In this book, Walter Foreman studies the closing scenes of Shakespeare's tragedies, considering the tragic structure of the plays and the shapes the tragic characters give their lives by the way they encounter death.

Foreman sees in the variety of tragic endings of the plays evidence that Shakespeare consciously experimented with tragic forms, for when he repeated he also changed, and changed more than superficially. Further, Foreman believes that these varieties and extensions of dramatic form were fundamentally a way of experiencing a various, often mysterious world. Extending and...