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

Bradley, A.C. (ed)

ISBN 10: 0333575369 / ISBN 13: 9780333575369

Published by Macmillan, 1992

About this Item

This is an ex-library book and may have the usual library/used-book markings inside.This book has soft covers. In good all round condition. Please note the Image in this listing is a stock photo and may not match the covers of the actual item,700grams, ISBN:9780333575369.

Seller Inventory # 9376084

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Shakespearean Tragedy: Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth
• Publisher: Macmillan
• Publication Date: 1992
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0333575369
• ISBN 13: 9780333575369
• Binding: Soft cover
• Condition: Good
• Weight: 700 grams
• Seller catalogs:
  • English Literature

About this title

Synopsis

The question we are to consider in this lecture may be stated in a variety of ways. We may put it thus: What is the substance of a Shakespearean tragedy, taken in abstraction both from its form and from the differences in point of substance between one tragedy and another? Or thus: What is the nature of the tragic aspect of life as represented by Shakespeare? What is the general fact shown now in this tragedy and now in that? And we are putting the same question when we ask: What is Shakespeare's tragic conception, or conception of tragedy? These expressions, it should be observed, do not imply that Shakespeare himself ever asked or answered such a question; that he set himself to reflect on the tragic aspects of life, that he framed a tragic conception, and still less that, like Aristotle or Corneille, he had a theory of the kind of poetry called tragedy. These things are all possible; how far any one of them is probable we need not discuss; but none of them is presupposed by the question we are going to consider. This question implies only that, as a matter of fact, Shakespeare in writing tragedy did represent a certain aspect of life in a certain way, and that through examination of his writings we ought to be able, to some extent, to describe this aspect and way in terms addressed to the understanding. Such a description, so far as it is true and adequate, may, after these explanations, be called indifferently an account of the substance of Shakespearean tragedy, or an account of Shakespeare's conception of tragedy or view of the tragic fact.