The best literary criticism for understanding Shakespeare
Shakespeare can seem familiar and inaccessible at the same time. The plots are often recognisable, yet the language, theatrical conventions and historical assumptions may feel distant to a modern reader. Literary criticism provides a set of tools for crossing that distance without reducing the plays to a single correct interpretation.
The strongest Shakespeare criticism combines close reading with knowledge of performance, politics, religion, gender and social history. Some critics focus on character and moral conflict, while others examine the theatre as a commercial institution or ask how race, class and empire shape the dramas.
For Australian students, teachers and independent readers, the most useful approach is to build a small, varied critical library. A reader preparing for the NSW HSC, VCE or university study in Sydney, Melbourne or elsewhere can begin with accessible commentary before moving towards more specialised scholarly debate.
Begin with the major traditional critics
Samuel Johnson’s Preface to Shakespeare remains a valuable starting point because it treats Shakespeare as both a poet and a practical dramatist. Johnson praises the representation of human nature across different ages and social positions, while also objecting to structural weaknesses and excessive wordplay. His criticism teaches readers to assess a play’s design rather than admire isolated quotations.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge offers a more psychological style of interpretation. His lectures and notes explore imagination, inward conflict and the distinctive qualities of figures such as Hamlet, Iago and Imogen. Coleridge sometimes treats Shakespeare’s characters as if they were real people, a method that later critics have questioned, but his attention to consciousness still influences classroom discussion.
William Hazlitt adds a lively account of Shakespearean character and theatrical energy. His essays on the plays are personal, forceful and often memorable. These early critics should not be treated as final authorities; their assumptions about gender, morality and society belong to their own period. Their lasting value lies in the questions they teach readers to ask.
Use character criticism with care
A.C. Bradley’s Shakespearean Tragedy is one of the most influential books for understanding Hamlet, Othello, King Lear and Macbeth. Bradley describes tragic protagonists as complex individuals whose errors, desires and circumstances lead towards catastrophe. His writing is clear enough for advanced secondary students and detailed enough to reward university readers.
The Bradley tradition remains useful when a reader needs to trace motivation, imagery and emotional development across a whole play. It can clarify why Macbeth’s ambition is inseparable from fear, or why Lear’s political error becomes a crisis of identity and family. The danger is assuming that every character has a stable private personality independent of language, actors and staging.
Later critics challenged this psychological model. L.C. Knights argued that Shakespeare should be studied through patterns of language and dramatic action rather than through invented biographies of characters. E.M. Forster and William Empson, in different ways, also encourage readers to notice ambiguity, contradiction and the pressure of multiple meanings.
Read the plays as theatrical events
Shakespeare wrote for performance, not for silent reading alone. Theatre criticism draws attention to entrances, exits, music, costumes, props, audience response and the physical relationship between actors and spectators. A pause in King Lear, a body displayed in Julius Caesar or a theatrical disguise in Twelfth Night can alter the meaning of a scene.
Jan Kott’s Shakespeare Our Contemporary presents the plays as politically tense and physically dangerous dramas. His interpretations can be provocative, especially when he connects Shakespeare with modern authoritarian states and violence. While some comparisons have aged unevenly, Kott makes the theatre’s brutality impossible to overlook.
Performance history is particularly useful in Australia, where Shakespeare is encountered through professional companies, school productions and outdoor festivals. A production at the Sydney Opera House may emphasise visual spectacle, while a touring company in regional New South Wales may rely on a small cast and adaptable staging. Comparing these choices with the written text reveals how interpretation changes with place, audience and theatrical resources.
Compare critical approaches
No single school of criticism explains every Shakespeare play. Formalism concentrates on imagery, structure and verbal pattern; historicism investigates institutions and beliefs; feminist criticism examines gender and power; postcolonial criticism questions representations of cultural difference and empire. Each method highlights evidence that another approach may overlook.
| Critical approach | Main question | Useful critics or books | Particularly helpful for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Formalist | How do language and structure create meaning? | Cleanth Brooks, L.C. Knights | Sonnets, speeches, imagery |
| Psychological | What drives a character’s actions and crisis? | Coleridge, A.C. Bradley | The major tragedies |
| Historicist | What social and political forces shape the play? | Stephen Greenblatt, Jonathan Dollimore | Kingship, religion, class |
| Feminist | How are gender and authority represented? | Juliet Dusinberre, Coppélia Kahn | The Taming of the Shrew, Measure for Measure |
| Performance-based | How does staging change interpretation? | Jan Kott, Peter Brook | Any play in production |
| Postcolonial | How are race, travel and empire imagined? | Ania Loomba, Kim F. Hall | Othello, The Tempest |
A practical reading sequence is to choose one traditional critic, one historical critic and one critic concerned with gender or performance. A reader consulting a broad book reference library can compare editions, criticism and related entries before selecting titles for sustained study.
Explore history without treating it as a key
New historicist criticism, associated with Stephen Greenblatt and other scholars, places Shakespeare within the religious, economic and political world of early modern England. This approach considers royal authority, censorship, urban life, colonial expansion, popular entertainment and the circulation of ideas. It helps explain why a play may be fascinated by order while repeatedly staging disorder.
Historical research can illuminate the anxieties surrounding succession in Macbeth, religious conflict in Measure for Measure and ideas of legitimate rule in Richard II. It can also reveal how the commercial theatre depended on audiences from different social groups. The Globe was not a private literary salon; it was a public business shaped by money, regulation and attendance.
History should support interpretation rather than replace it. A fact about Elizabethan marriage law does not automatically explain The Winter’s Tale, and a reference to a contemporary pamphlet does not prove that Shakespeare intended a direct political message. The best criticism moves between context and exact attention to the words on the page.
Include feminist and postcolonial perspectives
Feminist Shakespeare criticism has transformed the study of women who were once treated mainly as romantic accessories or moral warnings. Critics such as Juliet Dusinberre and Coppélia Kahn examine marriage, education, inheritance, domestic labour and the restrictions placed on female speech. Their work makes figures such as Portia, Rosalind, Lady Macbeth and Emilia central to the play’s intellectual design.
Gender criticism also asks how masculinity is constructed. Othello links military honour, sexual jealousy and racial suspicion; Coriolanus connects masculine pride with contempt for ordinary citizens. These plays become richer when readers examine how social expectations produce emotional and political violence.
Postcolonial criticism examines travel, conquest, enslavement and ideas of civilisation. Ania Loomba’s work is especially helpful for understanding how Shakespeare’s plays represent race and power, while Kim F. Hall’s scholarship explores blackness, commerce and identity in the Renaissance. Such criticism is essential for reading Othello and The Tempest in a multicultural country such as Australia, where classroom discussion may include Indigenous, migrant and diasporic perspectives.
Choose editions and study habits wisely
A reliable annotated edition matters as much as a critical monograph. The Arden Shakespeare offers extensive notes and scholarly introductions; the Oxford Shakespeare often provides careful textual discussion; the Cambridge editions are frequently approachable for students. Different editions may vary in punctuation, scene divisions and explanations, so readers should record which version they are using.
Australian readers also need to consider availability and cost. University libraries in Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth may provide digital access to criticism, while public libraries can help locate standard editions through interlibrary loans. Used bookshops and second-hand online sellers often carry older Penguin or Oxford volumes at lower prices. Copyright law under Australia’s Copyright Act 1968 affects the reproduction and distribution of modern editorial notes, even when Shakespeare’s original works are in the public domain.
A productive study habit is to keep three columns of notes: a striking quotation, a critical interpretation and a personal response. Add the act and scene, then test whether the critic’s claim fits the language, action and performance possibilities. This method works for a university essay, a school assessment or a weekend reading group, and it prevents secondary sources from replacing direct engagement with the play.
Build a personal Shakespeare criticism shelf
A compact shelf might begin with Johnson or Coleridge, Bradley’s Shakespearean Tragedy, Greenblatt’s Shakespearean Negotiations, a feminist study such as Dusinberre’s Shakespeare and the Nature of Women, and a performance-focused work such as Brook’s The Empty Space. Readers interested in race and empire can add Loomba’s Shakespeare, Race, and Colonialism.
The most rewarding criticism often disagrees with itself. Bradley’s sympathetic character studies can sit beside Knights’s objections to character biography; historicist accounts can be tested against close readings of metaphor; feminist and postcolonial interpretations can reveal assumptions that older scholarship left unexamined. This tension is not a problem to eliminate. It is the substance of literary study.
When selecting books, look for clear bibliographies, references to specific scenes and an argument that can be tested. Avoid commentary that simply retells the plot or offers unsupported claims about what Shakespeare “really meant”. The best literary criticism opens the play further, giving readers sharper language for uncertainty, conflict and theatrical possibility.
Choose one Shakespeare play and pair it with two contrasting critical voices. Mark the passages that each critic explains well, note where their interpretations diverge, and then return to the text or a recorded performance. That small practice can turn a large reference collection into an active path towards deeper reading.