Tragedies, Volume 2: Introduction by Tony Tanner

We read Shakespeare line by line for his supernatural mastery of all the poetic resources of the English language, and play by play for his utterly human, utterly intimate feeling for our condition as individuals and as social beings.  Through these works, which deal with the transcendence and the corruption of love, the exigencies of power, the domination of fate, and the algebra of human need, an entire civilization has come to understand its character and its destiny.

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