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Shakespeare Is Hard, But So Is Life: A Radical Guide to Shakespearean Tragedy

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Although this is a reprint of his 1990 volume originally titled "No More Heroes," O'Toole's introduction to Shakespeare and his great tragedies is yet one of the most helpful retakes on why we need to return to the original plots (in both senses) of the author. O'Toole arms teachers, individual readers, and potential directors with insights that will restore excitement to the experience of Shakespeare.

O'Toole is obviously as enthusiastic about his subject as Harold Bloom is, but his writing is careful, witty, and well thought out, with specific examples to back up his "radical" guide. Even the beginning Shakespearean will easily follow O'Toole's important placement of The Plays within their Elizabethan context: a turbulent time of social upheaval and personal insecurity (easy to appreciate early in this 21st Century). More experienced readers and teachers will (hopefully) enjoy being challenged to expand the narrow boxes in which recent generations have attempted to capture Hamlet, Macbeth, Othello, and Lear. The "tragic hero" and his "tragic flaw" (for example) are seen to be unnecessary distortions imposed by Victorian lenses. "See farther" - as Shakespeare might say.

You may want to quibble with some of the author's interpretations, but you'll come away respecting O'Toole's honesty and clarity, and will no doubt savor new insights into many details of the play (it was not just for show that toads, nails, and witches are included in the dramas). Both little details and long-disected classic overarching issues (e.g., "Why did Hamlet delay?") come into brighter light.

Warning to teachers: O'Toole will incite your students to think outside the boxes that have usually facilitated pat answers to essay asignments.

Eminently readable and engaging.

Over the years, I've seen productions of all four of Shakespeare's major tragedies discussed in this book. With the exception of "Hamlet", I have always found these plays powerful and disturbing, without necessarily understanding why.

I still don't get "Hamlet" - probably never will. But this relatively short book by Fintan O'Toole did actually offer fresh insights into where the power of these plays lies. In five clearly-written essays that are mercifully free of academic jargon, he analyzes the tragedies from a new point of view, which I found interesting and thought-provoking, without being completely persuasive.

The book consists of five essays:

Shakespeare is hard, but so is life.
Hamlet: Dying as an art.
Othello: Inside out.
King Lear: Zero hour.
Macbeth: Back to the future.

In the first, central, essay O'Toole lays out his objections to the 'standard' mode of interpreting the tragedies, and proposes an alternative viewpoint. This is then illustrated by application to each of the four tragedies in turn.

O'Toole opens with the assertion that we have all been sold a bill of goods were Shakespeare is concerned. The standard approach to interpreting the tragedies originated in Victorian England and is far more reflective of prevailing attitudes at that time than of the political and private realities that guided and influenced Shakespeare. To view the plays through this particular lens is to invite distortion. In particular, O'Toole calls out the following as being misguided:

1. The idea of the Tragic Flaw , which invites us to reduce the hero to a one-note character, and results in some 'witheringly useless' analyses (Macbeth is ambitious, Hamlet is indecisive, Lear is vain, Othello is jealous)
2. The idea of the Tragic Hero , which leads to an analysis in which the main character is viewed in isolation, rather than in terms of the interplay between characters.
3. The Victorian idea that the soliloquy is the 'heart of the tragedy', the place where the hero bares his true soul, and is thus the key to understanding the play.

Combining 1 and 2 leads to a view of the tragedy as a play in which the potentially noble hero, through some flaw in his character, helps to bring his own downfall, and by suffering, acquires self-knowledge, and so purges his own faults. As O'Toole points out, the problem with this notion, which is taken directly from Aristotle with no regard to the enormous differences between Greek tragic heroes and Shakespearean ones, is that Shakespeare's plays make no consistent sense when viewed in this way. It is reductionist in a way that ultimately makes the protagonists seem one-dimensional, not very bright, and not very interesting. Idea #3 is a Victorian distortion of how soliloquies actually worked in the Shakespearean theater.

How does O'Toole suggest we approach the plays, if not through the Victorian reformulation of Aristotle's lens? To get the full story, you'll have to read the essays yourself, but the following observations are relevant to his suggested approach:

"Successful tragedy .... gets written only at certain times, when there is on overwhelming tension between two sets of values, two world views, two ways of thinking about how individuals related to their societies. The tragic figures are those who get caught in the middle between these two world views, and who can therefore literally can do nothing right."

O'Toole goes on to make a case for viewing the tragedies as examples of what he terms 'secular rituals', but it is the observation above that I found most useful. That is, he invites us to reinterpret the plays, not in terms of a specific character flaw of a single indivual, but as expressions of the tension between two competing views of the world in which a given play is set.

Obviously, understanding the particular tensions which prevailed in Shakespeare's world when the plays were written, and how these may have shaped the playwright's thinking and influenced his writing, is likely to be important in trying to understand the tragedies. This is an obvious invitation to read, or re-read, Stephen Greenblatt's excellent "Will in the World : How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare", which is less a standard 'biography' than it is an exploration of the factors at play in Shakespeare's world and how they may have combined to form the poet's worldview.

Each of the four tragedies is analyzed within the framework proposed in the first essay. The analyses, though not always fully convincing, are clearly and persuasively argued. I couldn't be further removed from the world of Shakespeare scholarship, so I have no idea how O'Toole's ideas are viewed by academics within that community. All I can say is that he explains them clearly and articulately, and that I found them helpful and thought-provoking. I still don't get "Hamlet", though.

I highly recommend this book.

There's nothing like a book that's meant to be deliberately provocative, especially about literature. In Shakespeare Is Hard, But So Is Life, Fintan O'Toole tries to explode some of the old saws of Shakespearean criticism. In particular, he is against the tragic flaw/tragic hero analysis of the Shakespearean tragedy.

In the process of laying out his case, O'Toole makes a number of points with which I agree. Overall, he wants to get to a more holistic view of the plays and get away from such a severe focus on the "tragic hero". He makes an interesting case of the relationship between status and power in the major characters. (Hamlet has status but no power. Macbeth has power but not status.) He draws great parallels between the dichotomy of the medieval and Enlightenment viewpoints that play out in Shakespeare's work. Also, his view of the soliloquy as breaking the fourth wall instead of being a completely interior voice of the speaker is fascinating.

On the other hand, like most writers who want to make a strong case for something "radical," he overreaches a bit. One of the things that makes Shakespeare's plays so great is that they can withstand any number of interpretations. A holistic view of the plays does not eliminate the usefulness of the tragic flaw. Just because Shakespeare is illustrating the conflict between medieval values and Enlightenment values doesn't mean that there isn't a sense of inevitability to the direction taken by our protagonists. I also think that his argument is considerably weakened by the fact that he focuses only on four of the tragedies. Too many plays are left out.

In the end, though, this is a book that must be recommended. His passion and his ability to push outside the basic traditions of Victorian scholarship on Shakespeare is a pleasure to read. He got me thinking about Shakespeare in a different way, which is what I most look for in a book like this.

I received this book as a gift, otherwise I never would have stumbled upon it. I found it brief, highly idiosyncratic, and bordering at times on the realm of what might be termed fun. I disagreed with practically all of it, but found it stimulating in a way that the more ordinary works ordinarily are not.

O'Toole's historically-based concept of tragedy is a valuable corrective to the artistotelian viewpoint. He sees Renaissance tragedy as reflecting the problematic transition from medieval to early modern in England. His argument is not especially original but still very helpful for undergrads. O'Toole historicizes tragedy, presenting an accessible methodology for undergrads, taking them beyond purely formalistic analysis.