The passions of Shakespeare's tragic heroes /

Kirsch frames his study of Shakespeare's four most "passionate" heroes--Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth, and Lear--with chapters defending his essentialist approach. Drawing on Renaissance moral philosophy, Christian theology, the classics, and modern Freudian psychology, Kirsch's analyses attempt to redress the balance between the particular and the representational, between private interiority and cultural determinations. Shakespeare's interpretations of "passions," which engage a range of human nature and behavior, connect the Renaissance--and earlier worlds--with our own, his characters with "the pulses of our own lives." Evident learning and critical sobriety characterize Kirsch's work, which at every turn challenges new historicist conceptions of the self and reconceptions of literary studies. To some, this humanist reading of Shakespeare will be too removed from contemporary criticism to be of interest; others, however, will welcome a return to a familiar, if out of fashion, Shakespeare who speaks across cultures and time. -J. Schlueter, Lafayette College