Literary Criticism

In this program, the major themes of Shakespeare’s most popular tragedy are investigated by noted experts. Analyzing key scenes from an award-winning film production, Professor Robert Smallwood of the Shakespeare Centre and Professor Stanley Wells of the Shakespeare Institute examine how the relationship between Macbeth and Lady Macbeth changes during the course of the play; how Banquo’s character serves as a counterpart to Macbeth’s; whether Macbeth’s character is at all admirable; and whether the play confirms that all tragedies are uniformly pessimistic. Host Graham MacTavish, an actor with the Stratford Shakespeare Company, establishes context and background for the play. (33 minutes)

Stratford Festival's production of Macbeth.

A Midsummer Night's Dream is one of Shakespeare's most widely studied comedies. This guide offers students an introduction to its critical and performance history, including notable stage productions, TV, and film versions as well as opera and ballet. It includes a keynote chapter outlining major areas of current research on the play and four new critical essays. Finally, a guide to critical, web-based and production-related resources and an annotated bibliography provide a basis for further individual research."

Celebrating 400 years of Shakespeare, Russell T Davies’ full-blooded adaptation has more attitude and invention than anything that’s gone before. This is a production for everyone, brought to life by an award-winning cast of established stars and exciting newcomers. It’s a dream that will never be forgotten. BBC Worldwide Learning.

Including twenty-one groundbreaking chapters that examine one of Shakespeare's most complex tragedies. Othello: Critical Essays explores issues of friendship and fealty, love and betrayal, race and gender issues, and much more.

Othello is a major shakespearean text, studied widely and often adapted for film and TV and is especially challenging for a multicultural society. Othello lends itself to criticism through discussion of the major characters although this study also focuses on recent criticism's analysis of the characters as -signifiers-. The study of the key characters takes the discussion of the text immediately into the central issues of -otherness-, gender, race and power.

Starring Laurence Fishburne, Irene Jacob, and Kenneth Branagh. Director: Oliver Parker, 1995.

Compelling dramatizations of key scenes from Shakespeare’s tragedy are analyzed by two noted Shakespearean experts—Stanley Wells and Russell Jackson of the Shakespeare Institute, Stratford-upon-Avon. Themes and topics include the motives of Iago, and whether his evil is as complete as most commentators suggest; Victorian objections to the interracial relationship between Othello and Desdemona; evidence of racism within Shakespeare’s characterization of Othello; the role of opposing forces (good and evil) in relationships and events; Desdemona as victim or manipulative conniver, responsible for her own downfall; Othello as victim, ruled by emotion rather than logic; the conflict between Othello’s identity as a Christian commander of the Venetian force and as a social and racial outsider; and the use of women as characters vital to plot development. (33 minutes)