Fintan O’Toole’s teacherly guide to Shakespeare has its own tragic flaws

The write’s experience in theatre criticism lends itself well to this updated edition of his book on the social climate behind four great tragedies but his blind spots are clear

Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard in the 2015 film version of Macbeth

Katy Hayes

People are reading Shakespeare’s tragedies wrong, and Fintan O’Toole is out to correct this. The “wrong way” we are reading Shakespeare is that we are too concerned with the Aristotelian idea of the ‘tragic flaw’ and not sufficiently focused on social contexts. Shakespeare’s era was a furnace: society was emerging from feudalism and edging towards capitalism; scientific advances were huge; a new merchant class and middle class were emerging.

O’Toole blames this wrong reading on the Victorians — Matthew Arnold and others — who were always seeking moral purpose in literature, rules on how to live. Hence their focus on individual characters, whose downfall is caused by personal flaws, with scant attention paid to social contexts and the political instability that shapes action in Shakespeare’s plays.