Tragic Conditions in Shakespeare: Disinheriting the Globe

Paul A. Kottman offers a new and compelling understanding of tragedy as seen in four of Shakespeare's mature plays -- As You Like It, Hamlet, King Lear, and The Tempest.
The author pushes beyond traditional ways of thinking about tragedy, framing his readings with simple questions that have been missing from scholarship of the past generation: Are we still moved by Shakespeare, and why? Kottman throws into question the inheritability of human relationships by showing how the bonds upon which we depend for meaning and worth can be dissolved.
According to Kottman, the lives of Shakespeare's protagonists are conditioned by social bonds -- kinship ties, civic relations, economic dependencies, political allegiances -- that unravel irreparably.