A Guide to Shakespearean Tragedy (Patreon)

Shakespeare is going to be a fundamental part of the syllabus for the book club in the new year.

We'll be reading his plays in a wonderfully rewarding and exciting order.

Whether you're a newcomer to Shakespeare or a veteran of the Bard, it's going to be a riveting reading experience - one that illuminates the other Great Books we're reading.

So I sat down to record a podcast that works as a primer to Shakespearean Tragedy. We'll be putting out more guides to Shakespeare this year in the lead-up so you are comfortable when we arrive. 

Many of you are already reading and relishing the sonnets in sequence across the long-term. 

You are sharpening your aesthetic appreciation to world-class levels with writers such as Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Austen, Hesse, and Cervantes. 

You are ripe and ready for a guided tour through the locales of Shakespeare's oeuvre. 

Audio Timestamps

• 0:00 introduction to Shakespeare’s tragedies
• 2:10 A.C. Bradley on Shakespearean Tragedy
• 2:40 Critical companion for Shakespeare: Goddard, Bloom, Knight
• 3:00 how to truly appreciate Shakespeare
• 4:30 can we compare Shakespeare with other writers?
• 5:30 reading Shakespeare against Shakespeare
• 6:00 treating Shakespeare’s works as one organism
• 6:15 why you should read all of Shakespeare
• 7:30 should we do a biographical reading of Shakespeare?
• 9:30 where did Shakespeare find his stories?
• 13:00 unscholarly lovers of Shakespeare vs scholarly critics
• 14:00 the value of bringing lived experience to literature
• 16:00 Helen Vendler on pretending you are the poet
• 19:30 Shakespeare, dream analysis, and spiritual worship
• 21:00 criticism vs interpretation
• 22:00 art criticism as autobiography and books as mirrors
• 23:00 ‘how you see is who you are’
• 24:50 the Eastern wisdom of the thinking vs observing mind
• 25:30 the fantastical elements of Shakespeare
• 28:20 a note on spoilers in Shakespeare
• 31:00 the pleasure of Shakespeare’s and knowing the story beforehand
• 34:00 Shakespeare’s tragic period (1601-1608)
• 36:00 Shakespeare’s four phases of artistic development
• 37:30 the early immature/apprenticeship Henry VI trilogy
• 38:00 Titus Andronicus, a parody of Marlovian revenge tragedy
• 38:40 early comedies and Shakespeare’s first masterpiece
• 39:00 A Midsummer Night’s Dream
• 39:20 Romeo and Juliet and Shakespeare’s first grand woman
• 40:00 Shakespeare’s mature historical period (Henry IV)
• 40:30 Shakespeare’s romance period
• 41:00 the chronology of Shakespeare’s plays
• 41:20 the early form of Hamlet (the ur-Hamlet)
• 41:40 the rise of the sonnets and poems in a year of plague
• 43:00 can we infer Shakespeare the man from his artistic development?
• 44:00 what if Shakespeare had lived longer?
• 44:30 what Shakespeare done with the theatre towards the end of his life?
• 45:00 what if Shakespeare had died early?
• 46:00 Polonius on ‘scene individable or poem unlimited’
• 47:20 the First Folio generic grouping of Shakespeare’s plays in 1623
• 48:10 the interchangeability of Shakespeare’s comedies and tragedies
• 49:40 the best plays for newcomers - where to start with Shakespeare?
• 51:00 how the Elizabethan theatrical conventions differ from modern ones
• 52:00 Schlegel on the tragedy of thought (Hamlet) vs tragedy of passion (King Lear)
• 52:40 the unperformability of Shakespeare’s plays and the Theatre of the Mind
• 53:00 should you read or watch Shakespeare?
• 53:50 my thoughts on Kenneth Branagh’s Hamlet and Akira Kurosawa’s Ran/King Lear
• 54:00 the best King Lear performance I ever saw and minimalism vs the epic
• 55:00 the Nahum Tate version of King Lear
• 58:00 was Shakespeare writing covert messages to the monarchy?
• 1:00:00 the substance of Shakespearean tragedy
• 1:01:00 heroes of high degree falling from fortune by virtue of their hamartia
• 1:01:50 banquets of blood as offering catharsis
• 1:02:00 what does hamartia mean?
• 1:02:30 actions/deeds as characterising and being part of our undoing
• 1:03:00 modern examples of Shakespearean dramas (e.g. The Sopranos)
• 1:03:50 are Samuel Richardson and Jane Austen Shakespearean?
• 1:04:40 Tolstoy and Robert Graves’ attacks on Shakespeare
• 1:05:00 Yeats on Shakespeareanism, Romanticism, Modernism
• 1:06:00 the emotion of pity in tragedy
• 1:08:00 what if Hamlet existed in the world of Othello or King Lear?
• 1:09:00 the fear at the heart of King Lear
• 1:11:00 how Freud learnt about the Oedipal Complex from Hamlet
• 1:12:00 hamartia leads to action which leads to catastrophe
• 1:12:40 Shakespeare’s characters are free artists of themselves (Hegel)
• 1:15:00 the problem with contemporary self-help books
• 1:16:00 abnormal minds, supernatural elements, and chance
• 1:17:00 external vs internal conflict in Shakespeare’s tragedies
• 1:19:00 the nature of obsession and the sublime in Shakespeare’s tragedies
• 1:20:00 the sublimity of King Lear on the heath
• 1:21:30 Shakespearean tragedy is never depressing
• 1:22:00 poetic justice and the great stage of fools
• 1:23:00 what is the power that govern the universe of Shakespeare’s tragedies?
• 1:24:00 the structure of Shakespeare’s plays (exposition, conflict, catastrophe)
• 1:25:00 reading you some Hamlet, King Lear, and Macbeth
• 1:30:00 my audiobook and theatre productions

Share your thoughts

1) What has your personal history with Shakespeare looked like up until this point? School English classes ruined Shakespeare for many of us. Was this the case for you? Or were you able to resist this influence?

2) What preconceptions, positive or negative, do you have coming to Shakespeare? What would make your journey through his works easier for you? 

3) Do you have any favourites from his works? Be it a line of poetry, a characterisation, an entire play, or a performance that particularly resonated with you?

Happy reading!