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

I’ve never read a book like this before: it’s challenging, irreverent and funny. * Roddy Doyle *
Convincing, incisive and stimulating. * Independent on Sunday *
A brilliant and extremely readable distillation of some of the current thinking about Shakespeare’s tragedies. * Irish Times *
A lively and intelligent work of criticism...Shakespeare is hard, and O’Toole has valiantly refused to simplify him. * Michael Caines, TLS *
A useful corrective to the philistine notion that Shakespeare must be simplified and domesticated so that people can understand him. * Steven Poole, Guardian *
You’ll look at Shakespeare with new eyes after reading this book. * Sunday Herald *

Fintan O'Toole is the bestselling author of We Don’t Know Ourselves, Heroic Failure, Ship of Fools, A Traitor's Kiss, White Savage and other acclaimed books. He is a columnist for the Irish Times and advising editor of the New York Review of Books. He has received the Silvers-Dudley Prize for Journalism, the Orwell Prize and the European Press Prize.