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

by A.C. Bradley

A.C. Bradley's Shakespearean Tragedy, first published in 1904, ranks as one of the greatest works of Shakespearean criticism of all time. In his ten lectures, A.C. Bradley has provided a study of the four great tragedies - Hamlet, Othello, King Lear and Macbeth - which reveals a deep understanding of Shakespearean thought and art.

For this latest reprint and with nearly half a million copies in print, the distinguished Shakespearean scholar John Russell Brown has written a new introduction which points to the distinctive features of Bradley's work and assesses his place in the development of the criticism of Shakespeare in this century.

Genres: Shakespeare, Literary Criticism, Nonfiction, Classics, Literature, Criticism, Drama

275 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1904

About the author

Andrew Cecil Bradley was an English literary scholar, best remembered for his work on Shakespeare.

Reviews

[Michael Finocchiaro · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the classic lecture series from Shakespeare expert A.C Bradley delivered way back in 1904. You might be saying, so what, that was a long time ago. And I would answer, yes, but his observations of the text, the characters and the stage directions is incredibly precise and nearly as ageless as Shakespeare. His insights into Hamlet, Othello, Lear and Macbeth are absolutely essential to a close reading of the four great tragedies. Definitely recommended for any self-respecting lover of the Bard.

Fino's Reviews of Shakespeare and Shakespearean Criticism
Comedies
The Comedy of Errors (1592-1593
The Taming of the Shrew (1593-1594)
The Two Gentlemen of Verona (1594-1595)
Love's Labour's Lost (1594-1595)
A Midsummer Night's Dream (1595-1596)
The Merchant of Venice (1596-1597)
Much Ado About Nothing (1598-1599)
As You Like It (1599-1600)
Twelfth Night (1599-1600)
The Merry Wives of Windsor (1600-1601)
All's Well That Ends Well (1602-1603)
Measure for Measure (1604-1605)
Cymbeline (1609-1610)
A Winter's Tale (1610-1611)
The Tempest (1611-1612)
Two Noble Kinsmen (1612-1613)

Histories
Henry VI Part I (1589-1590)
Henry VI Part II (1590-1591)
Henry VI Part III (1590-1591)
Richard III (1593-1594)
Richard II (1595-1596)
King John (1596-1597)
Edward III (1596-1597)
Henry IV Part I (1597-1598)
Henry IV Part II (1597-1598)
Henry V (1598-1599)
Henry VIII (1612-1612)

Tragedies
Titus Andronicus (1592-1593)
Romeo and Juliet (1594-1595)
Julius Caesar (1599-1600)
Hamlet (1600-1601)
Troilus and Cressida (1601-1602)
Othello (1604-1605)
King Lear (1605-1606)
Macbeth (1605-1606)
Anthony and Cleopatra (1606-1607)
Coriolanus (1607-1608)
Timon of Athens (1607-1608)
Pericles (1608-1609)

Shakespearean Criticism
The Wheel of Fire by Wilson Knight
A Natural Perspective by Northrop Frye
Shakespeare After All by Marjorie Garber
Shakespeare's Roman Plays and Their Background by M W MacCallum
Shakespearean Criticism 1919-1935 compiled by Anne Ridler
Shakespearean Tragedy by A.C. Bradley
Shakespeare's Sexual Comedy by Hugh M. Richmond
Shakespeare: The Comedies by R.P. Draper
Tyrant: Shakespeare on Politics by Stephen Greenblatt
1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare by James Shapiro

Collections of Shakespeare
Venus and Adonis, the Rape of Lucrece and Other Poems
Shakespeare's Sonnets and a Lover's Complaint
The Complete Oxford Shakespeare

[Roy Lotz · Rating 5 out of 5]

I dreamt last night that Shakespeare’s Ghost
Sat for a civil service post
The English paper for that year
Had several questions on King Lear
Which Shakespeare answered very badly
Because he hadn’t read his Bradley

Analyzing great works of art is always fraught with danger. Whether the critic sets her sights on a portrait, a sonata, or a play, the task is always that of turning poetry into prose. The critic, in other words, must extract content from form—and making content and form inseparable is one of the goals of art. Insofar as art is great, therefore, the critic's task will prove difficult; and criticism thus reaches its most acute challenge in Shakespeare. His works have eluded minds as powerful as Coleridge and Freud, Goethe and Joyce. The man worthiest to the challenge was not anyone so famous; he was, rather, a retiring Oxford don who published a series of lectures on Shakespeare’s tragedies in 1904.

Bradley’s method has been attacked and dismissed as overly literal, treating Shakespeare's characters as real people: “How Many Children had Lady Macbeth?” was the derisive title of one critical article, implying that the question (which Bradley never asked) was ludicrous. But I am convinced that Bradley’s method is, on the whole, the right one. For Shakespeare’s tragedies are incomprehensible unless we set our sights on character—the plays' personalities. If you try the experiment suggested by Bradley himself, you will see this: attempt to narrate the plots of any of these stories without any mention of personality, merely recording the events, and the plot becomes weak and baffling.

The extreme example of this is, of course, Hamlet, whose endless ruminations and procrastinations have been a stumbling block for generations of critics. But the central importance of personality is apparent in all the tragedies. Indeed it must be, as Bradley explains, since a tragedy is tragic only insofar as the events result from a character’s personality. To fall off a building, to catch a deadly disease, to be conscripted into the army—all of these, while remarkably sad, are not tragic in the strict sense because they might happen to anyone. A tragedy may only happen to one person, because it is caused by that person. It does not result from circumstance, accident, or any overwhelming external force. To confirm this, try mentally switching the characters in these tragedies. Othello would have solved Hamlet’s problem in an hour, and Hamlet would have seen right through Iago’s trickery—the plot disappears.

The existence of tragedy, as Bradley also makes clear, seems to suggest a certain sort of universe. The characters must be capable of free action, since the consequences must flow from their personalities. Along with divine determination, the idea of a Christian afterlife is incompatible, too, since if every character ultimately receives their just desserts then the feeling of dreadful finality is lost. For tragedy, as Bradley tells us, always involves the idea of irrecoverable waste—wasted lives, wasted talents, wasted goodness. But the universe in Shakespeare’s plays is not indifferent. Indeed, although good and evil qualities are deeply mixed in all of his most memorable characters, we are never in doubt which is which. And though the hero is inevitably defeated, evil never triumphs.

Most difficult to articulate is the odd mixture of inevitability and avoidability that permeates the atmosphere in these tragedies. One is never in doubt that the characters are, in every sense, free and responsible for their destiny; and yet their unhappy fate seems certain. This feeling is caused, I think, by the way that circumstance bleeds into personality. The behavior of Shakespeare’s characters is the reaction of their personality with their environment; and in tragedy this reaction is always fateful. The events correspond exactly with our heroes’ fatal weakness—a weakness which, in any other situation, would not have doomed them. In this sense their personality becomes their prison. They cannot but act otherwise because it is who they are. The final impression is one of cosmic misfortune—by some twist of fate they have been thrown into a predicament which dooms them, and they participate in creating this situation every fateful step of the way.

To fully illustrate this view of tragedy, as springing from a character’s personality, Bradley must analyze Shakespeare’s heroes and villains. And these investigations are absolutely masterful. His dissections of Hamlet and Iago in particular—my two favorite Shakespeare characters, and the two most resistant to analysis—were spectacular. Ever since I first read those plays, I have been beating my head against them in the attempt to make sense of these bottomless personages. The plots of their respective plays are determined by the actions of these two, and yet their motivations are famously difficult to ferret out. What motivates Iago, and what prevents Hamlet from acting? They are mysterious, and yet extremely coherent; one is always sure their actions are of a piece with their nature—and yet their natures are so subtle and complex that they evade understanding. Indeed for some time I was ready to say that the challenge was impossible; but Bradley’s exegesis has convinced me that I was wrong.

This book was, in sum, a revelation: a model of literary criticism that left me thoroughly convinced. And to complete the triumph, Bradley accomplishes his analysis with brevity and charm. There is nothing stifled or academic in his approach; all technical matters are reserved for footnotes and endnotes. He is, rather, a frank and plainspoken man. Nothing could feel more natural than his tone and approach, and no guide could be more friendly and tolerant. However the intellectual winds may blow in the halls of academe, ordinary lovers of Shakespeare will always cherish Bradley, for he performs the office of the critic: to enhance our enjoyment of a work while being true to its spirit.

[Ted]

Bradley's Shakespearean Tragedy has remained for half a century one of the most influential discussions of Shakespeare's plays. Not only are these lectures significant for the light they throw on the four great tragedies, but they are a work of art in themselves. They represent the full flowering of Shakespeare criticism from the point of view of character, and when they were issued men despaired of "going beyond Bradley".
from the 1955 Meridian edition

The book has been, to many teachers, scholars and academics over the last century (now), the touchstone for the analysis of Shakespeare's tragedies.



Bradley in 1891

A.C. Bradley (1851-1935) was born in Surrey, the youngest of the twenty-one children born to the preacher Charles Bradley, a noted evangelical preacher and leader of the so-called Clapham Sect. Bradley studied at Balliol College, Oxford. He obtained a Balliol Fellowship in 1874 and lectured first in English, subsequently in philosophy until 1881. This led to a permanent position at the University of Liverpool where he lectured on literature. In 1889 he moved to Glasgow as Regius Professor. In 1901 he was elected to the Oxford professorship of poetry. It was during his five years in this post that he produced Shakespearean Tragedy (1904). He was an honorary fellow of Balliol and was awarded honorary doctorates from Liverpool, Glasgow, Edinburgh, and Durham.

Wiki notes that His influence on Shakespearean criticism was so great that the following poem by Guy Boas, "Lays of Learning", appeared in 1926:

I dreamt last night that Shakespeare’s Ghost
Sat for a civil service post.
The English paper for that year
Had several questions on King Lear
Which Shakespeare answered very badly
Because he hadn’t read his Bradley.

This book has been deemed "probably the most influential single work of Shakespearean criticism ever published."




Bradley favored publishing his thoughts in the form of lectures that he had delivered, without trying to rewrite them in a "book format". This would appear to be a favorable choice, given that he was lecturing to students studying Shakespeare or English literature in general. In the same way, we as readers of these lectures should be encouraged to absorb them by "listening" to them as if we were in a lecture hall.

He wrote in his Preface,

These lectures are based on a selection from materials used in teaching at Liverpool, Glasgow, and Oxford; and I have for the most part preserved the lecture form. I should, or course, wish them to be read in their order, and a knowledge of the first two is assumed in the remainder.

The ten "lectures" presented are titled as follows.

Lecture I The substance of Shakespearean Tragedy
Lecture II Construction in Shakespeare's Tragedies
Lecture III Shakespeare's Tragic Period - Hamlet
Lecture IV Hamlet
Lecture V Othello
Lecture VI Othello
Lecture VII King Lear
Lecture VIII King Lear
Lecture IX Macbeth
Lecture X Macbeth


As evident, the chief plays Bradley addresses are Hamlet, Othello, King Lear and Macbeth. There is a detailed index, in which references to all these plays, and others mentioned, are given.

In his introduction Bradley emphasizes that the main object that he had in the lectures

will be what may be called dramatic appreciation; to increase our understanding and enjoyment of these works as dramas; to learn to apprehend the action and some of the personages of each with a somewhat greater truth and intensity, so that they may assume in our imaginations a shape a little less unlike the shape they wore in the imagination of their creator.

More Recent reaction to Bradley

After the first fifty years, scholars began to point out (perhaps to enhance their own reputation? or more likely to free the field for contributions by younger plyers of the Shakespeare trade) certain deficiencies in Bradley's approach. This was just an opening salvo; the larger number of students began deserting Bradley as post-structuralist methodologies began permeating the graduate English departments of many universities. However, the pendulum has begun to swing back again, when the earlier emphasis which Bradley placed on character in the plays is once again seen to have a certain validity not be ignored.

The bottom line is that Bradley's book is still in print, in fact three editions seem in ready supply at Amazon; and for all I know it has never been out of print.

and why no rating?

Because I've only read the first lecture. For the eight main lectures, I'm waiting till such time as I tackle those plays. I'm very familiar already with Lear, know Macbeth fairly well – but amazingly know little beyond what everyone does about Hamlet, and little more about Othello. Hopefully I'll be reading all those in coming years; then will be the time for me to consult this book seriously.



. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Previous review: The Suppliants
Next review: Welcome to the Anthropocene pre-review
Older review: The Portable Faulkner

Previous library review: Writings on Shakespeare Coleridge
Next library review: The Wheel of Fire G. Wilson Knight

[Carol Storm · Rating 5 out of 5]

I went to Columbia, an Ivy League School located in Manhattan's famed Upper West Side. I hated it. The kids were stuck up, rich, and shallow. The professors were stuck up, cold, and distant. The only friendly group on the world-famous Morningside Heights campus were the cockroaches. Those guys would stop by my dorm room anytime, day or night, just to share my Entemann's Cookies and hang out. So many happy nights on campus, chasing cockroaches, eating Entemann's Cookies, and listening to Dan Carlisle on WNEW playing "Gloria" by the Doors. Those are the things I remember best about my glamorous undergraduate years at world famous Columbia University.

Aside from those things, practically the only good memory I have of Columbia is reading Shakespearean Tragedy by A.C. Bradley. This book was first published back in 1904 and still makes more sense than 99% of the so-called scholarly criticism that's published today. You don't need to be an Ivy League professor to understand it. Come to think of it, you don't need to waste four years at an Ivy League college to enjoy Shakespeare, either. And to all my old professors, thanks. Thanks for not punching me in the head!

[Lisa of Troy]

As part of the 100 Books to Read According to the BBC, the Complete Works of Shakespeare is coming up. If I am to devour this beast of a book, I might as well have a supplement. This covers Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth.

[Margaret Madden · Rating 5 out of 5]

Although from the early 1900s, I found this still amazingly relevant and a perfect insight for higher education

[Jeffrey Thomas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolute top shelf Honor Shelf. His essay on Lear is thrilling, after a start that I thought, despite what might have served as his warning, that he would begin with some criticism of the dramatic problems in the play, which are familiar to us all, and which, after you’ve read the play a few times, and are familiar with Shakespeare’s frequent sloppiness in—or cavalier regard for, you might rather say—various practical matters, you tend to impatiently acknowledge and wish to disregard as relatively trivial, given how the play works on stage and in the reading despite them.
The fun thing about Shakespeare and reading great Shakespeare critics (Bradley, Harold Bloom--whom I used not to like, and whose title for his essays on the plays I still think is off-track) is that the best plays bring out the best in them, and their insights and analyses are opportunities for you to recognize things you hadn't been aware of, not just about the play or about criticism, but about human life. That's why I said that his (and Bloom's essay on Lear) is thrilling.

[Richard · Rating 5 out of 5]

Much has changed in the performance and criticism of Shakespeare in the nearly 120 years since these lectures were first published - and even in the decades that have elapsed between my purchase of this book and my first proper reading of it! - but for all those developments, this is still a deeply insightful, impressively humane, and wonderfully readable book that will enhance anyone's enjoyment and understanding of the four great tragedies. I'm not quite sure that Bradley's take on Hamlet resolves the difficulties that I have with that play, but his reading of Othello further boosts it in its continuing rise through my Shakespeare appreciation rankings, his interpretation of Macbeth has saved me from a potential loss of faith occasioned by just having taught it badly—and his writing on King Lear, which embraces both the dramatic problems and the sublime literary heights of the play, is fully worthy of Shakespeare's masterpiece. A great book, which I am glad that I waited more than thirty years to read.

[Andrew Eaton · Rating 5 out of 5]

While I don’t agree with every conclusion, this remains an indispensable analysis even a century later.

[Anand · Rating 5 out of 5]

Still one of the best in Shakespeare criticism. My favorites of the lectures are the ones on Othello and Macbeth.

[Greg Talbot · Rating 5 out of 5]

“In many ways, the work of a critic is easy. We risk very little, yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgment. We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read. But the bitter truth we critics must face, is that in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is probably more meaningful than our criticism designating it so. But there are times when a critic truly risks something, and that is in the discovery and defense of the *new*.”
― Anton Ego - (Ratatouille movie!)

"If I could write the beauty of your eyes And in fresh numbers number all your graces, The age to come would say, 'This poet lies; Such heavenly touches ne'er touch'd earthly faces.'
William Shakespeare


Encountering A.C. Bradley lectures in a Shakespeare and Film college course, I remember the comment that Bradley writes about Shakespeare's characters as if they are people. written as if they are intimates, people he knows. And that intimacy is on full display as Bradley charges through his theories and ideas about the four great tragedies of Shakespeare.

Shakepearean tragedy is different from the medieval forms that came before him. Bradley writes rapturously, in flowing allusions about the nature of tragedy to arrive at a definition of a " world travailing for perfection, but bringing to birth, together with glorious good, an evil which it is able to overcome only by self-torture and self-waste" (p.39). It's never just the ghosts, the storms of the gods or ambiguous handkerchief, there are seeds in our tragic figures that come to fruition and develop onto the stage itself.

Bradley's work is academic, and stem from his lectures, but they are far from pedantic. His own experience is manifold. Though he says he will not think about the Bard in the pantheon of history..he has no qualms to discuss the staging of these plays, the historical times of Shakespeare, and the word choices effect on the narrative. It's one of the great joys that Bradley's own emotional experience is written into this story. He writes about the pregnant tragedy of sexual jealousy of Othello. Or the "flashes of light" in Macbeth with illuminary daggers, ghastly visions by the witches, and subtle moments of reflection. Bradley doesn't mind letting his own pen reach frenetic beauty that matches the high heights of his subject.

And as for the lectures themselves. They are illuminating. They reveal a humanity to Shakespeare, a writer and actor, whose work is not perfect (the footnotes on Hamlet's age are just hilarious), but shows an artist whose work moves in time with his life, from stage to stage, revision to revision and even reinventing itself across different works. Some of the connections between the plays are explored such as the wordplay (Hamlet - "Readiness is all; Lear - "Ripeness is all") and variations on theme. It reminds me of Clare R. Kinney's insights, from the great courses 'Shakespeare Tragedies', that the lens of tragedy itself was reinvented by Shakespeare in his late period, moving from tragedy's finality to the growth and hopes found in the romances, the grace manifested in "Winters Tale" seems like a re-writing of "King Lear"'s hopeless nihilism.

Shakespeare writing comes with it all these pent up ideas. Elitist. Difficult. Niche. Universal. Boring. Endlessly-Adaptable. But the more I encounter his work, even through the eyes of another, this case A.C. Bradley, I find a deeper appreciation of just how far a word evolves from a paragraph to a structures thought to an act to a play. No other writer can produce the offspring of ideas in the culture, or the food to satiate our appetite of understanding this human endeavor. As he wrote so beautifully in The Tempest "All Shall dissolve...We are such stuff As dreams are made on; and our little life is rounded with a sleep. So through Bradley's work, and encountering Shakespeare in all his beautiful artifacts we drift into a better sleep, a better world, even if only a short time.

[Boze Herrington · Rating 4 out of 5]

Worth reading just for the introductory chapter in which Bradley explains how Shakespeare constructed his tragedies to produce an emotional effect on the audience.

[Andrew · Rating 5 out of 5]

Perhaps it takes a genius to truly understand a genius?

I made a decision a chapter into this great book: I would use Bradley as my benchmark for all other Shakespearean criticism in the future. I don't think I can go far wrong, do you? Except where reserves of dopamine and serotonin run low.

It is little but a series of immense pleasures to read this wisdom, from a man who not only clearly loves (for it is still a living presence) Shakespeare, and perhaps Shakespeare more than any other literary figure (he references Milton, Pope and Tennyson as paragons of their form), but knows the stuff inside out in all its absorbing styles, language, construction - and character. Yet, unlike Shakespeare, whose language can be dense and dark (Macbeth [1605-1606]), Bradley is never so - and when you think he has wandered into that field, it is because you haven't been able to sustain the concentration required to take in everything he says, or have slipped into some revery of revelation just made, and are running to keep up, instead of slowing down and just ruminating.

Bradley might now be seen, after a century of highly technical literary theory, to be 'old school'... But when you want a deep discussion of the subject you share his love for - if not quite to the same depths of passion, and Kermode has something to say about past idolatry of Shakespeare (but when you've got the bug, it's for life) - you want nothing else but to get in his boat and go down that river with him. It's a limitlessly fascinating journey.

Bradley begins with a definition of Shakespearean tragedy, providing very comprehensive criteria, including (but not limited to) owning a tragic hero (or two, in the love tragedies) who is of high state, is consumed by one interest, object, passion or habit of mind, and suffers calamity until the catastrophe of death, the hero always contributing in some measure to that catastrophe. As with Shakespeare's own works, his definition gets a bit denser towards the end, for we are, as with many of the tragedies, dealing with the metaphysical. And it is in trying to plumb the depths of this residing mystery that we see the man's mind echoing that of the bard's, and going into unknown waters as we feel when we read those more obfusc parts of Shakespeare.

What is refreshing is that there is no sense of proselytising, or trying to score academic points: it is an investigative journey of both penetrating insight and broad erudition that sweeps you up in its yearning to understand, and to share that understanding. And as a student of Shakespeare, you can do no wrong to take notes, even when the range and scope seems to be becoming a little etiolated - but there is more, and still more. In his discussion of the construction of Shakespearean tragedy, you need to spend a good eight-hour day on it to get the most from it. But when you do, the satisfaction is close to that when finishing one of Shakespeare's plays... almost.

The lectures on each play are in two parts. The first deals with the construction of the tragedy and discusses problem areas and confusions (time scheme, plot inconsistencies) and the comparative forms of each tragedy to others. From these lectures we gain a wider understanding of Shakespeare's tragic period overall. The second part considers the action of the play through character, principals and secondary. From these lectures we gain an understanding of the residing character and behaviour of the leading roles and what foolishness has undone or corrupted them, and to what extent they were the agents and/or victims of their downfall. With footnotes and lengthy endnotes, Bradley provides a lot of analysis of these four tragedies, and insights into the others within the period (Hamlet, 1600-1, to Coriolanus, 1607-8), plus a wider view of Shakespeare's developing art, as well as reference to earlier notable critics (Coleridge, Hazlitt, Swinburne) and a considerable look at the overwhelming impression of the plays on us taking all their plot lines, characters and dramatic and linguistic expressions into account.

What is generally apparent is the knowledge and appreciation Bradley has for Shakespeare and his works - and these four tragedies specifically. His method is not hands-off, in ignoring the function of the author, nor governed by any modern perspective, but more an appreciation of the art, dramatic effect and power of character over us within each play. He is not absolutist about his determinations, but weights his deliberations according to a confidence in arriving at a series of decisions by the evidence of the texts - and where it is muddled or conflicting, arriving at a reasonable conclusion, whether guesswork, tentative hypothesis, or probability. His paired lectures on each play are supplemented by comprehensive discursive notes on contentious issues which take up 100 pages. Bradley's logic is unrelenting, and there is a great satisfaction in seeing him set up hypotheses, knock them down, or arrive at a conclusion of probability.

What is most enjoyable about this process - which is academic only in the loose sense of modern highly-referenced perspective-driven analyses, in that Bradley only generally references compared sources and is content to be personal in style - is that you are immediately involved, and stay involved in his argument throughout. Thus, his combination of academic study, conversational discussion, perceptive dissection, and free consideration of Shakespeare's state of mind, keeps you with him even while points may be punctilious and waters muddy. As we all know, not all of Shakespeare's language is comprehensible (ref. Macbeth), whether because of bad copy, modern variances in meaning, or downright complexity, but Bradley addresses these where it impinges on his argument. We are never, in memory of reading this work, left in the dark as to meaning. We might often agree independently, but could we ever have written such so well? Bradley does not ask such rhetorical questions.

This book is the outstanding criticism of Shakespeare, and I've now read quite a bit - though clearly not anywhere near enough. The only other critic I've read who matches Bradley for insight and command of his subject is Northrop Frye, while Felperin's excellent survey of the Romances approaches such surety, but for overall coverage, depth of analysis, and convincing argument, I'm not sure any can match him. And since most criticism these days comes in collections of essays by different analysts and analytical perspectives, that seems increasingly unlikely. My only regret is that he did not leave us with a larger tome which covered all 13 tragedies. Now that....

[Isabelle | Nine Tale Vixen]

DNF @ 9%

Since I'm currently doing online learning, I just don't have the mental bandwidth to really process all the analysis and insights in this book. But it's interesting stuff and I do like learning/thinking about Shakespeare, so I'll most likely give this another try at some point.

[David Sweet · Rating 3 out of 5]

Dry with great insights

All critics since A.C. Bradley's book seem to need to answer him, so profound are his insights into Shakespeare's tragedies. I'm glad I've taken the time to go through and read this while going through the plays. However, the lectures are dry compared to Harold Bloom or Emma Smith.

[rem]

what a ride

[Zachary Waltz · Rating 2 out of 5]

In spite of its fame and despite the fact that Bradley argues his point more closely (unlike many literary critics), there are many sections that do not convince me. However, below are some quotes worth remembering.

LECTURE I: THE SUBSTANCE OF SHAKESPEAREAN TRAGEDY

After carefully arguing the point, he concludes that, "'A tragedy is a story of exceptional calamity leading to the death of a man in high estate,' and we may say instead (what in its turn is one-sided, though less so), that the story is one of human actions producing exceptional calamity and ending in the death of such a man."

"Can we define this 'action' further by describing it as a conflict? … The truth is, that the type of tragedy in which the hero opposes to a hostile force an undivided soul, is not the Shakespearean type. The souls of those who contend with the hero may be thus undivided; they generally are; but, as a rule, the hero, though he pursues his fated way, is, at least at some point in the action, and sometimes at many, torn by an inward struggle; and it is frequently at such points that Shakespeare shows his most extraordinary power."

"His tragic characters are made of the stuff we find within ourselves and within the persons who surround them. But, by an intensification of the life which they share with others, they are raised above them; and the greatest are raised so far that, if we fully realise all that is implied in their words and actions, we become conscious that in real life we have known scarcely any one resembling them. Some, like Hamlet and Cleopatra, have genius. Others, like Othello, Lear, Macbeth, Coriolanus, are built on the grand scale; and desire, passion, or will attains in them a terrible force. In almost all we observe a marked one-sidedness, a predisposition in some particular direction; a total incapacity, in certain circumstances, of resisting the force which draws in this direction; a fatal tendency to identify the whole being with one interest, object, passion, or habit of mind. This, it would seem, is, for Shakespeare, the fundamental tragic trait."

The tragic hero with Shakespeare, then, need not be 'good,' though generally he is 'good' and therefore at once wins sympathy in his error. But it is necessary that he should have so much of greatness that in his error and fall we may be vividly conscious of the possibilities of human nature. … And with this greatness of the tragic hero (which is not always confined to him) is connected, secondly, what I venture to describe as the centre of the tragic impression. This central feeling is the impression of waste. With Shakespeare, at any rate, the pity and fear which are stirred by the tragic story seem to unite with, and even to merge in, a profound sense of sadness and mystery, which is due to this impression of waste.

...In this tragic world … what is this power?

Two statements, next, may at once be made regarding the tragic fact as he represents it: one, that it is and remains to us something piteous, fearful and mysterious; the other, that the representation of it does not leave us crushed, rebellious or desperate.

From the first it follows that the ultimate power in the tragic world is not adequately described as a law or order which we can see to be just and benevolent,—as, in that sense, a 'moral order': for in that case the spectacle of suffering and waste could not seem to us so fearful and mysterious as it does. And from the second it follows that this ultimate power is not adequately described as a fate, whether malicious and cruel, or blind and indifferent to human happiness and goodness: for in that case the spectacle would leave us desperate or rebellious. … Such views contradict one another, and no third view can unite them; but the several aspects from whose isolation and exaggeration they spring are both present in the fact, and a view which would be true to the fact and to the whole of our imaginative experience must in some way combine these aspects.

Evil exhibits itself everywhere as something negative, barren, weakening, destructive, a principle of death. It isolates, disunites, and tends to annihilate not only its opposite but itself. That which keeps the evil man prosperous, makes him succeed, even permits him to exist, is the good in him (I do not mean only the obviously 'moral' good). When the evil in him masters the good and has its way, it destroys other people through him, but it also destroys him.

tragedy would not be tragedy if it were not a painful mystery. Nor can he be said even to point distinctly, like some writers of tragedy, in any direction where a solution might lie.

We remain confronted with the inexplicable fact, or the no less inexplicable appearance, of a world travailing for perfection, but bringing to birth, together with glorious good, an evil which it is able to overcome only by self-torture and self-waste. And this fact or appearance is tragedy.

LECTURE II: CONSTRUCTION IN SHAKESPEARE'S TRAGEDIES

"As a Shakespearean tragedy represents a conflict which terminates in a catastrophe, any such tragedy may roughly be divided into three parts. The first of these sets forth or expounds the situation,[17] or state of affairs, out of which the conflict arises; and it may, therefore, be called the Exposition. The second deals with the definite beginning, the growth and the vicissitudes of the conflict. It forms accordingly the bulk of the play, comprising the Second, Third and Fourth Acts, and usually a part of the First and a part of the Fifth. The final section of the tragedy shows the issue of the conflict in a catastrophe.

"The application of this scheme of division is naturally more or less arbitrary. The first part glides into the second, and the second into the third, and there may often be difficulty in drawing the lines between them. But it is still harder to divide spring from summer, and summer from autumn; and yet spring is spring, and summer summer."

He makes a good point about the transition between the conflict and the catastrophe.

But when the crisis has been reached there come difficulties and dangers, which, if we put Shakespeare for the moment out of mind, are easily seen. An immediate and crushing counter-action would, no doubt, sustain the interest, but it would precipitate the catastrophe, and leave a feeling that there has been too long a preparation for a final effect so brief. What seems necessary is a momentary pause, followed by a counter-action which mounts at first slowly, and afterwards, as it gathers force, with quickening speed. And yet the result of this arrangement, it would seem, must be, for a time, a decided slackening of tension. Nor is this the only difficulty. The persons who represent the counter-action and now take the lead, are likely to be comparatively unfamiliar, and therefore unwelcome, to the audience; and, even if familiar, they are almost sure to be at first, if not permanently, less interesting than those who figured in the ascending movement, and on whom attention has been fixed. Possibly, too, their necessary prominence may crowd the hero into the back-ground. Hence the point of danger in this method of construction seems to lie in that section of the play which follows the crisis and has not yet approached the catastrophe. And this section will usually comprise the Fourth Act, together, in some cases, with a part of the Third and a part of the Fifth.

"In some of the tragedies, again, an expedient is used, which Freytag has pointed out (though he sometimes finds it, I think, where it is not really employed). Shakespeare very rarely makes the least attempt to surprise by his catastrophes. They are felt to be inevitable, though the precise way in which they will be brought about is not, of course, foreseen. Occasionally, however, where we dread the catastrophe because we love the hero, a moment occurs, just before it, in which a gleam of false hope lights up the darkening scene; and, though we know it is false, it affects us. Far the most remarkable example is to be found in the final Act of King Lear. Here the victory of Edgar and the deaths of Edmund and the two sisters have almost made us forget the design on the lives of Lear and Cordelia. Even when we are reminded of it there is still room for hope that Edgar, who rushes away to the prison, will be in time to save them; and, however familiar we are with the play, the sudden entrance of Lear, with Cordelia dead in his arms, comes on us with a shock. Much slighter, but quite perceptible, is the effect of Antony's victory on land, and of the last outburst of pride and joy as he and Cleopatra meet (iv. viii.). The frank apology of Hamlet to Laertes, their reconciliation, and a delusive appearance of quiet and even confident firmness in the tone of the hero's conversation with Horatio, almost."

A note on interpreting Shakespeare: "Hence comes what is perhaps the chief difficulty in interpreting his works. Where his power or art is fully exerted it really does resemble that of nature. It organises and vitalises its product from the centre outward to the minutest markings on the surface, so that when you turn upon it the most searching light you can command, when you dissect it and apply to it the test of a microscope, still you find in it nothing formless, general or vague, but everywhere structure, character, individuality. In this his great things, which seem to come whenever they are wanted, have no companions in literature except the few greatest things in Dante; and it is a fatal error to allow his carelessness elsewhere to make one doubt whether here one is not seeking more than can be found. It is very possible to look for subtlety in the wrong places in Shakespeare, but in the right places it is not possible to find too much. But then this characteristic, which is one source of his endless attraction, is also a source of perplexity. For in those parts of his plays which show him neither in his most intense nor in his most negligent mood, we are often unable to decide whether something that seems inconsistent, indistinct, feeble, exaggerated, is really so, or whether it was definitely meant to be as it is, and has an intention which we ought to be able to divine; whether, for example, we have before us some unusual trait in character, some abnormal movement of mind, only surprising to us because we understand so very much less of human nature than Shakespeare did, or whether he wanted to get his work done and made a slip, or in using an old play adopted hastily something that would not square with his own conception, or even refused to trouble himself with minutiae which we notice only because we study him, but which nobody ever notices in a stage performance. We know well enough what Shakespeare is doing when at the end of Measure for Measure he marries Isabella to the Duke—and a scandalous proceeding it is; but who can ever feel sure that the doubts which vex him as to some not unimportant points in Hamlet are due to his own want of eyesight or to Shakespeare's want of care?"

LECTURE III: SHAKESPEARE'S TRAGIC PERIOD—HAMLET

"Both Brutus and Hamlet are highly intellectual by nature and reflective by habit. Both may even be called, in a popular sense, philosophic; Brutus may be called so in a stricter sense. Each, being also a 'good' man, shows accordingly, when placed in critical circumstances, a sensitive and almost painful anxiety to do right. And though they fail—of course in quite different ways—to deal successfully with these circumstances, the failure in each case is connected rather with their intellectual nature and reflective habit than with any yielding to passion. Hence the name 'tragedy of thought,' which Schlegel gave to Hamlet, may be given also, as in effect it has been by Professor Dowden, to Julius Caesar. The later heroes, on the other hand, Othello, Lear, Timon, Macbeth, Antony, Coriolanus, have, one and all, passionate natures, and, speaking roughly, we may attribute the tragic failure in each of these cases to passion. Partly for this reason, the later plays are wilder and stormier than the first two."

Here, Bradley introduces the term "limited perfection".

If we turn now from the substance of the tragedies to their style and versification, we find on the whole a corresponding difference between the earlier and the later. The usual assignment of Julius Caesar, and even of Hamlet, to the end of Shakespeare's Second Period—the period of Henry V.—is based mainly, we saw, on considerations of form. The general style of the serious parts of the last plays from English history is one of full, noble and comparatively equable eloquence. The 'honey-tongued' sweetness and beauty of Shakespeare's early writing, as seen in Romeo and Juliet or the Midsummer-Night's Dream, remain; the ease and lucidity remain; but there is an accession of force and weight. We find no great change from this style when we come to Julius Caesar,[28] which may be taken to mark its culmination. At this point in Shakespeare's literary development he reaches, if the phrase may be pardoned, a limited perfection. Neither thought on the one side, nor expression on the other, seems to have any tendency to outrun or contend with its fellow. We receive an impression of easy mastery and complete harmony, but not so strong an impression of inner power bursting into outer life. Shakespeare's style is perhaps nowhere else so free from defects, and yet almost every one of his subsequent plays contains writing which is greater. To speak familiarly, we feel in Julius Caesar that, although not even Shakespeare could better the style he has chosen, he has not let himself go.

In reading Hamlet we have no such feeling, and in many parts (for there is in the writing of Hamlet an unusual variety) we are conscious of a decided change. The style in these parts is more rapid and vehement, less equable and less simple; and there is a change of the same kind in the versification. But on the whole the type is the same as in Julius Caesar, and the resemblance of the two plays is decidedly more marked than the difference. If Hamlet's soliloquies, considered simply as compositions, show a great change from Jaques's speech, 'All the world's a stage,' and even from the soliloquies of Brutus, yet Hamlet (for instance in the hero's interview with his mother) is like Julius Caesar, and unlike the later tragedies, in the fulness of its eloquence, and passages like the following belong quite definitely to the style of the Second Period.

[Theodulf · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a book that I love, and reread every couple years just for the pleasure of it. It's a group of lectures focusing on Hamlet, Othello, Lear, and Macbeth.. And I'm not a big Shakespeare junkie. I just love the civilized and powerful way that Bradley made the case for his positions, summoning up at will the text of the plays and three centuries of critical interpretation, and making his logical points in language both beautiful and precise. Frankly he could have been writing this way about any topic whatever and I would have loved it. He civilly restates with the best possible spin the position he is about to demolish, and then does so by the force of logic and evidence.

For example, why does Hamlet delay? "[W]hy in the world did not Hamlet obey the Ghost at once, and so save seven .. lives?" Was it just "external difficulties"? He takes a long look at this idea:

"Nothing is easier than to spun a plausible theory of this kind. What, it may be asked," (citing the "ablest exponent" of this view in an extremely polite endnote) "was Hamlet to do...? The King was surrounded not merely by courtiers but by a Swiss bodyguard; how was Hamlet to get at him? Was he then to accuse him publicly of the murder? ... How would he prove the charge? All that he had to offer in proof was -- a ghost-story! Others, to be sure, had seen the Ghost, but no one else had heard its revelations." And so on for the rest of a long paragraph, in which Bradley's personified critic makes the strongest and most intelligent case he can. Then, Bradley speaks for himself again:

"A theory like this sounds very plausible -- so long as you do not remember the text. But no unsophisticated mind, fresh from the reading of Hamlet,, will accept it; and, as soon as we begin to probe it, fatal objections arise in such numbers that I choose but a few, and indeed I think the first of them is enough.

"(a) From beginning to end of the play ..."

Well, I'll stop here. If you are curious as to how Bradley proceeds, go download the thing - it's out there in the public domain. The only flaw in this volume is that it's only one volume.

[Mac · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hands down the greatest work of Shakespeare scholarship ever written. Somehow an Oxford lecturer from the early 20th century managed to write a book on Shakespeare that is simultaneously more incisive and more readable than anything written since.

For fans of: stories, close-reading, examinations of character.

Not for fans of: whatever nonsense Roland Barthes was peddling.

If you disagree, you’re a knave, a rascal, an eater of broken meats, a base proud beggarly three suited worsted-stocking knave.

[Ian · Rating 4 out of 5]

As far as modern and post modern approaches to Shakespeare studies, this is where it all began. Love it or hate it, it is fundemental to how we all inherited the Bard

[Rick Patterson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Andrew Bradley has been considered one of the great Shakespearean critics of all time, but it is usually overlooked that this, perhaps his best collection of comments on just a limited selection of the tragedies, is actually a set of lectures. Of course he has packaged it all so it reads like standard critical essays with footnotes and endnotes and so forth, but it was originally for the ear (and the eye, although one can hardly suspect that visual supplements were much good at all in the first decade of the twentieth century). In that regard, this has some family resemblance to Shakespeare himself, whose work was obviously not supposed to be read so much as experienced live. That attention to the ear allows us to hear the old professor's voice enjoying the conversation as much as his audience; again, like Shakespeare, there are sections within the lectures (like scenes within the acts) and well-tuned stops and starts at which the pace is adjusted.
So the form is something to be appreciated, although much less than the content, without a doubt. Bradley is so immersed in the plays and intimidatingly knowledgeable of them that he is able to focus on a single line, consider its variants through the various folios and quartos, and arrive at what is probably the best composition of that line, raising its expression to meet the idea that is surely underlying it. His knowledge of the previous criticism--including the impressive ranks of German scholars who surely need to be part of our collective understanding--allows him to weigh this or that point of view, again in order to arrive at a more well informed reading of the text and context. Sometimes Bradley just brings what should be plain and simple common sense to his analysis. One of the best examples of this is his comment on the early passages of Othello, when Iago is explaining to Roderigo some of his antipathy towards Othello. Bradley simply reminds us that Iago is a liar--almost nothing that comes out of his mouth should be believed unless there is independent verification for it--so the whole story of his getting three great ones of Venice to present his application for the lieutenancy and Othello's almost derisive dismissal of his suit needs to be considered, at best, as inflation. From the same moment, our usual understanding of Cassio as an "arithmetician" who does not have the necessary experience to be a useful lieutenant is, again, completely based on Iago's observations. It is easy to forget that Iago's is certainly not the most objective of judgments, so Bradley's comments are salutary at least.
I must admit that I was waiting for him to bring his critical acumen to Macbeth and provide what I have always thought to be an obvious point from early in that play when Ross describes the hero of the Norwegian invasion at Fife as "Bellona's bridegroom" but fails to give the man's actual name. King Duncan pays no attention to the obvious fact that there have been two completely separate battles fought that day and blithely rewards Macbeth--one of the heroes at Forres, certainly--with the thaneship of Cawdor--a title that was lost at the other battle to the hero who fought more successfully there, who would assuredly be Macduff, the Thane of Fife. Bradley passes over this point without any discussion at all, which allows him to treat Macduff as a less important character than he surely should have been. Oh well. There are other splendid observations from that play which are worth savoring, including the explanation of Macduff's line, "He has no children," immediately after he learns of the deaths of his entire family. Of course it is directed to Malcolm, who has just encouraged Macduff to use his personal tragedy as motivation for bloody revenge, and it can not have any application to Macbeth himself, for the excellent reasons Bradley provides in his close analysis.
All together, these lectures help the careful reader--and who would approach Shakespeare as less than careful?--to be more astute in the reading, more attentive in the listening, and more appreciative of the whole dramatic experience.

[Jacob Hurley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Exhaustive study of Shakespeare's four big tragedies, emphasis on character. This book has a major place in Shakespearean criticism, or at least I've gathered this from the constant references in other studies I've read. He is very formal and analytical, not quite in the Brooksian sense but rather that he proceeds by rather strict guidelines, like the structural outline of the Shakespearean tragedy he gives at the start. He treats each of the four plays well, highlighting the complexities in Hamlet's character, the nature of Iago, the dark-mystic psychologies of Macbeth, and most engagingly, the flawed mastery in lear. While his project is oriented in a direction of somewhat speculative character analysis that has been repudiated, and proceeds on older, less hip structural-narrative grounds, it's a concisely thorough project and is probably worth reading for anyone interested in Shakespearean crit.

[Gille Liath · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was written for students, and perhaps it is useful for them; I'm not certain, though, as it gives a misleading impression that in Shakespeare the trees are more important than the wood. Personally I don't need Shakespeare's plays explaining; once you get used to his manner and method they, like all great poetry, either explain themselves or have no explanation. I was looking for something bigger, more comprehensive, more profound; but it is impossible that criticism should be greater than the critic. A book like this seems likely to be the result of long hours of donnish meditation in which you notice all sorts of little details which, however, are not really very important.

[James F · Rating 4 out of 5]

After a couple introductory chapters, this book deals in depth with the four major tragedies, Hamlet, Othello, King Lear and Macbeth. Shakespearian Tragedy is one of the most important works of Shakespeare criticism; influenced by Swinburne, Dowden and Moulton, this is a work that later critics all had to deal with, whether agreeing with Bradley or polemicizing against his views. I found his ideas and arguments useful in thinking about the plays, which I have read several times and seen performed.

[Oscar Despard · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a most enjoyable book of criticism. Bradley combines analysis with a sympathetic understanding of Shakespeare’s plays to write essays that enrich, rather than manipulate, one’s experience of them. His writing is precise yet concise and imbued with style that does justice to his subject. Furthermore, he communicates his own views with respect for the opinions held by fellow critics and those which would commonly be held by his readers. Throughout, his measured phrases give the impression of learning which is born of unhurried appreciation and exceptional insight.

[Tim · Rating 5 out of 5]

Massively insightful readings of Shakespeare’s tragedies. I rank him up right near the top along with Harold Goddard and Alan Bloom (whom I disagree with but find also fascinating).
This is old school literary criticism from a well read and well trained mind. His first and second essays on Hamlet are well worth the price of admission.
Those of you wanting a deeper understanding, and sick of all the deconstructionist and modernist critical approaches, would do well to pick him up.

[Breena · Rating 5 out of 5]

Although this was a required reading, I honestly enjoyed it more than most books I’ve read in the last 4 months. It felt like jumping head first into a long college dissertation, and I honestly just loved the fresh research feeling. I also find Bradley’s concepts entirely interesting. The source of tragedy is a hero with TOO much potential for their own good? Love it!!! I definitely need to read more lectures in the future…

[Rana · Rating 5 out of 5]

NOTE: IT'S NOT A REVIEW, i'M JUST BLABBERING.
I've only read the parts related to Macbeth, and eventhough I'm not required to go through the whole part, I put my study aside and continued reading it as i found it really interesting :"D
Unfortunately i have given this book all of me and I have an exam tomorrow, but no.. i don't regret that at all xD
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[Tac Anderson · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you really want to understand Shakespeare's tragedies, especially these four, this is an excellent read. If you want to understand Shakespeare as a playwright better, this is the place to start. If you want to be a better writer, I'd also recommend this book. It was very old academic, but incredibly insightful and well reasoned.

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Essential book for Shakespearean criticism, especially tragedy