In-Person

Shakespeare's Fab 4

Tuesday, March 18, 2025 | 12:00pm

Shakespeare’s Fab Four examines the four characters whom influential critics A.C. Bradley and Harold Bloom considered the Bard’s greatest and most original creations: Sir John Falstaff, Hamlet, Iago, and Cleopatra.

For the first meeting on March 4, the group will read two plays, Henry IV part 1 and Henry IV part 2, focusing on the character of Falstaff. The emphasis in each meeting will be on character development as revealed by close analysis of the text. Library member Penny Cobey will lead each discussion.

The group meets every other week on Tuesdays from noon to 1 pm at the Library beginning Tuesday, March 4. Participants should plan to attend the entire series, as cross-comparisons among the plays will be frequent. Free to members. Registration required.

The schedule for the remaining meetings will be:

March 18: Hamlet, Prince of Denmark (character of Hamlet)
April 1: Othello, the Moor of Venice (character of Iago)
April 15: Antony and Cleopatra (character of Cleopatra)

For a compilation of all Shakespeare’s plays that is particularly attractive to the general reader, The Complete Works of Shakespeare, ed. David Bevington, is recommended. For those interested in purchasing single-play paperback editions, the following are recommended and available on Amazon:

1 Henry IV (Oxford), ed. David Bevington
2 Henry IV (Arden Shakespeare: Third Series), ed. James C. Balkan and George Walton Williams
Hamlet, Prince of Denmark (Arden Shakespeare: Second Series), ed. Harold Jenkins
Othello, the Moor of Venice (Cambridge), ed. Norman Sanders
Antony and Cleopatra (Cambridge), ed. David Bevington

For those interested in comparing their own views to those of great Shakespearean character analysts of the past, the following is recommended: Harold Bloom, Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human (1998).