Shakespeare's contributions to stage and language are unequaled. In what Professor Clare Kinney calls the "power and audacity of his poetry and stagecraft," Shakespeare has left audiences breathless these past four centuries. But beyond his astonishing feats of language and dramatic impact, Shakespeare also left us a legacy, crafted from his experiences and explorations, of suffering and transgression in his six great mature tragedies: Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth, Antony and Cleopatra, and Coriolanus. In Shakespeare's Tragedies, Professor Kinney's aim is to take you deep within each play while supplying you with a nuanced understanding of its meaning.
Shakespeare's Tragedies
Get a close examination of the great Shakespearean tragedies in this insightful and interesting course taught by an expert Shakespeare scholar.
Rated 4 out of
5
by
mas30 from
Good but not inspiring
These lectures are clear and well-presented commentaries on the plays. There are some perceptive comments but, in my opinion, no great insights. Perhaps I was expecting too much!
Date published: 2024-03-19
Rated 1 out of
5
by
Tegs from
Biased
The professor has a good command of English and is clearly passionate about the subject. Some of her insights are original I believe, but obviously, so much analysis of Shakespeare’s works have been conducted over so many generations that it becomes tedious and the impact of seeing the plays themselves are losing their value as a consequence. I don’t want to sit in a theatre thinking have I missed something significant all the time ! Overall I wouldn’t necessarily recommend these lectures. The professor in her quotes gives the impression of being some kind of frustrated actress. There is insufficient background information provided as to the source and inspiration for the plays, but my biggest niggle is that I was left with the feeling after every lecture, that this is a deliberately feminist viewpoint. Now I have no issue with that interpretation whatsoever, except that if the course had been entitled ‘Shakespeare’s tragedies - a feminist viewpoint’ then I would not have purchased it. An example - Macbeth - his downfall had nothing whatsoever to do with his wife’s goadings of course, and then she was merely ‘forgotten’ rather than the military hero he was, tragically persuaded to wrong doing by his wife and the witches (all female) to be someone else, against his best nature, and to meet his end, bravely and defiantly, unlike his trembling, insane wreck of a wife. I agree with the professor that the plays are clearly open to endless interpretation and thus the only value of these lectures is to discover those that have not occurred to you before, but is that worth paying for ??
Date published: 2022-12-20
Rated 5 out of
5
by
Professor R from
Scholarly but accessible and compelling
Professor Kinney’s interpretations were thoughtful and compelling, done with close attention to the text. Highly recommended!
Date published: 2022-09-04
Rated 5 out of
5
by
dentav1 from
Unbelievable Detail and Analisis
I would recommend that you read each play BEFORE you take this course, after hearing lesson one!
Date published: 2022-03-02
Rated 5 out of
5
by
salubria from
Good depth
Professor very good at reciting Shakespeare which really enhances the lectures. I like that she examines lots of small details in the plays which might be overlooked by the reader. I thought I knew all these plays well but I am learning so much.
Date published: 2022-01-28
Rated 5 out of
5
by
jcraft123 from
Unreal
OMG, I can't add to the positive comments. 6 stars. Criticism of her accent....you have to be kidding (I speak American English). I've listened to many of the courses herein (mostly literary and historical). This one is by far the best.
Date published: 2021-09-19
Rated 4 out of
5
by
Snoscar from
It's worth taking the time to do.
I enjoyed the course & I gave it a generous 4 out of 5.
I read some of the other comments whining about Professor Kinney's accent, apparently for these gentle souls it was ruining their enjoyment of the course. I found that preposterous as she has a neutral English accent. It's similar to the gripe of people who say they can't bear Americans doing Shakespeare (as the accent grates upon their ears). I suppose all those who cannot abide CRK's dialect must have swerved the BBC's amazing 'The Hollow Crown' series. And those who like tragedies will naturally love the histories too. Anyhow, it's their loss - so let's lower the draw-bridge & rid ourselves of these dainty-eared malcontents & crack on to better things.
(In all the courses it's natural at times to focus on the lecturer themselves as opposed to the course – their speech delivery, mannerisms, dress-sense, when are they going to make a lunge for the cup to wet their whistle etc. It's easy to find fault, but I think they do an amazing job on the whole).
As for the course, I didn't want to be spoon-fed what I already knew, or merely hear the familiar quotes so as to pat myself on the back for knowing them. I found her opinions interesting, some of her ideas were new to me, and some annoyed me. When feminist reinterpretation thoughts of Othello began to be drip-fed into those lectures I found myself getting quite vexed, and I wholeheartedly disagreed with her final last-line conclusion on Othello. However, that's her take on it and good luck to her – everyone reads/watches Shakespeare in their own unique way and takes from it what they want to. It's all subjective. (And any kind of 'feminist reinterpretation' is liable to instantly get my hackles up at the best of times, so I am admittedly unenlightened on that score).
The last lecture wasn't the usually summation of what we've already learnt; as well as the look backwards, we also had a look forwards to the plays that came afterwards – a nice note to leave on.
Date published: 2021-04-07
Rated 5 out of
5
by
richibi from
inspiring
Professor Kinney reminded me, for her elegance, her eloquence, her erudition, of the character of Miss Jean Brodie, for which Maggie Smith got an Oscar in 1970. Professor Kinney deserves an equivalent accolade for her superior series of lectures on Shakespeare's tragedies. At her Lear's "Pray, do not mock me", she even made me cry. Not many professors can do that.
Date published: 2021-03-04
Overview
About
Dr. Clare R. Kinney is Associate Professor of English at the University of Virginia. She earned her B.A. in English at Cambridge University. Under a Paul W. Mellon Fellowship, she attended Yale University, where she earned her Ph.D. Professor Kinney served as Director of Undergraduate Studies in the UVA English Department and is in charge of its Distinguished Majors Program. In 2007 Professor Kinney was the recipient of a University of Virginia All-University Teaching Award. She also received a Distinguished Faculty Award from the Z Society of the University of Virginia. Professor Kinney has published many articles, including essays on Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe, Edmund Spenser, Philip Sidney, Lady Mary Wroth, Chaucer, the Gawain poet, and other Renaissance and medieval authors. She is the author of Strategies of Poetic Narrative: Chaucer, Spenser, Milton, Eliot. She specializes in the literature of the English Renaissance and teaches courses on medieval literature. Professor Kinney has participated in staged readings of plays by Shakespeare's contemporaries at the Blackfriars Playhouse in Staunton, Virginia, a reconstruction of the original Blackfriars Theatre in London. She also has directed student performances of scenes from Shakespeare in her courses.
01: Defining Tragedy
This lecture explores the persistent popularity of tragic drama. It includes discussions of Shakespeare's interest in the complicated relationships among protagonists, family and community, and the particular challenges and satisfactions offered by his language and idiom.
36 min
02: Shakespearean Tragedy in Context
After introducing performance conditions and attitudes toward the theater in Shakespeare's England, this lecture explores two contexts for thinking about Shakespearean tragedy: earlier 16th-century experiments in tragic writing, and the preoccupations and anxieties of the playwright's own historical time.
36 min
03: Hamlet I -"Stand and unfold yourself"
Hamlet begins with a sentry's command to "Stand and unfold [identify, disclose] yourself." This lecture addresses the work's fascination with secrets, with disclosure, and with things that cannot be put into words.
33 min
04: HamletI II-The Performance of Revenge
This lecture discusses the multiple perspectives Hamlet offers on the figure of the revenger and analyzes the play's complex exploration of the morality of revenge. It also discusses Shakespeare's interest in the relationship between "heroic" action and acting-as-performance.
33 min
05: Hamlet III - Difficult Women
Hamlet is capable of extraordinary emotional violence against his mother and the young woman he claims to have loved. This lecture explores his confrontations with Gertrude and Ophelia and discusses why—although the "transgressions" of the women trigger so much of the action of the play—it is difficult to think of them as being tragic protagonists in their own right.
33 min
06: Hamlet IV - Uncontainable Hamlet
Hamlet is at once a sprawling and encyclopedic play, but it is also filled with silences and mysteries. We look at the difficulty of determining what lies at its center and the near impossibility of ever containing its multifarious events within a single interpretation.
35 min
07: Othello I - Miscegenation and Mixed Messages
This lecture considers attitudes toward race in the world of the play and Shakespeare's own treatment of the black/white opposition. It analyzes in detail Othello's and Desdemona's defense of their love, Shakespeare's highly nuanced treatment of Desdemona's "errant" marriage, and Othello's uneasy negotiation of his double identity as warrior and lover.
34 min
08: Othello II - Monstrous Births
We look at the character Iago, his plots against Othello, and the longstanding mystery of his "motiveless malignity," including his capacity to manipulate other characters through his skillful use of loaded language and his exploitation of the unexamined assumptions and biases of their culture.
33 min
09: Othello III - "Ocular Proof"
What aspects of Othello's psyche lead him to choose an unholy alliance with Iago over a resolute belief in his wife's fidelity? We look at the gender dynamics of this play and also analyze Shakespeare's finely nuanced representation of Othello's poisoned sight and corrupted imagination.
34 min
10: Othello IV - Tragic Knowledge
This lecture focuses on the play's final act, beginning with a close reading of the soliloquy in which Othello contemplates the murder of his sleeping wife and positions himself as both her judge and her executioner. The lecture goes on to examine his subsequent horrified enlightenment.
34 min
11: King Lear I - Kingship and Kinship
We begin our study of King Lear by discussing the love test Lear devises to divide his kingdom among his daughters, moving on to address the implications of the protagonist's double identity as king and father, and of the play's entanglement of political action with family strife in its interweaving of the "Lear Plot" with the "Gloucester Plot."
35 min
12: King Lear II - "Unaccommodated Man"
This lecture focuses on Shakespeare's interest in the stripping and refashioning of identities in act 3, exploring the idiosyncratic dramatic juxtapositions and oppositions out of which Shakespeare creates his new society of fools and madmen.
35 min
13: King Lear III - The Stage of Fools
We continue to follow the physical and metaphysical journeys taken by Lear and Gloucester, including Gloucester's journey to Dover with his disowned son Edgar, Edgar's thwarting of his father's suicide, and an analysis of the encounter between blind Gloucester and mad Lear on Dover Beach.
34 min
14: King Lear IV - Is this the promised end?
We discuss the heartbreaking reunion between Lear and his banished daughter, along with the almost immediate shattering of Lear's newfound peace and his subsequent regression into madness. What kinds of catharsis or consolation might an audience find in the play's apocalyptic ending?
36 min
15: Macbeth I - Desire and Equivocation
After offering some contexts for Macbeth within early 17th-century English political history, we explore the play's preoccupation with the workings of ambiguous and duplicitous language and the equivocal nature of protagonist Macbeth's own language and desires.
35 min
16: Macbeth II - Dispute it like a man
This lecture turns its focus to Lady Macbeth, the first female character we have encountered who might be called a tragic protagonist. A consideration of her strategies in manipulating her husband leads to a larger meditation on what manhood might mean in the world of Macbeth.
35 min
17: Macbeth III - Bloody Babes and Bloody Ends
Children are at once both utterly vulnerable and supremely powerful in the world of Macbeth. This lecture explores the link between the children (real and metaphorical) of this play and a future that Macbeth cannot ultimately control.
32 min
18: Antony and Cleopatra I - Epic Desires
The protagonists of Antony and Cleopatra are power brokers enmeshed in the complexities of imperial history. We look at the historical context in which the play's events unfold, discuss the Romans' fascination with Cleopatra, and consider how the play's leisurely beginning suggests darker things to come.
35 min
19: Antony and Cleopatra II- Identity Politics
We look at Antony's crisis of identity as he tries to reconcile his notion of "Roman" honor with his "Egyptian" appetites, and propose that the stoic and martial Roman ideal that Antony is perpetually called on to represent is not as clearly differentiated from "Egyptian" flux and cunning as Rome would believe.
34 min
20: Antony and Cleopatra III - The Art of Dying
We continue our discussion of the staging of identity in Antony and Cleopatra, focusing on the protagonists' highly performative suicides, the ironies that complicate Antony's bungled attempt to die a stoic Roman death, and Cleopatra's resurrection of the "heroic Antony" in her eulogy for her lover.
36 min
21: Coriolanus I - The Loner and the Mob
Coriolanus focuses on the public life of republican Rome, with most of its major scenes unfolding in the marketplace. We begin by looking at its protagonist's troubled relationship with the social contracts underpinning the relationship among Rome's patricians, plebeians, and tribunes.
36 min
22: Coriolanus II - The Theater of Politics
In this lecture, we begin by examining the implications of the protagonist's horror at accommodating himself to his society's public rituals before analyzing the clash between Coriolanus's absolutism and the politically expedient (and theatrical) dissimulation preached by his mother.
32 min
23: Coriolanus III - Mothers and Killers
This lecture looks more closely at the relationship between Coriolanus and his mother, examining their traumatic final encounter as it relates to the destructive contradictions that lie within the system of values she nurtured in him.
35 min
24: Conclusion - Beyond Tragedy?
In this final lecture, we address the elusiveness of Shakespearean tragedy as a descriptive category, and discuss Shakespeare's most striking preoccupations as a tragic dramatist, concluding with an account of what happens when our playwright moves beyond tragedy in the final works of his career.
37 min
