Is Hamlet really mad or is the world mad? Are the witches in "Macbeth" an embarrassment or do they have a relevance for a 21st-century audience? Is Othello merely gullible or is there something more profound about his place in society that makes him vulnerable? Why can there be no happy ending in "King Lear"? This is a guide to Shakespearean tragedy. Irish theatre critic Fintan O'Toole shows how the plays have been made unintelligible to modern students by being filtered through a series of ideas that have nothing to do with what Shakespeare wrote, and often have everything to do with keeping the world safe for conservative values.