How did the Elizabethan understanding of the soul inform the greatest tragedies in the English language? In this classic of Shakespearean scholarship, Lily Bess Campbell offers a rigorous and illuminating examination of the religious, philosophical, and scientific foundations of Elizabethan tragedy. Eschewing modern psychological impositions, Campbell restores the plays to their original intellectual climate. She argues that Shakespeare's tragic heroes-Hamlet, Othello, Lear, and Macbeth-are not case studies in modern psychology, but depictions of the destructive power of ungoverned passion. Inside this New Edition: The Four Humors: Discover how Renaissance medical theories shaped the struggles between reason and emotion. Moral Philosophy: An indispensable map of the sixteenth-century mind for researchers and students alike. Historical Criticism: Understand the "historical constraints" of Shakespeare's world to see his universal genius more clearly. Expanded Bibliography & Index: Modernized for the 2026 student with editorial notes and corrections.