Download or read book Shakespeare's Tragic Cosmos written by T. McAlindon and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1996-04-18 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study focuses on Romeo and Juliet, Julius Caesar, the four main tragedies and Antony and Cleopatra. Tom McAlindon argues that there were two models of nature in Renaissance culture, one hierarchical, in which everything has an appointed place, and the other contrarious, showing nature as a tense system of interacting opposites, liable to sudden collapse and transformation. This latter model informs Shakespeare's tragedy.