Shakespeare's Tragedies

By: Clare R. Kinney, The Great Courses

Narrated by: Clare R. Kinney

Shakespeare's contributions to stage and language are unequaled, audiences left breathless for the past four centuries, his artistry as evident in moments of insensate rage as it is in moments of heartbreaking tenderness.

But beyond his astonishing feats of language and dramatic impact, Shakespeare also left us a legacy in the explorations of suffering and transgression offered in the six great mature tragedies—Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth, Antony and Cleopatra, and Coriolanus—that make up the astonishing body of work he produced from 1600 to 1608.

This series of 24 exciting lectures from an award-winning teacher takes you deep within each play to observe Shakespeare's protagonists struggling to make choices in the face of competing social, moral, and psychological pressures and "clawing [from] their pain and horror," as Professor Kinney puts it, " [to] a kind of insight."

Whether you're a veteran lover of Shakespeare, someone new to his work, or an old lover returning after too long away, you'll find this course a delight, as Professor Kinney offers insights that give you a nuanced understanding of each play's meaning. It's a gift that will increase the dramatic impact of every Shakespearean tragedy you see on the stage or screen, or visualize as you read them, as well as enhance your ability to form insights on your own with each reading or performance.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your My Library section along with the audio.

©2007 The Teaching Company, LLC (P)2007 The Great Courses

Too Dark

These stories are extremely Dark, however, interesting. The narrator brings excitement to the Tragedies. I was extremely interested in hearing all of the lectures.

Among the very best Shakespeare series

I listen to every Shakespeare series I see, and this ranks at or near the top. Professor Kinney offers a somewhat new (to me) perspective on these masterworks, and added much to my appreciation of the Bard. For one small example, I never considered Gertrude on her own terms, but only through Prince Hamlet's jaundiced though compelling language. For me, the lectures on MacBeth were the highlights of a superb intellectual journey. Brava!

motivation to read Shakespeare

Would you listen to Shakespeare's Tragedies again? Why?

Probably not. I wanted a launching off point and this was it.

What did you like best about this story?

I didn't always know where to focus my attention in reading Shakespeare's plays on my own. The wordplay and vocabulary present stumbling blocks to a new reader. Prof. Kinney introduces the important themes, as well as key lines, and when you read the plays alongside the course, comprehension is less of a challenge and the timeless themes of the work emerge. As a native English speaker, comprehending Shakespeare was a reward by itself. Every other form of literature opens up.

Which character – as performed by Professor Clare R. Kinney – was your favorite?

I like Hamlet and Coriolanus. Hamlet is a sympathetic character who seems trapped by fate and his soliloquies on death and existence are some of the most famous lines in English literature. Coriolanus is a talented warrior turned politician undone by his own arrogance, which seems to be a timely political theme.

Well done

The professor gives a lot of interesting insight into the plays. Other lectures will get into the more technical aspects or the plays. But this felt more like a discussion about the plays themselves, which was delightful.

terrific lectures

This was exactly what I was hoping it would be. Clare Kinney delivers some insightful and creative lectures that showcase the depth of her knowledge while inviting the listener to infuse their own ideas into hers. Never dull and well paced. Great analysis of Shakespeare's tragedies. made me want to go back and read them again.

"If Sorrow is the Food of Thought, Play On!"

I could write volumes about this course whose professor has independently confirmed some of my collegiate epiphanies on the subject even though she had published this recording in 2013 and one year before I took Studies in Shakespeare during Fall 2014; additionally, I was surprised to find out that some catch phrases like “Method in the madness” (Hamlet), “Woe is me” (Hamlet), and “You shall not pass!” (Coriolanus) had been Shakespearean originals.   Professor Clair Kinsey is an Englishwoman and a graduate of Cambridge (UK) and Yale who knows her subject well but who makes absolutely no attempts to change her voice when she has read all quotes; to her extended credit, she takes the subject matter most seriously and even fights back tears in her last and 24th lecture.  In her opening lecture, she lists the six Shakespearean tragedies that she will discuss: Hamlet, the Prince of Denmark (HPD); Othello, The Moor of Venice (OMV); King Lear (KL); Antony & Cleopatra (A&C); Macbeth; and Coriolanus.  Next, she discusses why she has excluded some tragedies like Julius Caesar as well as Romeo & Juliet from her course and then talks about why Western Civilization has been fascinated with watching sadness unfold itself onstage.


Professor Kinsey argues that some form of human nobility is born out of the sadness of human suffering, and this argument is very true but not complete, so she will later say that wisdom/enlightenment is also born out of tragedy; for example, Iago’s last lines say “Demand me nothing: what you know you know…” after which Othello will describe himself in his final words as “one that loved not wisely but too well.” Clearly, experience is the best teacher if that saying is not too much of an oversimplification.  The professor discusses in the final lecture how tragic plotlines usually come from the irreversible decisions that the characters made in the beginnings and from the irreversible damage that has happened since then, but she then speaks of the plays beyond tragedy that are often called the Romances in which happiness transcends sadness because of the decisions that the protagonists have made in the presence of real or perceived damage such as banishment, disownment, and bitterness; for examples, Prospero in The Tempest decides to show forgiveness to his enemies whom he has brought to his island of exile and who had plotted his downfall in the beginning; and in Pericles, the Prince of Tyre, Lord Lysimachus decides to not “crack the glass of [Marina’s] virginity” but instead gives her money to escape.


The professor describes A&C as a play in which "speech is equal to action" thanks to the symbolic value of words that Shakespeare used to convey ideas; for instance, Cleopatra turns the noun "boy" into a verb "to boy" when she means "to be enacted by a high-pitched boy." Something similar happened when I took Creative Writing in Poetry because a classmate had used the verb "sheared" when she had meant "shaved with clippers," and that verb invoked the metaphors of sheepherding and of animal agriculture and drew connections between itself and the control that military officials force onto new recruits.  In A&C, Antony calls Cleopatra the "Serpent of Old Nile" who in turn says "Now I feed myself with most delicious poison" and will have said "and kindly creatures turn all to serpents" right after she will say "Melt Egypt into [the] Nile," and that passage says a lot because the Queen of Egypt was interchangeable with the country itself and because it foreshadows her suicide by a literal serpent and its poison.  In the 1972 film that was both directed and enacted by Charolton Heston, two gladiators fight each other while Antony, Agrippa, and Caesar Octavius engage in a civilized, cordial, and elegant exchange of words; initially, I thought that the characters took the fight for granted, but then I would soon realize that I took the fight for granted because one had always expected to see gladiator fights in the Ancient-Roman setting, but the diplomatic conversation was a camouflaged fight, and that connection becomes apparent when one gladiator pins the arm of another to the ground with a trident after Aggripa proposed a marriage between Antony and Octavia, and Octavius has prompted Antony for an answer.    


In two other tragedies, KL and Coriolanus, Shakespeare tells and shows us just how true the saying is that “actions speak louder than words,” for the latter work has some very powerful lines that show how useless fake gratitude and sound waves are.  Volumina, the mother of Caius Martius (Coriolanus), says the most powerful and convicting line to the political Tribune Sicinius: “Hadst thou foxship to banish him that struck more blows for Rome than thou hast spoken words?” The events of the play had happened 2,000 years before Shakespeare’s lifetime and 2,400 years before our time, and yet our ancestors were so quick to fall into the herd mentality and into the victim mentality from which they fell into childish accountability; thus, the friends of the protagonist try to make the others account for how much his patriotism has converted itself into violent action and even into sustained injury.  In the opening scene, the first citizen says “First, you [all] know that Caius Martius is [the] chief enemy to the people?” before a third citizen will say “Consider [for] you[selves] what services he has done for his county?” Later Caius Martius says to Menenius and the Tribunes, “To brag unto them,--thus I did, and thus;---Show them the unaching scars which I should hide, as if I had receiv’d them for the hire of their breath only!” Later on, he will voice his abhorrence of politics before the masses, “...but with a grain a day, I would not buy their [favor] at the price of one fair word,” and that is saying much because sound waves are useless.  Of course, the highest award for hypocritical sound waves goes to the antagonist Tullus Aufideius who claims that he had loved his adversary, Caius Martius, more than he had loved his bride before he married her and then speaks of “pouring war into the bowels of ungrateful Rome'' even though he will later allow himself to become jealous, hypocritical, and hypocritically disloyal.


The Tragedy of KL shows how true love and true loyalty relay themselves through more than just hollow sound waves and through far more than just sweet-smelling flatteries because Kent disguises himself and his voice, so that he can still serve Lear after the retired king has banished him from court and after when the latter called the former “old man.”  In the opening scene, the youngest daughter Cordelia asks King Lear “Why have my sisters husbands if they love you [entirely]?” but her question is far from rhetorical because the plotline shall reveal that the older sisters, Goneril and Regan, had loved neither their father nor their husbands and neither themselves nor each other, and yet Cordelia allows her filial love to convert itself in bold and dangerous action as she raises the army of France on Lear’s behalf even though he has disowned and exiled her.  I have neither read nor seen all Shakespearean plays, but to the best of my knowledge, KL is the only play in which the weather plays a role onstage; whereas, the seastorm in The Tempest happens offstage.  Of course, the countries along the English Channel have no shortage of bad weather, but the storm in KL is symbolic of fair-weathered friendship and loyalty versus ill-weathered friendship and loyalty.  The work also draws attention to the willful ignorance that blinds people from distinguishing between both kinds of loyalty and friendship; for instance and upon banishment, Kent says “See better, Lear, and let me still remain the true blank of thine eye” after the king has shouted “Out of my sight!” and after Kent said “Nor are th[ey] empty-hearted whose low sound [echoes] no hollowness.” Later when Lear shall lose his mind and Gloucester, his eyes, the former will ask the latter to read a letter to which he will have replied with “Were all the [words and] letters suns, I could not see one,” and the wordplay was quite intentional and has a triple meaning because it shows how literally blind Goucester is to his loyal and “maddened” son who has prevented his suicide just as he had been figuratively blind to his disloyal and scheming son before he lost his eyesight.  But runaway Lear is mentally blind because he calls Gloucester “Blind Cupid” before he will demand him to read a letter.


When I took Studies in Shakespeare, I read both OMV and Macbeth and argued that the author used the Yin-yang symbol and the metaphor of horticulture as symbolic tools for exploring moral ambiguity.  Professor Kinsey has confirmed my epiphany that Shakespeare designated evil/darkness as male characteristic and virtue/light as a female characteristic, but inversely he has made Macbeth and most male characters “feminine” and Lady Macbeth and her fellow female characters as “masculine”; hence, the beards on the three witches in the beginning.  The characters frequently mention the colors black and white as well as symbolic nouns like snow, milk, a raven, a goose, etc, but the professor has not caught onto the second half of my epiphany that a seed of darkness grows itself in Lord Macbeth that shall destroy him just as seed of light grows itself and shall destroy Lady Macbeth.  I have come to think that the same yin-yang symbol pertains to the moral ambiguity and the exploration of morality in OMV that uses race as a metaphor of moral contrast and of NO opinion on miscegenation; as a result, Barbantio, the father of Desdemona, says to Roderigo, the rival of Othello, “Thou hast heard me say [that] my daughter is not for thee.”


Professor Kinsey points out the long-standing associations between whiteness and morality and between blackness and immorality (black knight, black magic, black death, etc.) in addition to the world of binary opposites in not only Western Civilization but also in the whole universe.  The director Oliver Parker also made vivid use of this contrast in the 1995 film when Kenneth Branagh’s Iago had placed two chess pieces of a black king and a white queen into a close-up shot before he placed a white knight between them, and then lightning flashes as soon as he has said “I have’t;---it is engendered:---hell and night / Must bring this monstrous birth to the world’s light.” Even though Iago is obviously white on the outside and dark on the inside while Othello is inversely black on the outside and light on the inside, I now and uniquely argue that a seed of light grows itself in Iago that shall destroy him just as a seed of darkness grows in Othello that shall destroy him.  For example, Iago says in the beginning that he of “the tribe of hell,” but Othello implies in the end that his late wife Desdemona was analogous to Christ and of the tribe of heaven and will compare himself to Judas Iscariot who was “the base Judean [who] threw a pearl away [that had been] richer than all his tribe.” The seed of light in Iago was his love for his wife Emilia or at least the love that she had for him, and the seed of darkness in Othello was his lack of real self-love that soon turns itself into jealousy, insecurity, and nihilism, and it was also his lack of wisdom: “then must you speak of one that loved not wisely, but too well.” 

But there are two other analogies that weave themselves into the play: the Biblical parable of the Foolish Man who Built his House upon the Sand, the aforementioned metaphor of horticulture that was in Macbeth as well, and the Machiavellian philosophy of human-bestial dualism.  Shakespeare had set at fewest five plays in Renaissance-Era Italy and another five in Ancient Rome, but the Venetian setting was no coincidence because the city is built on swampy ground and still continues to sink however slowly.  Near the beginning of the 1995 film, Lawrence Fishbourne’s Othello says “If you do find me foul in her report, the trust, the office I do hold of you, not only take away, but let your sentence even fall upon my life,” before Michael Cassio on the right side will look off-screen and then the camera operator will have jumped to a medium close-up shot of Branagh’s Iago.  Shortly thereafter, Roderigo mourns “I will incontinently drown myself,” then Iago tries to make him look at the figurative glass as half-full and says that he has “never found a man that knew how to love himself” because the average man could not differentiate between the beneficial half and the injurious half of a figurative glass, so then Iago invokes the metaphor of horticulture by saying “Our bodies are gardens, to the which our wills are gardeners,” then he tells Roderigo to invest in himself with his oft-repeated phrase: “Put money in[to] thy purse.” In Iago’s estimation, the “Moors are changeable in their wills” because their figurative houses are built on sinking sand, so in essence, Iago evokes the inversion of the Machiavellian raging-river analogy by telling his friend to prepare himself for the time of great fortune, so that way when Desdemona shall become whimsically bored of her husband, the heavily-enriched Roderigo will have been ready for her.


The Italian setting and Florentine character Michael Cassio are heavy allusions to the Florentine and Renaissance-Era philosopher Niccolo Machiavelli in whose book The Prince he advises every ruler to become part-beast and part-human and “to know how to use both natures, and that the one without the other has no stability,” and that the bestial half ought to become half-vulpine and half-leonine, “for the lion cannot guard himself from the toils, nor the fox from the wolves.  [A ruler] must therefore be a fox to discern toils, and a lion to drive off wolves.”  In that same conversation, Iago invokes the inversion of the Florentine’s maxim by saying, “Ere I would say I would drown myself for the love of a [harlot], I would change my humanity with a [foolish creature like a] baboon.”  The cinematography of the film uses the theme of sinking elegantly and strongly because the first and establishing shot shows Othello and his newly-wed wife riding in a gondola, and after an hour and 28 minutes Iago says aside “This is the night / That either makes me or fordoes me quite” before he will knock the chess pieces into a well as an underwater camera operator will film their moonlit descent, and that scene foreshadows the last one in which the boatmen dump the mummified Othello and Desdemona into the sea.


At the end of Lecture 10, the professor states that something seems to be missing in “Othello’s imaginative universe that insists on such extreme opposites,” and it is in her estimation, love even though she has not specified which kind(s) of love.  This claim is partially true because both OMV and Macbeth raise the question of how much morality is not enough and how much immorality is too much; furthermore, the Christian Bible reads “[the Judeo-Christian God] maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust” (Mathew 5:45).  The answer is genuine self-love, that is, love for the better half of yourself and the undeveloped potential within yourself.  Only once you have improved yourself and have developed valid first-person love is when and only when you can develop and donate second-person love.  If Othello were genuinely in love with himself, he would not need to stake his “life upon her faith [and love],” and he would not become insecure at the slightest tremor.  If King Lear were genuinely in love with himself, he would be able to understand the partial yet genuine love that Cordelia has for him, and his generosity would not be conditional under the requited love from anybody.  If Lord Macbeth were genuinely in love with himself and with the version of manliness that has always been his, he would not be as dependent on the need for spousal validation, and then Lady Macbeth should (conditional tense of shall) not be able to sway him as easily.


Even so, there is another redeeming goal alongside real self-love, and it is the wisdom that is earned and not just inherited; unfortunately for them, the tragic protagonists have paid some heavy prices for that enlightening wisdom that, in many ways, they had been able to develop in their minds before the tragic events happened, so if Othello were genuinely as “wise as serpents” (Mathew 10:16), he would ask himself about who else had had access to his wife’s chambers before the handkerchief found itself in Michael Cassio’s possesion, and he would become more alert to the “green-eyed monster” within not only himself but also in third parties like Iago and Roderigo.  If King Lear were genuinely wiser than he is, he would be more accountable, and then he would realize that actions have always spoken louder than words, and then he should become less inclined to blame his lack of agency of on what Dante Aligheri calls the “false and lying gods” of the Romans.  If Lord Macbeth were genuinely wise, he would see through the gender-specific rhetoric of his manipulative, controlling, and power-hungry wife, and he would also ask himself if there were a double meaning in the prophecy of the witches, or at least if there were an alternative interpretation to their otherwise impossible prediction.

Oh Sir! You are old;

What did you love best about Shakespeare's Tragedies?

Although, the words delivered are so extraordinarily tragic, the speaker enriches the meaning profoundly ten times over. As I listened to King Lear and other tragic Shakespeare stories told by Professor Kinney, I realized how engulfed I quickly became as each word echoed through her enriched my understanding of what I had previously known of Shakespeares tragedies. I love that Shakespeare Tragedies can connect me with the production and the performance through words. Professor Kinney has such an eloquent voice to enhance the tragedies.

Who was your favorite character and why?

More than ever my favorite character would be King Lear. Ha! King Lear, his daughter's and Edward, this character list helps to enhance the story of Lear as he comes to terms with the laws of justice.We are offered a glimpse at how it could feel to be faced with consequences of our actions and be at odds with our own personal conscience. Naturally, there are several choices, conflicts, and political situations which are surrounding Lear throughout his clash as he is forced to reflect on human laws and moral laws. How many times I've said to someone, we see, but we don't see what we are shown.

Have you listened to any of Professor Clare R. Kinney’s other performances before? How does this one compare?

No, I've never listened to Professor Kinney's performances, but she far outshines most professional female speakers. I do have favorites, but she ranks up there with the best.

Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

Professor Kinney is the perfect individual to read this audio book, perhaps more are in store for her, and her next move in life will be in this genre of literature and entertainment. Her explanations and comments offer a true analysis of each one of the Shakespearean stories in this Great Courses Course (sounds redundant, but it is what it is). Ok, so Professor Kinney, has such a sweet voice, soothing, enhancing of every Renaissance piece spoken in contemporary productions. She has a knack of using the verbal text and shifting into a visual image in order to relate and heighten the stories.Even characters who murder, such as in MacBeth, I'm assuming if you've read MacBeth, who are the most unscrupulous, despicable, revengeful individuals can be thought of as fully developed through Professor Kinney's descriptions. I did cry at the end of her reading Othello, but this is true of every time I come to the end of Othello. In this story, we know that Shakespeare had the ability to convey such a range of emotion in a very piece, that we really do not know how to react until it happens. I never understand in its entirety the feeling of jealousy, but it too is an emotion that is drawn upon in such a provocative way that we begin to reflect upon our lives. This course, is such a powerful read, that I cannot recommend it any higher than I have, but if it were possible I would like to say thank you.

Any additional comments?

Imagery at its best

very good

I wish the professor would do this for the rest of the plays - and spenser and marlowe!

A wonderful and insightful experience

I was an English literature major and had read and/or seen five of the six plays presented in this course.

Dr. Kinney provided numerous interpretations, clarifications and alternate views to plays I thought I understood.

She has one of the most beautiful reading voices I’ve heard (perhaps she can get a side hustle reading audiobooks.)

This course has given me so much more to consider in plays that are over 400 years old.

I was particularly moved near the end of the last lecture, when Dr. Kinney seemed to struggle not to weep while reminding us of the tragedies that befell various characters in each play. She obviously feels these works deeply and profoundly.

As I neared the end of the course, I checked to see if she prepared any others for The Great Courses.

Alas, not on Audible.

But I thank her for this remarkable work and envy her students at UVA.

Enlightening and well presented

Professor Clare Kinney does an excellent job of bringing fascinating insights to each of the plays she speaks to in this course. Her lectures are well structured, the information is accessible for the lay reader and above all, these lectures will invite and encourage those who have only a high school or college course experience with Shakespeare's tragedies to invest the intellectual energy toward a deeper understanding of the plays.

Note that she doesn't speak to Romeo and Juliet, but (wisely in my view) includes Antony and Cleopatra. However, it would have been excellent if she had included both, in addition to the most popular tragic plays. Undoubtedly, she would also treat R & J with expert analysis as well. She left me curious and wondering what she would have to say.

I wish that producer of The Great Courses would have left out the music and clapping between each lecture. I find that a bit annoying and that it adds nothing to the audio experience.