Shakespearean Tragedy (Barnes & Noble Digital Library)

This edition includes a modern introduction and a list of suggested further reading.Shakespearean Tragedy is a landmark work of literary criticism. It is at once the pinnacle of the nineteenth century's love affair with Shakespeare and the starting point for a new century of Shakespeare scholarship.Critics have charged that A.C. Bradley attends to character at the expense of other elements of the plays, such as theme, dramatic structure, and historical background; Bradley's defenders have praised the work for its philosophical and psychological insights. As the first important, book-length academic study in English of four of Shakespeare's major tragedies - Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth - Bradley's work both influenced and enabled modern Shakespearean literary criticism even as it engaged with, and often rebutted, conventional Romantic and Victorian interpretations of the plays and their author.