Misinterpretations of Shakespeare in the 19th Century

Irish journalist and author, Fintan O'Toole on how the Victorians changed the meaning of Shakespeare's plays, and how we can bring them back to life.

Fintan O'Toole is an Irish journalist and author who writes on politics and history for the New York Review of Books and the Irish Times.

He wants to change the way we think about Shakespeare's plays, because the way many of us are introduced to Shakespeare is wrong and boring.

Fintan says Shakespeare’s work is wrongly presented as a delivery system for simple moral instruction — a hangover from the Victorian era, which wanted to turn Shakespeare into a form of "mental muesli".

According to Fintan, the genius of Shakespeare is that his characters keep escaping narrow moral categories, just as people do in real life.

This episode of Conversations deals with Shakespeare's epic plays, life, death, betrayal, history, kings, royalty, motherhood, fatherhood, grief, life processes, making meaning of life and morality, Othello, Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet.