'Brilliant' -Sunday Times

How does a truly disastrous leader a sociopath, a demagogue, a tyrant come to power? How, and why, does a tyrant hold on to power? And what goes on in the hidden recesses of the tyrant's soul?

For help in understanding our most urgent contemporary dilemmas, William Shakespeare has no peer. As an ageing, tenacious Elizabeth I clung to power, a talented playwright probed the social and psychological roots and the twisted consequences of tyranny. What he discovered in his characters remains remarkably relevant today. With uncanny insight, he shone a spotlight on the infantile psychology and unquenchable narcissistic appetites of demagogues and imagined how they might be stopped.

InTyrant, Stephen Greenblatt examines the themes of power and tyranny in some of Shakespeares most famous plays -- from the dominating figures of Richard III, Julius Caesar, Hamlet, Macbeth, and Coriolanus to the subtle tyranny found inMeasure for MeasureandThe Winter's Tale.

Tyrantis a highly relevant exploration of Shakespeares work that sheds new light on the workings of power.

Stephen Greenblattis Cogan University Professor of the Humanities at Harvard University. He is the author of twelve books, includingThe Swerve: How the World BecameModern, which won the National Book Award and a Pulitzer Prize, as well as the New York Times bestsellerWill in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeareand the classic university textRenaissance Self-Fashioning.

He is General Editor ofThe Norton Anthology of English Literatureand ofThe Norton Shakespeare,and has edited seven collections of literary criticism.