A Very Tragic Annotated Bibliography

My topic is going to be focused on the deaths in Shakespeare's tragedies, so I looked mostly for sources talking about different elements of Shakespearean tragedy so I could have a good understanding of the genre and how the character deaths fit into it.

1. Boyce, Charles. Shakespeare A to Z: The Essential Reference to His Plays, His Poems, His Life and Times, and More. Ed. David White. New York: Roundtable Press, 1990. Print.

This book has information about characters from all the plays, many people involved with Shakespeare and Shakespearean performances, and the plays themselves, including a synopsis, commentary, sources for the play, and theatrical history. I found it at the BYU library (sorry, I'm the guilty one who checked it out.) Since I'm going to be using multiple plays for my paper, this will be helpful for getting general information for plays that I haven't studied in depth.

2. Bradley, A.C. Shakespearean Tragedy: Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth. London: Penguin Books, 1991. Print.

This book has a series of lectures about the substance and construction of Shakespearean tragedies as well as lectures specifically focusing on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, and Macbeth. I haven't looked at the play-specific lectures yet, but the general ones have helpful insights about different elements of tragedy and how they are used in individual plays. I also found this one at the BYU library while just looking around in the Shakespeare section.

3. Hammersmith, James P. "Shakespeare and the Tragic Virtue." Southern Humanities Review 24.3 (1990): 245-54. Web. 4 Nov. 2015.

This article, which I found online using a site.edu Google search, is actually a criticism of Bradley's book. It talks about the tragic flaw theory, the idea that all of the tragic heroes of Shakespeare's tragedies fall because of a certain tragic flaw, and says that the idea of a tragic flaw is itself flawed because all of the supposed flaws would be virtues in a different circumstance. I think this article is useful because it gives a more unique view of tragedy and also because I might be talking about tragic flaws in connection with character deaths.

4. Kaiser, Gerhard W. The Substance of Greek and Shakespearean Tragedy. Ed. James Hogg. Salzburg: Universität Salzburg, 1977. Print.

This book explains the basic elements of both Greek and Shakespearean Tragedy and the similarities and differences between the two. This was very helpful for me because a question that I had was whether the character deaths in Shakespeare's tragedy were hearkening back to classical tradition (it turns out they're not) and it also explained the basics of tragedy in a very understandable way. I also found this one at the library.

5. Johnston, Ian. "Dramatic Structure: Comedy and Tragedy." Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. N.p., n.d. Web. 4 Nov. 2015.

This is a lecture about differences in structure between comedies and tragedies. The main claim that it makes is that comic heroes succeed because they are willing to rely on a community, while tragic heroes fail/die because they insist on relying only on their own ideas and solving problems alone. It was a really interesting way to look at it, and helpful to me because of the focus on why tragedies end tragically. I think it could be helpful for people looking at comedies or the way characters interact as well. I also found this from a site.edu Google search.