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A lively and provocative introduction to Shakespeare's five major tragedies, revealing their profoundly sympathetic and illuminating exploration of human experience.
Shakespeare's Tragedies illuminates the majestic beauties and subtle insights of the great playwright's greatest works. Building from a helpful introduction of each tragedy, and progressing to advanced new interpretations, Watson reveals what these famous plays offer us as we confront the heartbreaking aspects of life and the redeeming virtues of our flawed humanity.
Watson shows Romeo and Juliet providing dreamy romance, but also exploring the fears of sexual violence that Juliet must heroically overcome, in a play that marries comedy to tragedy, as love and death intertwine. Analyzing Hamlet's centuries-long worldwide fame, Watson shows how it speaks to our Information (and Disinformation) Age, and why the conventional understanding of the most famous six syllables in all of literature—"To be or not to be"—is misguided and even dangerous.
Tracing the intertwined roles of race, religion, and sexuality in Othello, Watson explores the deep psychological roots of villainy, and shows how the play articulates the tragic costs of believing that love (from a person or a deity) must be bought or deserved, rather than embraced as a miracle. King Lear amplifies those warnings, explodes many complacent certainties, and imposes an ending so multiply shocking that it was hidden for 150 years.
Watson demonstrates how the verbal details of Macbeth produce its psychological intensity and its relentlessly haunting aura, while also teaching environmentalist lessons and lamenting the inescapable double-bind of our ambitions, as individuals and as a species. The book concludes with a rousing advocacy for Shakespeare as an enduring force—across races, nations, genders, and generations—for understanding and justice.
The culmination of Robert N. Watson's distinguished career as a scholar and teacher, Shakespeare's Tragedies explains, in fresh, accessible, and moving ways, why multitudes have treasured this playwright's tragic masterpieces for centuries.
"With infectious enthusiasm for the 'wonder-filled house' of Shakespeare, Watson's book speaks to our guts as much as our brains—reviving Shakespeare's dramatizations of our common crises through engagingly accessible prose."—Scott Newstok, author of How to Think like Shakespeare
"It is a very long time since I have enjoyed reading a book about Shakespeare's plays a quarter as much as I have enjoyed this one. I have spent my time reading it grinning from ear to ear with delight." —Peter Holland, Chair of the International Shakespeare Association and Past President of the Shakespeare Association of America
"Shakespeare's Tragediesought to be a required text. The writing is eloquent, witty, fast-paced, anddelightful to read. A masterwork by one of America's celebrated teachers, Watson's book will reward every reader." —Kent Cartwright, author ofShakespeare and the Comedy of Enchantment
"Watson'silluminatingbookshows not just why but< i>how Shakespeare's words have touched so many so feelingly by introducing each of Shakespeare's greatest tragedies in three stages—a lucid overview, a careful, closer guide, and finally a deep cut into Shakespeare's precise and startling craft. It models brilliantly and concretely the kind of flexible, informed, curious questioning and thinking-through that many of us want to develop in our studentand in ourselves." —William N. West,author of Common Understandings, Poetic Confusions
"Shakespeare's Tragedies is sure to get students newly excited about Shakespeare. In it, Watson shows how five of Shakespeare's commonly taught tragedies resonate poignantly across time, bringing us face to face with the perplexing nature of humanity itself. Unlike student guides that simplify the plays' language and meanings, this book invites us to be mesmerized by their complexity. Its engaging close readings, which wear their depth and ingenuity lightly, are filled with discoveries and delights. Readers at all levels will find provocative rewards here. —Emily C. Bartels, author ofSpeaking of the Moor
"Watson distills a lifetime of teaching and reflecting on Shakespeare into these pages. Accessible, engaging, witty, with a keen eye for detail, Watson is a terrific storyteller.Readers will return to this book time and again for insight and illumination." —James Shapiro, author ofShakespeare in a Divided America