The chief dramatic forms in England during the Middle Ages were religious and didactic in purpose. The Miracle plays presented stories from the Bible in dialogue form. Morality plays presented general guidance for life’s struggles through the means of allegorical actions. Within such parameters there were only limited opportunities for presenting human nature and human life with any breadth or variety.

   The Renaissance, however, ushered in a closer observation of nature, alongside the study and imitation of classical forms. Across the arts, and almost in every field of intellectual endeavour, we witness strenuous efforts to capture and represent the complexity of nature. In England, this was nowhere more evident than in drama. And it was nowhere more emphatic than in Shakespeare's Tragedies.