Eight tragedies of Shakespeare: a Marxist study: New Edition

309 Pages·2016·24.992 MB·English

by  Eagleton, Terry, Kiernan, Victor Gordon, Shakespeare, William

About Victor Kiernan
Victor Kiernan (1913-2009) ranks among Britain's most
distinguished historians. After a fellowship at Trinity
College, Cambridge, and a long period spent teaching
in India, he joined the History Department at the
University of Edinburgh, where he served as professor of
modern history from 1970 until his retirement. Over the
course of his life he authored such works as Eight Tragedies
of Shakespeare, The Lords of Human Kind, European Empires
from Conquest to Collapse, The Duel in European History
and numerous others, as well as translating two volumes
of Urdu poetry.
Other works by Victor Kiernan available from Zed Books
Shakespeare: Poet and Citizen
The Lords of Human Kind: European Attitudes
to Other Cultures in the Imperial Age
America: From VYnite Settlement to Global Hegemony
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EIGHT
TRAGEDIES OF
SHAKESPEARE
VICTOR KIERNAN
Introduction by Terry Eagleton
Zed Books
LONDON
Eight Tragedies of Shakespeare.indd 3 13/1112015 18:131
1
This edition of Eight Tragedies of Slwkespeare was ftrst published in 2016 by
Zed Books Ltd, The Foundry, 17 Oval Way, London SEll SRR, UK.
wwwzedbooks.co.uk
Original erution published byVerso Books in 1996.
Copyright © Heather Kiernan, 1996
Introduction ©Terry Eagleton, 2016
The right of Victor Kiernan to be identifted as the author of this work has been
asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
Cover designed by Michael OswelL
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a
retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,
photocopying or otherwise, -without the prior permission of Zed Books Ltd.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978-1-78360-735-8 hb
ISBN 978-1-78360-688-7 pb
ISBN 978-1-78360-689-4 pdf
ISBN 978-1-78360-690-0 epub
ISBN 978-1-78360-691-7 mobi
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To
N.S.K.
Bear free and patient thoughts.
-King Lear IV vi. SO
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Contents
Introduction by Terry Eagleton IX
Foreword Xl
PART I Programmatic
PART II Introductory
1 The Condition of England 19
2 The Theatre 25
3 Shakespeare and Tragedy 29
4 The Tragic Road 37
5 The Others 42
PART III The Plays
1 Julius Caesar (1598-99) 53
2 Hamlet (1600-D1) 63
3 Othello (1603-D4) 88
4 King Lear (1605-D6) 104
5 Macbeth (1606) 124
6 Timon of Athens (1606-08) 140
7 Antony and Cleopatra (1606-08) 154
8 Coriolanus (1608) 173
PART IV Tragic Themes
1 The Hero 191
2 Villains and Revengers 206
3 Man and Superman 214
4 War 222
5 Political Shadows 228
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6 Women and Men 239
7 Religion and Pliilosopliy 252
8 Endings and Beginnings 264
Bibliography 275
Index 283
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Introduction
by Terry Eagleton
Marxist criticism of Shakespeare begins with Marx himself, who as a
formidably erudite scholar in the great heritage of European hwnanism had
a passion for his work and quotes liberally from it in his own writings. His
comments, however, tend to be as brief as they are perceptive; whereas what
this absorbing study has to offer is a set of detailed, sustained analyses of
the major tragedies, all set firmly in their historical context and properly
unafraid to raise that most embarrassing and impolite of all English subjects,
the question of social class.
Kiernan begins by noting the complex relations between the extraordinary
flourishing of tragedy in Elizabethan and Jacobean England and the fact that
it took place in an era of profound historical transfonnation. One might add
to his remarks that this relation is not confined to that particular moment.
There have been four major outbreaks of tragic art in the history of Europe
- ancient Greece, the age of Shakespeare, the moment of French neo-classical
tragedy and the modern period from Ibsen to Arthur Miller - and all of them
occur at a time of momentous transition. More particularly, tragedy tends
to emerge at a point where a traditional order is still up and running but
is increasingly in conflict with forces which threaten to undo it. The ancien
regime is on the wane but still powerfully influential, while the emergent
world is increasingly buoyant but unable as yet to oust it.
It is not hard, for example, to see ancient Greek tragedy as staging just
such a collision between the realm of myth, gods and heroes, and the gradual
dawning of a new fonn of enlightened rationality which subjects that sacred
sphere to critical interrogation. Oedipus is a key figure here, as a character
who must deploy his rational powers to discover the fearful secret of his
origin, but who in doing so becomes tragically aware of just how much
eludes the conscious mind and shades off into darkness. As for French neo
classical drama, Lucien Goldmann has brilliantly demonstrated in The Hidden
God how the silence of God in an increasingly secular, rationalised world
does not render the intolerable burden of his presence any less painful.
Modernism, it has been claimed, arises from a process of modernisation
which is still incomplete. It is when the modern is still alarmingly or
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