In your plan: Week 23, Fri, 26 Mar 2027.
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Overview
William Shakespeare wrote about thirty-seven plays between about 1590 and 1613. This guide covers six major works from the later part of that span: Julius Caesar, Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth and The Tempest. They are valued for characters who seem to think, doubt and change in front of the audience, and each play can be read as a case study in power, judgement and human failure.
Context
Shakespeare worked in London as actor, playwright and shareholder in a theatre company, the Chamberlain's Men, later the King's Men. The theatre was commercial and public, so plays had to hold a mixed audience. Under Elizabeth I and then James I, questions of succession, loyalty and rebellion were sensitive. The collected plays were printed in the First Folio in 1623, seven years after his death in 1616.
Read the full guide: chapter summaries, competing interpretations, key terms
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Curator's notes
- Why it matters
- Created the modern psychological character. Hamlet thinks too much; Macbeth wants too much; Lear cannot hear the truth; Othello trusts the wrong person.
- Use in training and coaching
- Each play is a leadership case: indecision, ambition, flattery, manipulation, persuasion (Mark Antony's speech is a masterclass)
- Connects to
- Greek tragedy; Freud; all modern drama and film
- What to read
- Hamlet, Macbeth, King Lear, Othello, Julius Caesar, The Tempest
- Text (date)
- Shakespeare, plays (1590–1611)
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