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Shakespeare’s tragedies are among the most powerful studies of human nature in all literature
and appropriately stand as the greatest achievements of his dramatic artistry. Attention understandably has focused on his
unforgettable tragic characters, such as Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth. Yet the plays also explore
and extend the very nature of tragedy itself by discovering within it a structure that derives meaning precisely from its
refusal to offer consolation or compensation for the suffering it traces.
Shakespeare wrote his first tragedies in 1594 and 1595. But he left the field of tragedy untouched
for at least five years after finishing Romeo and Juliet, probably in 1595, and turned to comedy and history plays.
Julius Caesar, written about 1599, served as a link between the history plays and the mature tragedies that followed.
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