Shakespearean Tragedies (Research Paper)

The paradox of tragedy is when the worst comes inevitably even to those who proceed with the best meaning. Titus Adronicus, King Lear, and Timon of Athens are a collection of some Shakespearean tragedies that have survived through the ages because of their content. The society that perceived and attended the theatre at the time each play was written had some influence on how the plays were written or performed in the future. Critics have reviewed and studied all of these plays and many different outcomes have occurred as a result. It has been said that Shakespeare must have had nothing short of some shattering personal experience to explain the sudden change in the mode of his expression when he began writing his tragedies.

The most influential writer in all of English literature, William Shakespeare was born in 1564 to a successful middle-class glove-maker, Richard Shakespeare, in Stratford-upon-Avon, England. Shakespeare attended grammar school, but his education went no further than that. In 1582 he married an older woman, Anne Hathaway, and had three children with her. Around 1590 he left his family behind and traveled to London to work as an actor and playwright. Public and critical success quickly followed, and Shakespeare eventually became the most popular playwright in England and part owner of the Globe Theater. Wealthy and renowned, Shakespeare retired to Stratford and died in 1616 at the age of fifty-two. At the time of Shakespeare's death, literary intellectuals such as Ben Jonson hailed his works as timeless.

Shakespeare's works were collected and printed in various editions in the century following his death, and by the early eighteenth century his reputation as the greatest poet ever to write in English was very well established. The dearth of biographical information has left many details of Shakespeare's personal history concealed...