Riassunto
Riassunto di La tragedia shakespeariana: lezioni su Amleto, Otello, Re Lear e Macbeth
A chi è rivolto
For readers who love Shakespeare and want a guide to the four great tragedies, and for students who enjoy exploring the ideas behind the plays, their characters’ motives and the choices that lead to ruin.
Che cos’è questo libro
Shakespearean Tragedy is a book of literary criticism by Andrew Cecil Bradley, published in 1904. It grew out of lectures he gave while he taught at Liverpool, Glasgow and then Oxford, where he held the chair of poetry. The book studies four plays in depth: Hamlet, Othello, King Lear and Macbeth. It begins with two general lectures on what tragedy is and how Shakespeare builds it.
Bradley asks plain questions and gives careful answers. What makes a play a tragedy? Why do we feel pain at the end of one, and also a strange sense of wonder? Why does Hamlet wait so long to act? Why does Iago do what he does to Othello? Bradley reads each play closely, scene by scene, and treats the characters as people whose choices and moods we can weigh.
What you get from this summary is the shape of his argument. You will hear his account of the tragic hero, his view of how the plays are built, and his reading of each of the four plays. You will also hear why later critics pushed back against him. Let us begin with the first key point: what Bradley says a Shakespearean tragedy is made of.
In questo riassunto
- 1Tragedy is about a great person's fallFree
- 2Tragedy shows conflict, waste and a mystery
- 3Watch how each tragedy is built
- 4Hamlet's trouble is melancholy, not thinking
- 5Othello's goodness makes him easy prey
- 6Iago is a villain who craves power
- 7Lear's suffering teaches him what he missed
- 8Macbeth's imagination breeds his guilt
- 9Bradley's method has been challenged and has lasted
Punto chiave 1 di 9
Tragedy is about a great person's fall
Bradley opens by describing the common substance of Shakespeare's tragedies. Each one, he says, is the story of a person of high standing who meets disaster. The hero is a king, a prince or a general, someone whose fate affects a whole country. This gives the story size, and it makes the fall matter to everyone around the hero.
Bradley adds that the story is not only about outward events. It is also about action, and the actions come from character. A man does something, and it brings terrible results that he did not foresee. Bradley stresses that the deeds flow from who the person is, more than from chance or from the plot alone.
The hero, in Bradley's account, is not simply good and not simply bad. He is exceptional, and he has a fault, a leaning of mind or temper that works like a crack in a fine piece of glass. In Hamlet it is one thing, in Othello another, in Lear another again. Bradley will spend most of the book showing how each fault is built into the hero's greatness. The very quality that raises the man also helps to ruin him.
Bradley also looks at what we feel as we watch. We feel pity for the hero's suffering and fear at the way it comes about. But he says there is a third feeling, a sense of wonder at the human spirit. The hero may be destroyed, yet we are made to feel how much was in him and how much has been lost.
For a modern reader this is a useful first lens. When you meet a tragic play, ask who the person is, what in him drives the action, and what is wasted when he falls. Bradley's answer is not the only one, but it gives you a clear place to start. It also explains why these plays can sadden us and still leave us strangely lifted.
That’s 1 of 9 key points.
The rest of the summary, written and spoken, and the whole book: free to start.
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Questions about La tragedia shakespeariana: lezioni su Amleto, Otello, Re Lear e Macbeth
What is Shakespearean Tragedy by A. C. Bradley about?
It is a work of criticism that explains what a Shakespearean tragedy is and then studies four plays in detail: Hamlet, Othello, King Lear and Macbeth. Bradley focuses on character, motive and the way each play is built.
Why does Bradley say Hamlet delays?
Bradley argues that Hamlet is not a man who thinks too much. He suffers from deep melancholy after his father's death and his mother's quick remarriage, and this numbs his will and holds back his action.
When was Shakespearean Tragedy written?
It was published in 1904 and came out of lectures Bradley gave at universities, including Oxford. It is a work of criticism, not a story, and its views reflect the scholarship and taste of the early twentieth century.
Why do critics disagree with A. C. Bradley?
Critics such as L. C. Knights said Bradley treated characters like real people with lives outside the text. They preferred to read the plays as poems or as stage works shaped by their own time.
Is Shakespearean Tragedy hard to read?
No. Bradley writes in clear, careful prose and explains his points step by step. It helps to know the four plays first, but a reader with a general knowledge of them can follow his argument.