Shakespearean Tragedy: Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth

Andrew Cecil Bradley (1851-1935) was an English literary scholar, best remembered for his work on Shakespeare. The outcome of the five years as Professor of Poetry in Oxford were A. C. Bradley's two major works, Shakespearean Tragedy (1904), and Oxford Lectures on Poetry (1909). All of his published work was delivered earlier as lectures. Bradley's pedagogical manner and his self-confidence made him a real guide for many students to the meaning of Shakespeare. Though Bradley has sometimes been criticised for writing of Shakespeare's characters as though they were real people, his book is probably the most influential single work of Shakespearean criticism ever published. By the mid-twentieth century his approach became discredited for many scholars; often it is said to contain anachronistic errors and attempts to apply late 19th century novelistic conceptions of morality and psychology to early 17th century society. Bradley's other works include: Poetry for Poetry's Sake (1901), A Commentary on Tennyson's in Memoriam (1901), and A Miscellany (1929).