearer Greek earlier model.
And this in such a way that the Shakespearean tragic heroes each seem to be in themselves a kind of supreme human essence, a manifestation of character at its greatest level of intensity.
Shakespeare's greatest heroes are individuals who become in some sense the ' type' of themselves, and live in our minds as models of humanity in its extreme essence.
'Greatness is all'

Tragedy!.......2003-07-23

Hamlet
This play, of course, is perhaps the best known in all of English literature. Taking it's inspiration from lesser plays and tales of the same name, Shakespeare crafted the characters, dialogue and plot into a timeless tale of betrayal, the quest for justice, and ultimately a hollow victory. This play, in short, is a downer.

I will speak daggers to her, but use none.

Of course, it really thrilled the audiences, who, lacking the primetime violence of today, enjoyed seeing the blood, the gore, the violence, the swordplay. Those with a more subtle bent were very satisfied with the wonderful dialogues, full of double and self-reflexive meanings. So many of the monologues have become common parlance in our language.

A hit, a very palpable hit.

The 'on one foot' synopsis: Hamlet, prince of Denmark, is suspicious that his step-father killed his father and usurped the throne and his mother's bedchamber; he plots to get revenge; in the meantime his love-interest Ophelia dies; in a duel to the death at the end the mother dies, the step-father dies, the duel contender dies, and Hamlet dies. Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.

The rest is silence.

Othello
Rude I am in speech,
And little blessed with the soft phrase of peace

Surely Shakespeare was not speaking of himself here. Even his poorly-spoken characters cannot help to have an elegance and subtlety all their own. Othello is another tragedy, this one driven by jealousy. The exact cause of the jealousy can vary; Iago can be jealous of Othello, of his love for Desdemona, of Desdemona herself, or several other possibilities. The emphasis often lies in the performance, and Shakespeare's play is written broadly enough to allow for any of these to be correct interpretations.

But men are men; the best sometimes forget.

Othello satisfied the need for violence, for passion, and for intrigue. 'On one foot', Iago, servant and friend of Othello, who also hates Othello, plants the seeds of suspicion that Desdemona has been unfaithful, leading Othello down a treacherous path that leads in his ultimate murder of Desdemona.

Take note, take note, O world!
To be direct and honest is not safe.

During one performance in the American Old West, an audience member became so entranced and enraged with the actor's portrayal of Iago that he took out his pistol and shot him. The tombstone of the actor reads 'Here lies the greatest actor'.

Lear
The prince of darkness is a gentleman.

This most difficult of Shakespeare plays, both for performing and for studying, is one of the true masterpieces of English (or any) literature, and yet is underperformed and underappreciated due to the power of its complexity and of its tragedy. Indeed, often the tragedy at the end has been softened by having Cordelia survive victorious. Beware these kinds of performances--they not Shakespeare's intent, however much we wish.

Lear begins with folly, and ends in tragedy, while treachery and evil seems to creep like a vine choking off first this person, then that. The fool is the only wise one; the insane are the only protected, and the nobles increasingly lose nobility of intent and action as the events progress. Gloucester and Lear are both deceived by wicked children turned against their better offspring; all ends in tragedy for most of the lot.

Lear addresses sibling rivalries, parent/child relationships, poverty and insanity, and any number of other readily accessible issues, but all interwoven so tightly that they cannot be unravelled easily, yet all the while the world for the characters are unravelling thread by thread before our very eyes. Lear points out the folly of human planning and agency. Lear was banned from performance, actually, during 1788-1820 when George III was considered insane, and the connexion between stage and royalty would be too blurred for official comfort.

Howl, howl, howl, howl! O! you are men of stones!

Macbeth
The witches, the blood-stained hands, the play whose name must not be mentioned in a theatre lest bad luck befall the actor or production. Macbeth is all of these, and more. Loosely based upon a real historical character, the tragedy here is one of ambition.

Fair is foul, and foul is fair:
Hover through the fog and filthy air

Did Macbeth really see the ghost of Banquo at the banquet, or was it indigestion because of the haggis? Macbeth can be played with or without a conscience, which makes for differing character development, but both options are available in Shakespeare's flexible playwriting.

Hear it not, Duncan; for it is a knell
That summons thee to heaven or to hell

Macbeth is driven by his ambition, but also by the ambition of his wife, Lady Macbeth, as treacherous a villain in many respects as any male character in Shakespeare. Macbeth has an overgrown sense of invincibility, convinced by prophecies that his course will be successful, and ordinarily it is (until it all goes awry); it is a successful struggle to the throne, but never secure, and in the end, all is lost.

Macbeth may be the bloodiest of Shakespeare's plays, a thrill for Elizabethan audiences, and a wonder to behold as the scenes get ever more desperate and darker.

This edition
There are so many editions of Shakespeare available, and many have merits. This particular volume of the four major tragic plays provides commentary by David Bevington which is insightful and accessible; it also gives photographs of performances and stagings by the New York Shakespeare Festivals, modernised spelling and concordance listings of major passages. Not short by any means (nearly 1000 pages), this will nonetheless give a good study to the plays, with visual aids, and supportive material, all in one volume.

excellent edition of great tragedies.......2002-12-14

this is an excellent 'cheap' edition of the great tragedies. besides being edited by david bevington, considered one of the foremost shakespeare scholars, the bantam edition also includes introductory essays for each play AND the source material that shakespeare used - ie, the actual short stories or plays that the bard drew on to the write his plays. wonderful stuff and a great way to get into shakespeare.

This book needs footnotes!.......2001-01-01

An integral part to any Shakespeare work is the presence of footnotes! This book has a glossary, but it does not do any good because there is not sign in the actual text itself that one can look up specific words in the glossary. While the plays themselves are very enjoyable, do not purchase this edition unless you feel very confident about your ability to read Shakespearean language.

for shakespeare fans.......2000-09-04

this is a great book for shakespeare fans. it was the first time i read shakespeare outside of class, and it was very interesting. i didn't like the prefaces much, i didn't have the patience to read them. i felt they were very of long, and harder to read and understand than the actual shakespeare. they actual plays-not stories, just to clarify- are wonderful. it would be a great book to read if you are taking a literature class and want to get a head start or if you want to expand your vocabulary. you can even relate the problems of those times to the problems of today. the plays were very fun to read once you got into them; shakespeare is just as great as he is said to be.

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Dogg's Hamlet ; and, Cahoot's Macbeth
Tom Stoppard
Manufacturer: Inter-Action Inprint
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding

The Marowitz Shakespeare: Adaptations and Collages of Hamlet, Macbeth, the Taming of the Shrew, Measure for Measure and the Merchant of Venice

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The Marowitz Shakespeare: Adaptations and Collages of Hamlet, Macbeth, the Taming of the Shrew, Measure for Measure and the Merchant of Venice
Charles Marowitz
Manufacturer: Marion Boyars Publishers
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Shakespeare's Christianity: The Protestant and Catholic Poetics of Julius Caesar, Macbeth, and Hamlet

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Shakespeare's Christianity: The Protestant and Catholic Poetics of Julius Caesar, Macbeth, and Hamlet

Manufacturer: Baylor University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Product Description

This volume explores the influences of Catholicism and Protestantism in a trio of Shakespeare's tragedies: Julius Caesar, Macbeth and Hamlet. Bypassing the discussion of Shakespeare's personal religious beliefs, Batson instead focuses on distinct footprints left by Catholic and Protestant traditions that underlie and inform Shakespeare's artistic genius.

Shakespeare for Students: Critical Interpretations of As You Like It, Hamlet, Julius Caesar, Macbeth, the Merchant of Venice, a Midsummer Night's Dr (Shakespeare for Students)

Average customer rating:

A Helpful Book Full of Interprative Essays

Shakespeare for Students: Critical Interpretations of As You Like It, Hamlet, Julius Caesar, Macbeth, the Merchant of Venice, a Midsummer Night's Dr (Shakespeare for Students)

Manufacturer: Thomson Gale
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Customer Reviews:

A Helpful Book Full of Interprative Essays.......2000-12-18

I am a sophomore attending Marquette University, and for my British Literature Class, we had to write a 7-10 pg paper for our final research project on any work we covered in class.

I chose Othello. The purpose of the assignment was to pick a topic related to the work and find various interpretations that would help you prove your point. Scott does a very nice job of collecting various reputable authors in his discussions of each play. From what I could tell, he chose professors and esteemed writers for all the essays I read.

I also liked how he gave a brief synopsis of each play before the essays. He also makes sure that there are in-depth character sketches for each main character and descriptions of the main themes in the plays.

I picked up this book from our library and I enjoyed his collections on Othello. Therefore, since I believe it is a valuable resource, I have decided to purchase the book myself.

Book Description

This series of beautifully packaged and affordably priced editions of classic works of literature from all over the world encompasses a variety of periods, themes, and authors.

Book Description

Includes 4 of the playwright's greatest works: Hamlet, featuring the drama world's most discussed and contentious character; Macbeth, concerning a Scots nobleman's overweening ambition; Othello, in which a gallant soldier is undone by jealousy; and Romeo and Juliet, the tale of the lovers whose names are synonymous with star-crossed romance.

FOUR TRAGEDIES Romeo and Juliet, MacBeth , Julius Caesar, Hamlet

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FOUR TRAGEDIES Romeo and Juliet, MacBeth , Julius Caesar, Hamlet
William Shakespeare
Manufacturer: Wasington Square Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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