F. Scott Fitzgerald was a product of the era he was at his zenith: the roaring 1920s. By the time he arrived in Los Angeles, he was short on money and the audience for his novels and writing was waning. This work explores his time in L.A., his attitude toward cinema & the Hollywood system, and how he incorporated what he learned from screenwriting into The Last Tycoon, the unfinished novel that Fitzgerald aimed to revive his own career with.

This essay uses Gerard Genette’s theory of intertextuality – in particular, architextuality - in order to establish the connection between Shakespearean tragedies and F. Scott Fitzgerald’s last novel, The Last Tycoon. The essay relies mainly on known Shakespeare critic A.C Bradley and the categories he uses in order to establish what makes a Shakespearean tragedy a Shakespearean tragedy. This framework will then be used to further elaborate upon the architextual connection between Shakespeare and Fitzgerald. The essay also compares the characters from The Last Tycoon directly to characters from Shakespeare’s tragedies in order to further show the intertextual connections. For example, Fitzgerald's main character Monroe Stahr is compared to Julius Caesar, from Shakespeare's play of the same name, while the antagonist Mr Brady is compared to both Cassius from the previously mentioned Julius Caesar, as well as Iago from Othello