New Introduction XXXlll

decades. Perhaps his most lasting achievement was to show

how rewarding such an engagement can be.
In an Introduction to the second volume of his collected
Plays (1978), Edward Bond complained:

Recently I spoke to a man whose job it was to teach the

meaning of Shakespeare's writings to students at a univer-
sity. He told me Shakespeare had no opinions of his own,
he could understand and retail everyone's opinion, he left
it to others to judge.

From this dramatist's point of view, that sounded like

nonsense:

Had Shakespeare not spent his creative life desperately

struggling to reconcile problems that obsessed him he
could not have written with such intellectual strength and
passionate beauty.

Bradley would have answered in much the same way. Few

books of criticism give us the sensation of being close to a
creative mind, but Shakespearean Tragedy is a necessary mas-
terpiece because it does just that. It can both widen and
sharpen our view of the issues implicit in the tragedies, and
deepen our understanding of Shakespeare's art.