Shakespeare has based his play on Plutarch's 3narrative of Roman characters .A.C.Bradley does not consider it the real tragedy because he thinks that it lacks certain convention of tragedy. It may fall between tragedy and history .However T.S Coleridge rates it one the finest history play as he says: 'Of all Shakspeare's historical plays, Antony and Cleopatra is by far the most wonderful. ... Their moral standard was also comparatively very poor as Shakespeare has highlighted all these short comings of the Egyptian society in the character of Cleopatra. ... William Shakespea...

• Word Count: 2903
• Approx Pages: 12
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

Ultimately, this kind of reading threatens to reduce King Lear to a form of melodrama, a story of the straightforward conflict of clearly identifiable and separable forces of good and evil, in which the outcome is tragic only in the sense of being disastrous for the main characters. ... Critics may go on speaking of the grandeur of Shakespeare's achievement and of Lear as a character, but if the standard readings of the play were correct, a more honest reaction would resemble that of Groucho Marx, when, in a meeting almost as improbable as Lear's encounter with Tom o' Bedlam, he...

• Word Count: 8939
• Approx Pages: 36
• Grade Level: High School