Awards

• Short-listed for National Book Critics Circle Award 2018

Overview

As an aging, tenacious Elizabeth I clung to power, a talented playwright probed the social causes, the psychological roots, and the twisted consequences of tyranny. In exploring the psyche (and psychoses) of the likes of Richard III, Macbeth, Lear, Coriolanus, and the societies they rule over, Stephen Greenblatt illuminates the ways in which William Shakespeare delved into the lust for absolute power and the catastrophic consequences of its execution. Cherished institutions seem fragile, political classes are in disarray, economic misery fuels populist anger, people knowingly accept being lied to, partisan rancor dominates, spectacular indecency rules—these aspects of a society in crisis fascinated Shakespeare and shaped some of his most memorable plays. With uncanny insight, he shone a spotlight on the infantile psychology and unquenchable narcissistic appetites of demagogues—and the cynicism and opportunism of the various enablers and hangers-on who surround them—and imagined how they might be stopped. As Greenblatt shows, Shakespeare’s work, in this as in so many other ways, remains vitally relevant today.

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Reviews

Offers a canny parallel to contemporary political concerns...Full of insight, both for lovers of literature and for students of history and politics. -- Publishers Weekly An incisive and instructive study of personality politics and the abuse of power-topical literary criticism with classical virtues. -- Kirkus Reviews Tyrant is a striking literary feat. At the outset, the book notes how Shakespeare craftily commented on his own times by telling tales of tyrants from centuries before. In an act of scholarly daring, Greenblatt then proceeds to do exactly the same thing. Rarely have these blood-soaked creatures seemed so recognizably human and so contemporary. -- John Lithgow In this brilliant, beautifully organized, exceedingly readable study of Shakespeare's tyrants and their tyrannies-their dreadful narcissistic follies, their usurpations and their craziness and their cruelties, their arrogant incompetence, their paranoid viciousness, their falsehoods and their flattery hunger-Stephen Greenblatt manages to elucidate obliquely our own desperate (in Shakespeare's words) 'general woe.' -- Philip Roth

An incisive and instructive study of personality politics and the abuse of power--topical literary criticism with classical virtues. In this brilliant, beautifully organized, exceedingly readable study of Shakespeare's tyrants and their tyrannies--their dreadful narcissistic follies, their usurpations and their craziness and their cruelties, their arrogant incompetence, their paranoid viciousness, their falsehoods and their flattery hunger--Stephen Greenblatt manages to elucidate obliquely our own desperate (in Shakespeare's words) 'general woe.'--Philip Roth Offers a canny parallel to contemporary political concerns...Full of insight, both for lovers of literature and for students of history and politics. Elegant and deftly written.--Eliot A. Cohen Compelling literary history and analysis. Even those who don't share Greenblatt's political perspective should find his well-informed survey of the making and unmaking of autocratic rulers to be instructive and entertaining. Tyrant is a striking literary feat. At the outset, the book notes how Shakespeare craftily commented on his own times by telling tales of tyrants from centuries before. In an act of scholarly daring, Greenblatt then proceeds to do exactly the same thing. Rarely have these blood-soaked creatures seemed so recognizably human and so contemporary.--John Lithgow

Offers a canny parallel to contemporary political concerns. . . . Full of insight, both for lovers of literature and for students of history and politics. -- Publishers Weekly An incisive and instructive study of personality politics and the abuse of power-topical literary criticism with classical virtues. -- Kirkus Reviews Tyrant is a striking literary feat. At the outset, the book notes how Shakespeare craftily commented on his own times by telling tales of tyrants from centuries before. In an act of scholarly daring, Greenblatt then proceeds to do exactly the same thing. Rarely have these blood-soaked creatures seemed so recognizably human and so contemporary. -- John Lithgow In this brilliant, beautifully organized, exceedingly readable study of Shakespeare's tyrants and their tyrannies-their dreadful narcissistic follies, their usurpations and their craziness and their cruelties, their arrogant incompetence, their paranoid viciousness, their falsehoods and their flattery hunger-Stephen Greenblatt manages to elucidate obliquely our own desperate (in Shakespeare's words) general woe. -- Philip Roth

Author Information

Stephen Greenblatt is Cogan University Professor of the Humanities at Harvard University. He has written extensively on English Renaissance literature and acts as general editor of The Norton Anthology of English Literature and The Norton Shakespeare. He is the author of fourteen books, including The Swerve, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award, and Will in the World, a Pulitzer Prize finalist.

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