Shakespearian Tragedy Research Articles

“Like a Rouged Corpse? Recycled, Revised, and Reused:The Selling of the Female Body on the Shakespearean Stage”

The practice of adapting Shakespeare is something that theatre historians have historically viewed with horror and contempt. George C. D. Odell, author of Shakespeare from Betterton to Irving, described Restoration and eighteenth-century adaptations as “rouged corpses.” Hazelton Spencer, author of Shakespeare Improved, insisted that Shakespeare’s reputation was actually in jeopardy because of the ways in which Shakespeare’s works were being recycled, revised, and reused now that women were allowed to perform in professional theatres. Spencer would be disappointed if he knew the act of adapting Shakespeare – or giving some of the most iconic male roles to actresses – is something that is widely popular today. An example of a contemporary incarnation of this tradition is Helen Mirren’s Prospero in a film adaptation of The Tempest (2010) or Glenda Jackson’s controversial portrayal of King Lear on Broadway (2019). This trend, women playing male roles in Shakespearian tragedies, may seem like a product of the current political climate, a kind of cultural outgrowth of the #MeToo movement. But actually, there is a long history of such a practice, a fact that Teresa’s Rebeck’s 2018 play Bernhardt/Hamlet eloquently reminds us of. In this paper, I’d like to explore the question of how the influence of actresses, particularly celebrity actresses who opted to play traditionally male roles, impacts our reception and experience of Shakespeare and gender on the twenty-first century stage and screen. In what way do celebrity culture, political movements, and contemporary notions of gender, influence an audience’s experience of this most infamous Renaissance playwright: William Shakespeare?

루이 16세의 재판: 혁명권과 합법성

There was a great deal of controversy surrounding the trial of Louis XVI, especially within National Convention at every stage of the trial (whether or not to prosecute, indictment, interrogation and pleading, and voting on guilt, sentence, ratification of the people, reprieve, etc.). In terms of ''fall of the monarchy’, the most noteworthy part is the debate over whether the king will be tried or not. This is because the ‘Constitution of 1791’ stipulated the king’s sacred inviolability, that is, the privilege of immunity. The series of debates surrounding the trial of Louis XVI give us two major implications in relation to our problem. One is the historical significance of the royal trial. In the traditional era, usurpation and assassination of kings were common events in Europe, but such expulsion of the monarch strengthened rather than undermined the historical basis and legitimacy of the monarchy. For the monarchy to formally end, an alternative political order had to be imagined, and the king’s trial was a rite of passage that must be passed for this purpose. It is not the assassination like the manner of Shakespearian tragedies which secretly kill the kings, but the king’s trial and execution carried out by the new legitimate power under the name of the popular sovereignty in broad daylight in the centre of the capital city while the crowds are gathering, that historically ended the rule of monarchs. In fact, after the execution of Louis XVI, the monarchs continued to reign, but the mystery, splendor, and awe enjoyed by the monarchy have virtually disappeared. The other is that although National Convention tried to give the royal trial a form of lawfulness in its own way, and in fact, the trial was generally conducted in the manner suggested by the ‘Girondins’, the most influential faction at the beginning of the trial, paradoxically, the argument of Saint-Just, who insisted on the immediate execution of the king without a trial, rather defined the main line of the Louis XVI trial. “On ne peut point regner innocemment.” Accepting the premises of the social contract and popular sovereignty, “Tout roi est un rebelle et un usurpateur.” Thus the events of August 10, 1792 effectively determined the fate of the monarchy. The right to revolution lay at the foundation of the legitimacy of the modern bourgeois order. (Seoul National University / kchoi7@snu.ac.kr)

Journeys from Crimes to Crowns: Literary Representation of Shakespearian Tragedies

Thinking is ideas banking and everyone wants the encashment of his/her thinking. Man desires to get godly powers through the encashment of his ideas. Some people get power through inheritance while others earn through hard work. The scholars are of the view that religion and fortune favor some men in committing crimes to reach the crowns, while others lose their lives. Human history is full of such incidents where sinners become saints through power. Religious and cultural accounts start preaching and teaching of their nobility. Shakespearean tragedies, in this regard, are highly important where different dramatic characters and historical figures reached to crowns through committing crimes and these characters can be seen in the present age. This research paper is an investigation that how has the act of crime in Shakespeares Hamlet (2006), Macbeth (1990) and King Lear (1897) connected to the accession of crowns?

A linguistic Study of Euphemistic Expressions in Shakespearian Tragedies

Nowadays, people use euphemism just to avoid naming abstract things and objects directly, since they do not like just to empress other people. By attempting to avoid hurting the emotion of others, there is an attempt to reduce the depressing effects of the words by using another substitution this indicates that at whatever time people approach a responsive topic; they try to use such expression to reduce the harsh influence on listeners. However, the major aim of this research is to analyze the uses of euphemisms in Shakespearian tragedies such as Othello, Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet and Antony and Cleopatra. The research consists of two parts. The theoretical part which provides an introduction about the meaning of euphemism, types, origin, etymology and its functions, while various examples from Shakespeare's tragedies will be discussed in the practical part. It ends with a conclusion which sums up the main findings of the research.

‘Come what come may, Time, and the Houre, runs through the roughest Day’

AbstractThe paper maps the lexico-grammatical resources of the representation of time inMacbeth,looking in particular at the way futurity is portrayed. The study is based on concordance analysis of the top full lexical items in frequency lists and of time-related keywords (generated using the other Shakespearian tragedies as a reference corpus). Paying particular attention to the occurrences in Macbeth and his wife’s speeches, the analysis centres on the collocations and semantic preferences of the items identified. The top full lexical items in the wordlist are shown to be related to the notion of time, especially contrasting the present and the future, hence contributing to the pace of the plot in the play. Keywords highlight the connection of the notion of time with the notion of fear and with the impossibility of predicting the future. In general, the analysis depicts a conceptual space in which time and futurity are not connected to hope but to fear, thus creating a menacing universe that has its origins in the protagonist himself, in the tension between deceitful prediction and frustrated volition.

Finisce male. Othello e la tragedia nonlineare femminile

The articles focuses first on the Elizabethan theory of tragedy, being based on the Medieval traditioon of the Fall of Princes and then implemented with the discovery of Artistole’s Poetics. Then it shows how Othello, and more generally Shakespearian tragedy, veers away from this canonical format and instead pursues a model of plotmaking based on the imagery of weaving, as is made clear by the numerous references in the play to knitting and weaving and to women’s domestic work, resulting in a purposedly indistinct, complex result if compared to the canonical fall of the tragical hero.

Refusal and disowning knowledge: re-thinking disengagement in higher education

This paper addresses both ‘student engagement’ in contemporary universities, and student ‘disengagement’ – where the latter is often seen as a failure of performance, or absence of will. In a bold move, the paper asks whether students should be engaged in their university education, and whether there is value in forms of disengagement. It finds an original way in which student disengagement can be understood by drawing on the writings of Stanley Cavell – on the philosophical appeal to what we say, our search for criteria, and on ideas of acknowledgement and avoidance in his work on Shakespearian tragedy. It shows what is at stake in our attunement with, and dissent from, criteria, and how such dissent can be educative. The paper considers the film ‘Stella Dallas’, in which Stella’s aversion to, her disengagement from, her culture’s criteria, is not a passive withdrawal, but rather the finding of voice, her education as a grownup. The paper concludes that disengagement, understood as aversion, dissent and refusal of voice, is not to be seen always as a lack of action or of care, but as the opposite: the active voicing of what we will, or will not, consent to in our education.

The Translation of Wordplay from the Perspective of Relevance Theory: Translating Sexual Puns in two Shakespearian Tragedies into Galician and Spanish

The present paper aims to analyse the translation of puns from a relevance-theory perspective. According to such theoretical framework, the relation between a translation and its source text is considered to be based on interpretive resemblance, rather than on equivalence. The translator would try to seek optimal relevance, in such a way that he or she would use different strategies to try to recreate the cognitive effects intended by the source writer with the lowest possible processing effort on the part of the target addressee. The analysis carried out in this study is based on two tragedies by Shakespeare – namely, Hamlet and Othello – and on five Spanish and two Galician versions of those two plays. The strategies used by the translators of those versions to render sexual puns have been analysed, focusing not only on the product but also on the process. The selection of strategy is determined, among other factors, by the specific context and by the principle of relevance. In those cases in which there is a coincidence in the relation between the levels of signifier and signified across source and target language, translators normally opt to translate literally and reproduce a pun based on the same linguistic phenomenon as the source text pun and semantically equivalent to it. In the rest of the cases, the translator will have to assess what is more relevant, either content or the effect produced by the pun.

THE DIVINE OR THE PHYSICIAN? FEARS OF GHOSTS AND THE SUPERNATURAL IN APPROVED SOCIAL WORK

Freud claimed that the primitive fear of the dead is so strong within us that it can be brought to the surface of our lives at the slightest provocation. This paper considers the tendency of people suffering mental distress to express themselves by using the language of the supernatural and images of ghosts and demons. Case studies from the author's experience as an approved social worker are used to illustrate practice dilemmas arising from such work. Writings from psychodynamic theory and Shakespearian tragedy are employed to help make sense of bizarre‐sounding material. The tension between wanting to know and not wanting to know is discussed. The paper acknowledges that people might sometimes need anti‐psychotic medication to help them deal with disturbing ideas. It concludes, however, that social workers should not discount the importance of careful listening for and attending to important communications which can be concealed in references to ghosts and other supernatural phenomena.

Shakespeare and the Force of Modern Performance by W. B. Worthen (review)

MLR, ioi.i, 2006 227 Troilus and Criseyde and "The Knight's Tale"' (p. 11). As the title of Shakespearean Tragedy as Chivalric Romance makes clear, Hays is pursuing a very different line of thinking, and one that goes far beyond a bare acknowledgement of Chaucerian borrowings. His argument is twofold. Firstly, he claims that romance was 'the preponderant genre in fictional literature' from the onset of printing to the end of the sixteenth century. Secondly, that it is therefore a significant and hitherto neglected context forShakespearian tragedy, to the extent that Shakespeare's major tragedies? Hamlet, Lear, Othello, and Macbeth?might be redesignated 'tragic romances'. The firsthalf of this argument seems to me successful. Survey ing publication data, dramatic adaptations, and manuscript evidence, Hays makes a clear case forthe famil? iarity and availability, forthe pervasive influence, of chivalric romance in Renaissance culture. Tabulating his data, he also suggests some striking peaks and troughs in the output of this literature. (However, it is regrettable that it was not possible to reproduce the underlying bibliographie work in all its detail: we are told that so many manuscripts of chivalric romances were published between such-and-such dates, but not what they were.) Working within a critical tradition that (as Hays argues) gener? ally tends to minimize the presence of chivalric elements in Renaissance culture, literary critics may be more surprised by the interest generated by the second of these arguments. It is illuminating to view Macbeth as a chivalric knight with duties to his lady, obliged to prove his manhood to her though brave deeds. There are source studies: Hamlet is compared with the Anglo-Norman romance Bevis ofHampton, and Robert Greene's play of Orlando furioso identified as a source for Othello. King Lear is read as a drama of chivalric dispossession and restoration. Shakespearian tragedy and chivalric romance do seem an unlikely combination, but Hays's novel perspective produces intriguing and often productive results, although few are likely to accept his larger attempts at generic redefinition. In general, Hays sees chivalric romance as focusing attention upon themes ofgover? nance, legitimacy, and succession, and it should be said that Shakespearean Tragedy as Chivalric Romance is the work of a scholar profoundly out of sympathy with modern critical thinking about the way in which Renaissance drama treats these themes: the footnotes of this volume conduct a vigorous polemical campaign against those who would argue in favour of a politically subversive or otherwise unorthodox Shake? speare. In this, Hays's readings are governed by a sense ofthe prevailing 'idealism' of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century culture, which he also considers to be the distinguishing characteristic of chivalric romance. Other literary critics might dispute such an account, and decide to take a reading of the chivalric elements of Renaissance society in a very differentdirection. The secure achievement of this volume lies in the way in which it prompts us to reconsider a certain construction of cultural history that would seek to deny the presence of any such elements whatsoever. University of St Andrews Alex Davis Shakespeare and theForce ofModern Performance. By W. B. Worthen. Cambridge, New York, and Melbourne: Cambridge University Press. 2003. vii+ 274 pp. ?42.50; $58 (pbk ?15.95; $21). ISBN 0-521-81030-2 (pbk 0-521-00800-x). W. B. Worthen's book is a welcome addition to the growing body of studies that deal with various aspects of Shakespearian 'performativity' in the contemporary theatre. He argues, to quote from his own introduction, that 'dramatic performance is conditioned not only from within the theatre, requiring an understanding of the con? ventional performance practices of a given culture, but also from without [. . .] in relation to social and cultural factors, other institutions which define the categories and meanings of performance' (pp. 1-2). 228 Reviews The discussion over four chapters ranges widely. In 'Performing History' Worthen begins by asking 'In what sense is production ofa Shakespeare play meaningfully en? gaged with Shakespeare?' (p. 24), i.e. 'can performance enable the text's past meanings to speak?' (p. 38). The second chapter, 'Globe Performativity', to which I shall return, places the Globe reconstruction alongside iiving history museums' (p. 25) such as Colonial...

“Dreadful thoughts”: The tenth anniversary of the Levin petition

I n 1988, Richard Levin, Professor of English at State University of New York at Stony Brook, wrote an essay for Publications of Modem Language Association (PMI-4) explaining his objections to feminist literary criticism. The react ion f rom feminist literary critics that ensued revealed how politicized literary scholarship had become dur ing 1970s and 1980s and how literary theory was transforming into political activism. It has been ten years since feminist literary critics launched their assault on Professor Levin, and it would be enl ightening to revisit tactics in tended to int imidate literary scholars who failed to acknowledge political goals of radical academics. It is hard to measure what success, if any, feminist literary critics were able to realize f rom their attack on Professor Levin, but it surely must have been more than apparent ten years ago to n o n t e n u r e d literature teachers, graduate students, and depar tment cha i rmen that scholars risked oppor tuni ty to publish if they dared, like Professor Levin, to find fault with feminist literary criticism. In his essay, titled Feminist Thematics and Shakespearian Tragedy, Levin argued that feminist literary criticism, since it emerged dur ing mid-1970s, suffered from an overreliance on thematics, reduct ion of complex works of literature to a handful of simple and persistent themes.1 (Such an objection was consistent with Professor Levin's similar complaints in his 1979 New Readings vs. Old Plays that thematic studies deprive Shakespeare's plays of their complexity and originality. For thematic critic, Professor Levin argued, significance of Shakespeare's plays always resides e lsewhere-in contemporary documents , religious controversies, or topical events -but no t in words that Shakespeare wrote.) In his PMIA essay, Professor Levin similarly observed that the themes employed in [feminist] interpretat ions are basically same. Although terminology may vary, these criticisms all f ind that [Shakespeare's] plays are about role of gender in individual and society (125). Insisting that Shakespeare's plays are really about gender themes not only obscures o ther and richer interpretations, Professor Levin argued, but feminist literary critics too often ignore facts of plays. For example, Professor Levin cited one feminist literary critic who wrote that King Lear's rejection of his daughter in first act of King Lear is a social n o r m for patriarchal father-daughter relationship. Yet, observed Levin, the witnesses to this relat ionship--Kent, Gloucester, Burgundy, France, even Goneril and

From iran to the MCG — Australian soccer's Shakespearian tragedy and the medical issues of such a journey

From iran to the MCG — Australian soccer's Shakespearian tragedy and the medical issues of such a journey

Crossfire: Philosophy and the Novel in Spain, 1900-1934

Reviewed by: Crossfire: Philosophy and the Novel in Spain, 1900–1934 E. Inman Fox Roberta Johnson, Crossfire: Philosophy and the Novel in Spain, 1900 – 1934. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1993. 234 pp. In one of the most stimulating and instructive studies on the Spanish novel to be published in recent years, Roberta Johnson calls our attention to the importance of three waves of philosophical novels published during the first third of this century. Through refreshingly new readings we are shown how each reflects different philosophical concerns, while, at the same time, their authors are engaged in an intellectual “crossfire” between their ideas, either through parody, indirect allusion or open attack. Johnson teases all of this out through fascinating intertextual readings of the novels and by establishing carefully constructed contexts based on detailed research into the intellectual biography, reading and interpersonal relationships of the writers involved. At the same time she studies the way metaphysical or epistemological themes are cast into novelistic terms and devices and the innovative narrative techniques that emerge. Most of Johnson’s attention is given to the first group of writers—Unamuno, Baroja and Martínez Ruiz—who were concerned mainly with [End Page 451] heterogeneous philosophies entering Spanish intellectual life for the first time at the turn of the century. This resulted not only in disputes and polemics among themselves, but also in novels which were often confused in their philosophical positions and characters who were anguished over the resolution of philosophical idealism and determinism and the problems of will and existence. In her analysis of the novels’ meaning Johnson uses Bakhtin’s theories on the dialogic nature of the novel, in which the author’s voice is refracted through the multiple voices of the narrative discourse, to point out that often a character’s ideas are undermined by the narrator’s attitude. In the process, she demonstrates how this has been overlooked by intellectual historians. We are told how Unamuno draws on the techniques of several earlier philosophical novels (Voltaire’s Candide, Carlyle’s Sartor Resartus and Dickens’s Hard Times) to write his comic-burlesque novel, Amor y pedagogía, in which his characters are embodiments or satires of a range of philosophical positions—all of which are parodied—reflecting Unamuno’s own intellectual evolution from Descartes and the rational idealism of Kant and Hegel to the positivism of Spencer. In her analyses of Camino de perfección and La voluntad Johnson focuses on the “cross-pollenization” between the two authors and the similar resolutions of their protagonists’ lives. She concludes that in Camino de perfección Baroja discovered in the dialogics of dialogue a method for presenting several possible theoretical positions which cancel each other, thus burying the philosophic schizophrenia in the plot more successfully than do Unamuno or Martínez Ruiz. But Baroja’s artistic achievement lies, as demonstrated by Johnson, in his borrowing from several genres—the decadent novel, mystic literature, the picaresque novel, the serial crime or adventure novel, Shakespearian tragedy, and the nineteenth century realist novel—to write a philosophical journey expressing the modern dilemma between determinism and will. On the other hand, Martínez Ruiz’s La voluntad uses a variety of narrative techniques to test a wide range of ideas and pit them against each other in a defiant work that undermines all philosophical and literary authority, including Baroja’s solution to a will-less protagonist. With a meager plot, the characters engage in endless speech making, while contradicting the several philosophical positions that the author had been entertaining since his earliest days and suggesting that there are no metaphysical answers to life’s dilemmas. These novels of 1902 conclude the first era of the Spanish philosophical novel, according to Johnson’s historiography. But before moving on to the second wave, she provides us with revealing new readings of Niebla and El árbol de la ciencia in which they are viewed as wrap-ups of the philosophical themes of the two novelists, particularly that of reason versus will or life. But it is now Ortega—with his reintroduction of rationalism into Spain’s philosophical agenda—who provides the crossfire. Niebla begins with an ironic critique of...

REVIEWS

REVIEWS Get access Shakespearian Tragedy. Edited by MALCOLM BRADBURY and DAVID PALMER. Pp. vi+186 (Stratford-upon-Avon Studies 20). London: Edward Arnold, 1984. £6.95 net. PETER BEMENT PETER BEMENT Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Review of English Studies, Volume XXXVII, Issue 146, May 1986, Pages 255–256, https://doi.org/10.1093/res/XXXVII.146.255 Published: 01 May 1986

Soul in the System: on Meaning and Mystique in Stanislavski and A. C. Bradley

Although literary criticism has moved on since the work of A. C. Bradley, his Shakespearian Tragedy (1904) is still regarded as the greatest achievement of the ‘biographical’ approach to dramatic characterization – and a reprint of that classic work, with a new introduction by John Russell Brown, has just appeared from Macmillan. But the teachings of his close contemporary Stanislavski remain more widely disseminated than disputed, though they spring from very similar assumptions and concerns. Alice Rayner, an assistant professor at University of California, Irvine, investigates what the writings of the two men had in common, how their insights and approaches can be mutually revealing – and how some of their underlying beliefs can be the cause of mystification.

Theatre History and the Literary Critic

In I8I I Charles Lamb wrote, 'What we see upon a stage is body and bodily action; what we are conscious of in reading is almost exclusively the mind and its movements: and this I think may sufficiently account for the very different sort of delight with which the same play so often affects us in the reading and seeing'. Lamb was concerned with the gulf between the Shakespeare existing in his imagination, an imagination stimulated by perusal of the text, and the inadequacies of representation (in comparison) he observed upon the contemporary stage. When the juvenile pleasure of first attending Shakespearian tragedy in the theatre has worn off, 'we find to our cost that instead of realizing an idea, we have only materialized and brought down a fine vision to the standard of flesh and blood. We have let go a dream in quest of an unattainable substance'.1 Lamb seems to have been the first English critic to face the dichotomy between the response to performance and the response to text. Although in this well-known essay he discusses only Shakespearian tragic characters and their representation in the context ot the acting and staging of his time, Lamb raised a question that has never been satisfactorily answered. He did not answer it himself, and modern writers have not answered it for him.

Shakespeare in Britain, 1975

Journal Article Shakespeare in Britain, 1975 Get access Robert Speaight Robert Speaight ROBERT SPEAIGHT is the author of William Poel and the Elizabethan Revival, Nature in Shakespearian Tragedy, and Shakeshpeare on the Stage. Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Shakespeare Quarterly, Volume 27, Issue 1, Winter 1976, Pages 15–23, https://doi.org/10.2307/2869059 Published: 01 January 1976

Reviews

Journal Article Reviews Get access THE HEROIC IMAGE IN FIVE SHAKESPEARIAN TRAGEDIES , by Matthew N. Proser . Princeton University Press 1965 , Oxford University Press , 1966 ; pp. viii, 254 ; 48s. CONCEPTIONS OF SHAKESPEARE , by Alfred Harbage . Harvard University Press, Oxford University Press , 1966 ; pp. x, 164 ; 36s. SHAKESPEARE AT 400 , A Series of Public Lectures Given in May and June, 1964 by Members of the Department of English (Literature) on the Occasion of the Four Hundredth Anniversary of William Shakespear's Birth. University of Cape Town , 1965 ; pp. 63; no price stated. J. C. MAXWELL J. C. MAXWELL Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Notes and Queries, Volume 14, Issue 4, April 1967, Pages 157–158, https://doi.org/10.1093/nq/14-4-157 Published: 01 April 1967

The Idea of the Person and Shakespearian Tragedy

The Idea of the Person and Shakespearian Tragedy Get access Elias Schwartz Elias Schwartz Harpur College Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Shakespeare Quarterly, Volume 16, Issue 1, Winter 1965, Pages 39–47, https://doi.org/10.2307/2867733 Published: 01 January 1965

King Lear: Moral Example or Tragic Protagonist?

AY, but this dotage of our general's, cries Philo at the opening of Antony and Cleopatra, O'erflows the measure; and from this point on Shakespeare's lines recurrently insist not only upon the dotage, but upon its direct relationship with the decdine of Antony's generalship, statecraft, and power. From the inimical Octavius Caesar through Enobarbus to Cleopatra, one or another character guides, with clearly pointed remarks, our interpretation of what we see. Hence it is easy to provide copious evidence from the lines of the play to support the view that Antony is not tragic figure, but warning for sinners: that he brings on his downfall by surrendering to passion. This interpretation is open to dispute. As Willard Farnham has pointed out, the world of later Shakespearian tragedy sometimes tempts us to find a neatly working key to itself in moral responsibility which is there allotted without question.... And it deserts us after we have done so.' Nevertheless, evidence for such reading of Antony's career is easily found in various passages of the play. Similar treatment of Macbeth enables the interpreter to offer him too as model of how not to live: as the cause of his own well-deserved fall. In both plays, furthermore, the text is dotted with references to the effect which the protagonist's doings have upon the state in which he is dominant figure, while in Macbeth there is evidence that the thane's murder of Duncan is to be considered crime against the laws of nature. This is the manner of Shakespeare's working from Love's Labor's Lost and Titus Andronicus to The Tempest. What opinion we are to hold concerning characters of any importance and what they do is made clear to us by what is said about those persons and their deeds. Dissenting opinions may occur, like Shylock's of Antonio and Emilia's of Othello; but against them Shakespeare sets weight of evidence more than adequate to prevent confusion. Dramatists in general, for that matter, have been following this procedure from long time before Shakespeare to our own day; we are told what to think of Creon and Andrew Undershaft as carefully as what to think of Macbeth. Now many scholars have offered interpretations of King Lear which make its protagonist serve purpose as sternly didactic as that attributed to Antony and Macbeth. He brings on his own downfall, we are told, because he is temperamentally wrathful and arrogant; or because he is stupid and senile; or because in dividing up his kingdom and resigning power he is derelict in duty; or because he sins against natural law in doing so. Most commentators prefer