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Shakespeare is Hard, but so is Life

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Shakespeare is Hard, but so is Life

By: Fintan O'Toole
Narrated by: Fintan O'Toole
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Bloomsbury presents Shakespeare is Hard, but so is Life written and read by Fintan O'Toole.

The works of Shakespeare have become staples of literature. They are everywhere, from our early schooling to the lecture rooms of academia, from classic theatre to modern adaptations on stage and screen. But how well do we really know his plays?

In this witty, iconoclastic book, the bestselling author Fintan O’Toole examines four of Shakespeare’s most enduring tragedies: Hamlet, Macbeth, Othello and King Lear. He shows how their tragic heroes have been over-simplified and moulded to fit restrictive, conservative values, and restores the true heart and spirit of the classics.

'I've never read a book like this before: it's challenging, irreverent and funny.' Roddy Doyle Literary History & Criticism Shakespeare Heartfelt Witty Funny
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Critic reviews

I’ve never read a book like this before: it’s challenging, irreverent and funny.
Convincing, incisive and stimulating.
A brilliant and extremely readable distillation of some of the current thinking about Shakespeare’s tragedies.
A lively and intelligent work of criticism...Shakespeare is hard, and O’Toole has valiantly refused to simplify him.
A useful corrective to the philistine notion that Shakespeare must be simplified and domesticated so that people can understand him.
You’ll look at Shakespeare with new eyes after reading this book.
All stars
Most relevant
I liked the unacademic approach the author takes. He actually slices through the plays and characters in a way, that gave us, classic readers, a new taste and prospective. It shows that Macbeth is his favourite, yet he gave all the other plays their share of focus. It's a very good book for those who are interested in a new angle to view old works of art.

Shakespeare is hard, but made easy by this book

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This is the best popular book of Shakespeare criticism (expanded for re-publication.). Witty and lucid, this short text puts forward the essential basis for understanding Shakespeare, what he and his work really means, how to really 'get' it. It's an accessible summary of a materialist analysis, without neglecting the texts, stripping away accreted layers of reactionary critical 'wisdom', and putting Shakespeare back into social and historical context. In the process, the Shakespeare everyone seems at pains to not see becomes clearly visible. He is revealed as radical instead of trite, searing instead of sentimental, insightful instead of banal, relevant instead of outdated. To read or listen to this (the author reads his own work beautifully, by the way) is to feel things falling into place, light breaking in, and a vital part of culture being rescued from a pall of trivia, cant, lazy orthodoxy, and boring eyewash. Bravo!

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