Shakespeare’s Early Tragedies

First published in 1968.

Shakespeare’s Early Tragedies contains studies of six plays: Titus Andronicus, Richard III, Romeo and Juliet, Richard II, Julius Caesar and Hamlet. The emphasis is on the variety of the plays, and the themes, a variety which has been too often obscured by the belief in a single ‘tragic experience’. The kind of experience the plays create and their quality as dramatic works for the stage are also examined.

These essays develop an understanding of Shakespeare’s use of the stage picture in relation to the emblematic imagery of Elizabethan poetry.