Shakespeare is Hard, but so is Life

By: Fintan O'Toole

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Paperback | 4 November 2025

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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

About the Author

Fintan O'Toole is the author of Heroic Failure, Ship of Fools, A Traitor's Kiss, White Savage and other acclaimed books. He is a columnist for the Irish Times and the Milberg Professor of Irish Letters at Princeton University.

He writes regularly for the Guardian, New York Review of Books, New York Times and other British and American journals.

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