Shakespearian Tragedy

H. B. Charlton was Clark Lecturer at Trinity College, Cambridge, in the years 1946-1947. In this volume on Shakespeare’s tragedies, originally published in 1948, he opposes those critics who focus solely on Shakespeare’s words and metaphors. For Charlton, these ‘moderns’ missed the greatest aspect of Shakespeare: his mastery of stagecraft. This book thus considers Shakespeare’s tragedies specifically as plays, written for performance and for an audience. Charlton also engages with the humanist elements, arguing that Shakespeare’s dramas are chiefly explorations of man and morality, rather than of religion or metaphysics. Charlton’s work is an in-depth analysis of Shakespeare’s tragedies, complete with an introduction that gives a significant insight into the fresh ways of reading Shakespeare that emerged during the 1940s. This text will primarily be of use to scholars of Shakespearean tragedy, but will also intrigue anyone with an interest in the changing reception of Shakespeare’s works.