Knight's theories have become commonplaces. The idea that Hamlet is a bad guy? The theories the Duke of Measure for Measure and Timon of Athens are Christ figures? All those are propounded for (as far as I know) the first time in this eloquent book. Aside from having famous theories, Knight supports his claims, which at first can seem absurd, with mountains of evidence gathered from a fine-toothed reading of the text. He never makes obvious points or fallacious arguments; he starts out by noticing fine details in the text and then draws these into a coherent, convincing whole. I don't agree with every word he's ever written, but all his words are brilliant. Knight is the best literary critic I have ever read, by a wide margin, and this may be his best book.

G. Wilson Knight's book, The Wheel of Fire, examines Shakespeare's later tragedies in the light of what Knight calls "spatial" correspondences. Through the examination of such works as Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth, King Lear and others, Knight shows that the themes considered in the plays are worked out not merely in the plot, but spatially as well, that is in the relationship of the characters to their background. This is to say that the characters and plot alone do not construct the theme, but the setting and other circumstances surrounding the chain of events of the story are also key to an understanding of the play's meaning. As Knight says, the idea is not to see the plays as realities but rather as artworks, which is to see them as expanded metaphors. Therefore all things contained within contribute to the overarching theme, and not the plot and characters alone. Knight suspects that this is what Aristotle means when he refers to the "unity of idea," where all elements hinge on their relation to the whole. Any serious study of Shakespearian tragedy ought to contain a reading of this classic scholarly work.

When Knight analyzed Shakespeare's general merits, he was brilliant and lyrical, particularly when refuting Tolstoy; and his essays on Shakespeare's slightly more minor works, such as Troilus and Cressida, Timon of Athens, and Measure for Measure, he discovers themes and motifs overlooked by many prior critics. However, I am sorry to say that he has nothing new to say on Hamlet, Othello, or even Lear.