Tragedies: Volume 1 (Everyman's Library) - Hardcover

Shakespeare, William

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0679417427 ISBN 13: 9780679417422

Publisher: Everyman's Library, 1992

Synopsis

 

Shakespeare’s four greatest tragedies were written in a remarkably short period of time, between 1598 and 1606. Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth, and King Lear are each so singular an achievement that any rereading of them reinforces the awe and almost idolatrous worship that this most uncanny of the world’s great writers invariably inspires. In these four plays, Shakespeare engages the problem that is central to tragedy and crucial to any human community—the problem of violence and revenge—on an unprecedented scale. No other literary texts have been more instrumental in deepening our knowledge of ourselves as individuals and as a civilization.

 

This authoritative edition of the plays is supplemented with footnotes, bibliographies, a detailed chronology of Shakespeare’s life and times, and a substantial introduction in which Tony Tanner discusses each play individually while setting each in context.

About this title

From the Inside Flap:

An appealing collection of the great tragedies of Shakespeare, these plays express the full force of his dramatic and psychological insight, exploring the fatal flaws that lead to the fall of the mighty from good fortune. The hesitant vengefulness of Hamlet; the vain selfishness of Lear; the irrational jealousy of Othello; the cunning destructiveness of Iago; the romantic impulsiveness of Romeo; the murderous ambition of Lady Macbeth--all of these characters are burned into the collective psyche of world culture.

From the Back Cover:

Just why the history of Rome was so important to the Elizabethans, and how and to what ends Shakespeare imaginatively deployed that history, will be made a little clearer in the course of this introduction.

About this edition

• Publisher: Everyman's Library
• Publication date: 1992
• ISBN 10: 0679417427
• ISBN 13: 9780679417422
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 672