This course encompasses Romeo and Juliet, Julius Caesar, Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth, Antony and Cleopatra, Coriolanus, and King Lear. While addressing ourselves to such matters as language and theatricality, we shall approach plays primarily from the perspectives of plot and characterization. This line of inquiry will enable us to focus on the psychology and morality of the tragic protagonists and at the same time take into account the shape of the plays’ action. Thereby we shall be able to move beyond the misguided idea of the “tragic flaw” of characterization to come to terms with the philosophical, if not theological, question that all tragedy ultimately raises: the relationship between moral excellence and man’s fate.
