A) The great tragedies

Julius Caesar

Sources: North's translation of Plutarch's The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans

Themes:

- tragical relation between personal morality and political efficiency

- shows "how a man can be destroyed by his own virtue"

- well articulated play, in fluid blank verse

Hamlet

Sources: Saxo Grammaticus, History of the Danes and F. Belleforest, Histories tragiques,

the original Hamlet [Ur-Hamlet] [Ur: German prefix for old, original) - lost play

Themes:

- an old-fashioned revenge play treated in a heroic tradition

- revenge is not going to restore either the lost world or bring back health to a tainted society

- it shows how moral sensitivity can respond to a wicked world

how an idealist man can face reality

how powerful imagination may be

Othello

Sources: Italian novella Hecatommithi, (1565) by G. Cinthio.

Themes:

- it is less a study in jealousy but a description of the anguish that a beautiful and innocent being can be guilty and deceitful

- the paradox of evil which is bred out [may originate in] of innocence

King Lear

Sources: Celtic mythology and folk tradition

Themes:

- most elemental and primeval of Shakespeare's plays

- shows how the road to true humility passes through bitter insight

- it makes use of archetypal images to produce a cosmic view of individual tragedy and destiny

- a combination of psychological and symbolic descriptions

- existence as determined by the confusion between

true and false visions

self-knowledge and self-blindness

- the question of what is natural and unnatural

- the Fool acquires a different, tragic key

- Folly is assimilated to revealing the truth and contributes to the tragic dimension

- shows a concern for impersonal justice : "None does offend none; all are guilty and in need not of justice but forgiveness"

Macbeth

Sources: R. Holinshed: Chronicles of England and Scotland

Themes:

- the destruction brought about by the appetite for power

- a mystique of the crown, which represents the achievement of the ultimate earthly ambition the false heroism that originates in the lack of faith

- the degree to which power can corrupt and breed immorality

- the main characters are not so much damned as they are reduced to moral nothingness

- Macbeth: initially a heroic figure loyal and brave - becomes an obsessed nihilist

- Lady Macbeth: a devoted wife - is driven by power to self-destruction, to the inability to control her body and spirit

Antony and Cleopatra

(also listed as a Roman play)

Source: North's Plutarch: The Lives of noble Grecians and Romans

Themes:

- contrast between two worlds,

the Roman world, marked by order, structure, loyalty, reason

the Eastern magic of Egypt, characterized by disorder, betrayal, passion

conflict between public duty and private passion

- Cleopatra: one of S.'s most complex female characters: queenly, beautiful, skilful, noble, generous, but also domineering, hysterical, jealous, coward,

- Antony: heroic, generous, noble, loyal to his friends, but selfish and immature

Date: 2015-12-18; view: 870