Shakespeare is the foremost writer in the English language, and his place in Western literature is such that critic Harold Bloom called him “the center of the canon.”

In this volume, Imperium Press collects his four most essential tragedies. Paraded across the stage we see Hamlet torn between revenge and doubt, Macbeth consumed by his own dark ambition, Othello descending into murderous jealousy, and Lear unravelling in a spiral of pride and madness. With accurate text taken from authoritative sources, these pillars of dramatic literature burn with verbal genius like nothing else in the English language.

This volume includes introductions to each play by Shakespeare scholar Neema Parvini, drawing out the reactionary and chivalric values in these plays so often condemned by modern scholarship. It also includes a glossary of 1,100 obscure words, making these plays fully accessible to the non-specialist.