Shakespearean Tragedy | Page 4

the Chorus are

reckoned among them); but it is pre-eminently the story of one person,
the 'hero,'[1] or at most of two, the 'hero' and 'heroine.' Moreover, it is
only in the love-tragedies, Romeo and Juliet and Antony and Cleopatra,
that the heroine is as much the centre of the action as the hero. The rest,
including Macbeth, are single stars. So that, having noticed the
peculiarity of these two dramas, we may henceforth, for the sake of
brevity, ignore it, and may speak of the tragic story as being concerned
primarily with one person.
The story, next, leads up to, and includes, the death of the hero. On the
one hand (whatever may be true of tragedy elsewhere), no play at the
end of which the hero remains alive is, in the full Shakespearean sense,
a tragedy; and we no longer class Troilus and Cressida or Cymbeline as
such, as did the editors of the Folio. On the other hand, the story
depicts also the troubled part of the hero's life which precedes and leads
up to his death; and an instantaneous death occurring by 'accident' in
the midst of prosperity would not suffice for it. It is, in fact, essentially
a tale of suffering and calamity conducting to death.
The suffering and calamity are, moreover, exceptional. They befall a
conspicuous person. They are themselves of some striking kind. They
are also, as a rule, unexpected, and contrasted with previous happiness
or glory. A tale, for example, of a man slowly worn to death by disease,
poverty, little cares, sordid vices, petty persecutions, however piteous
or dreadful it might be, would not be tragic in the Shakespearean sense.
Such exceptional suffering and calamity, then, affecting the hero,
and--we must now add--generally extending far and wide beyond him,
so as to make the whole scene a scene of woe, are an essential
ingredient in tragedy and a chief source of the tragic emotions, and
especially of pity. But the proportions of this ingredient, and the
direction taken by tragic pity, will naturally vary greatly. Pity, for
example, has a much larger part in King Lear than in Macbeth, and is
directed in the one case chiefly to the hero, in the other chiefly to minor
characters.
Let us now pause for a moment on the ideas we have so far reached.
They would more than suffice to describe the whole tragic fact as it

presented itself to the mediaeval mind. To the mediaeval mind a
tragedy meant a narrative rather than a play, and its notion of the matter
of this narrative may readily be gathered from Dante or, still better,
from Chaucer. Chaucer's _Monk's Tale_ is a series of what he calls
'tragedies'; and this means in fact a series of tales de Casibus Illustrium
Virorum,--stories of the Falls of Illustrious Men, such as Lucifer, Adam,
Hercules and Nebuchadnezzar. And the Monk ends the tale of Croesus
thus:
Anhanged was Cresus, the proudè kyng; His roial tronè myghte hym
nat availle. Tragédie is noon oother maner thyng, Ne kan in syngyng
criè ne biwaille But for that Fortune alwey wole assaile With unwar
strook the regnès that been proude; For whan men trusteth hire, thanne
wol she faille, And covere hire brighte facè with a clowde.
A total reverse of fortune, coming unawares upon a man who 'stood in
high degree,' happy and apparently secure,--such was the tragic fact to
the mediaeval mind. It appealed strongly to common human sympathy
and pity; it startled also another feeling, that of fear. It frightened men
and awed them. It made them feel that man is blind and helpless, the
plaything of an inscrutable power, called by the name of Fortune or
some other name,--a power which appears to smile on him for a little,
and then on a sudden strikes him down in his pride.
Shakespeare's idea of the tragic fact is larger than this idea and goes
beyond it; but it includes it, and it is worth while to observe the identity
of the two in a certain point which is often ignored. Tragedy with
Shakespeare is concerned always with persons of 'high degree'; often
with kings or princes; if not, with leaders in the state like Coriolanus,
Brutus, Antony; at the least, as in Romeo and Juliet, with members of
great houses, whose quarrels are of public moment. There is a decided
difference here between Othello and our three other tragedies, but it is
not a difference of kind. Othello himself is no mere private person; he
is the General of the Republic. At the beginning we see him in the
Council-Chamber of the Senate. The consciousness of his high position
never leaves him. At the end, when he is determined to live no longer,
he is as anxious as Hamlet