Andrew Cecil Bradley, (26 March 1851 – 2 September 1935) was an English

literary Literature is any collection of written work, but it is also used more narrowly for writings specifically considered to be an art form, especially novels, plays, and poems. It includes both print and digital writing. In recent centuries, ...

scholar, best remembered for his work on

Shakespeare William Shakespeare ( 23 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's natio ...

Life

Bradley was born at Park Hill,

Clapham Clapham () is a district in south London, south west London, England, lying mostly within the London Borough of Lambeth, but with some areas (including Clapham Common) extending into the neighbouring London Borough of Wandsworth. History Ea ...

, then in

Surrey Surrey () is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in South East England. It is bordered by Greater London to the northeast, Kent to the east, East Sussex, East and West Sussex to the south, and Hampshire and Berkshire to the wes ...

but now part of

London London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...

. His father was the preacher Charles Bradley (1789–1871), vicar of Glasbury, a noted evangelical Anglican preacher and leader of the so-called

Clapham Sect The Clapham Sect, or Clapham Saints, were a group of social reformers associated with Holy Trinity Clapham in the period from the 1780s to the 1840s. Despite the label "sect", most members remained in the Established Church, established (and do ...

. Charles had thirteen children (twelve surviving) by his first wife, who died in 1831, and nine by his second wife Emma Linton. Bradley was the youngest of the nine born to Emma and Charles; his older brother, philosopher Francis Herbert Bradley (1846–1924), was the fifth.Bradley, Francis Herbert
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography An older half-brother was Rev. George Granville Bradley (1821–1903), who was Dean of Westminster. Bradley studied at

Balliol College, Oxford Balliol College () is a constituent college of the University of Oxford. Founded in 1263 by nobleman John I de Balliol, it has a claim to be the oldest college in Oxford and the English-speaking world. With a governing body of a master and aro ...

. He obtained a Balliol Fellowship in 1874 and lectured first in English and subsequently in philosophy until 1881. He then took a permanent position at the

University of Liverpool The University of Liverpool (abbreviated UOL) is a Public university, public research university in Liverpool, England. Founded in 1881 as University College Liverpool, Victoria University (United Kingdom), Victoria University, it received Ro ...

where he lectured on literature. In 1889 he moved to

Glasgow Glasgow is the Cities of Scotland, most populous city in Scotland, located on the banks of the River Clyde in Strathclyde, west central Scotland. It is the List of cities in the United Kingdom, third-most-populous city in the United Kingdom ...

Regius Professor A Regius Professor is a university Professor (highest academic rank), professor who has, or originally had, Monarchy of the United Kingdom, royal patronage or appointment. They are a unique feature of academia in the United Kingdom and Republic ...

. In 1901 he was elected to the Oxford professorship of poetry. During his five years in this post he produced ''Shakespearean Tragedy'' (1904) and ''Oxford Lectures on Poetry'' (1909). He was later made an honorary fellow of Balliol and was awarded honorary doctorates from Liverpool, Glasgow, Edinburgh (1899), and Durham, and was offered (but declined) the King Edward VII chair at Cambridge. Bradley never married; he lived in London with his sister and died at 6 Holland Park Road,

Kensington Kensington is an area of London in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, around west of Central London. The district's commercial heart is Kensington High Street, running on an east–west axis. The north-east is taken up by Kensingt ...

, London, on 2 September 1935. His will established a research fellowship for young scholars of English Letters.

Work

The outcome of his five years as professor of poetry at the

University of Oxford The University of Oxford is a collegiate university, collegiate research university in Oxford, England. There is evidence of teaching as early as 1096, making it the oldest university in the English-speaking world and the List of oldest un ...

were Bradley's two major works, ''Shakespearean Tragedy'' (1904), and ''Oxford Lectures on Poetry'' (1909). All his published work was originally delivered in the form of lectures. Bradley's pedagogical manner and his self-confidence made him a real guide for many students to the meaning of Shakespeare. His influence on Shakespearean criticism was so great that the following poem by Guy Boas, "Lays of Learning", appeared in 1926: :I dreamt last night that Shakespeare’s Ghost :Sat for a civil service post. :The English paper for that year :Had several questions on King Lear :Which Shakespeare answered very badly :Because he hadn’t read his Bradley. ::(Hawkes 1986 as cited in Taylor 2001: 46) Though Bradley has sometimes been criticised for writing of Shakespeare's characters as though they were real people, his book is probably the most influential single work of Shakespearean criticism ever published.

Reputation

''Shakespearean Tragedy'' has been reprinted more than two dozen times and is itself the subject of a scholarly book, Katherine Cooke's ''A. C. Bradley and His Influence in Twentieth-Century Shakespeare Criticism''. By the mid-twentieth century his approach became discredited for many scholars; often it is said to contain anachronistic errors and attempts to apply late 19th century novelistic conceptions of morality and psychology to early 17th century society. Kenneth Burke's 1951 article "Othello: An Essay to Illustrate a Method" counters a Bradleyan reading of character, as L. C. Knights had earlier done with his 1933 essay "How Many Children Had Lady Macbeth?" (John Britton has pointed out that this was never a question actually posed by Bradley, and apparently was made up by F. R. Leavis as a mockery of "current irrelevancies in Shakespeare criticism.") Since the 1970s, the prevalence of poststructuralist methods of criticism resulted in students turning away from his work, although a number of scholars have recently returned to considering "character" as a historical category of evaluation (for instance, Michael Bristol).

Harold Bloom Harold Bloom (July 11, 1930 – October 14, 2019) was an American literary critic and the Sterling Professor of humanities at Yale University. In 2017, Bloom was called "probably the most famous literary critic in the English-speaking world". Af ...

has paid tribute to Bradley's place in the great tradition of critical writing on Shakespeare: "This loom'sbook – '' Shakespeare: the Invention of the Human'' – is a latecomer work, written in the wake of the Shakespeare critics I most admire: Johnson, Hazlitt, Bradley." Bradley delivered the 1907–1908 Gifford Lectures at the

University of Glasgow The University of Glasgow (abbreviated as ''Glas.'' in Post-nominal letters, post-nominals; ) is a Public university, public research university in Glasgow, Scotland. Founded by papal bull in , it is the List of oldest universities in continuous ...

, entitled "Ideals of Religion." He also delivered the 1909 Adamson Lecture of the

Victoria University of Manchester The Victoria University of Manchester, usually referred to as simply the University of Manchester, was a university in Manchester, England. It was founded in 1851 as Owens College. In 1880, the college joined the federal Victoria University. A ...

and the 1912 Shakespeare Lecture of the British Academy. Second Annual Shakespeare Lecture of the British Academy (1912) Bradley's other works include "Aristotle's Conception of the State" in ''Hellenica'', ed. Evelyn Abbott, London : Longmans, Green, 1st ed. 1880, 2nd ed., 1898, ''Poetry for Poetry's Sake'' (1901), ''A Commentary on Tennyson's in Memoriam'' (1901), and ''A Miscellany'' (1929).

References

Sources

''New General Catalog of Old Books and Authors''

External links