Shakespearean Tragedy | Page 5

not to be misjudged by the great world, and

his last speech begins,
Soft you; a word or two before you go. I have done the state some
service, and they know it.[2]
And this characteristic of Shakespeare's tragedies, though not the most
vital, is neither external nor unimportant. The saying that every
death-bed is the scene of the fifth act of a tragedy has its meaning, but
it would not be true if the word 'tragedy' bore its dramatic sense. The
pangs of despised love and the anguish of remorse, we say, are the
same in a peasant and a prince; but, not to insist that they cannot be so
when the prince is really a prince, the story of the prince, the triumvir,
or the general, has a greatness and dignity of its own. His fate affects
the welfare of a whole nation or empire; and when he falls suddenly
from the height of earthly greatness to the dust, his fall produces a
sense of contrast, of the powerlessness of man, and of the
omnipotence--perhaps the caprice--of Fortune or Fate, which no tale of
private life can possibly rival.
Such feelings are constantly evoked by Shakespeare's tragedies,--again
in varying degrees. Perhaps they are the very strongest of the emotions
awakened by the early tragedy of _Richard II._, where they receive a
concentrated expression in Richard's famous speech about the antic
Death, who sits in the hollow crown
That rounds the mortal temples of a king,
grinning at his pomp, watching till his vanity and his fancied security
have wholly encased him round, and then coming and boring with a
little pin through his castle wall. And these feelings, though their
predominance is subdued in the mightiest tragedies, remain powerful
there. In the figure of the maddened Lear we see
A sight most pitiful in the meanest wretch, Past speaking of in a king;
and if we would realise the truth in this matter we cannot do better than
compare with the effect of King Lear the effect of Tourgénief's parallel
and remarkable tale of peasant life, A King Lear of the Steppes.

2
A Shakespearean tragedy as so far considered may be called a story of
exceptional calamity leading to the death of a man in high estate. But it
is clearly much more than this, and we have now to regard it from
another side. No amount of calamity which merely befell a man,
descending from the clouds like lightning, or stealing from the darkness
like pestilence, could alone provide the substance of its story. Job was
the greatest of all the children of the east, and his afflictions were
well-nigh more than he could bear; but even if we imagined them
wearing him to death, that would not make his story tragic. Nor yet
would it become so, in the Shakespearean sense, if the fire, and the
great wind from the wilderness, and the torments of his flesh were
conceived as sent by a supernatural power, whether just or malignant.
The calamities of tragedy do not simply happen, nor are they sent; they
proceed mainly from actions, and those the actions of men.
We see a number of human beings placed in certain circumstances; and
we see, arising from the co-operation of their characters in these
circumstances, certain actions. These actions beget others, and these
others beget others again, until this series of inter-connected deeds
leads by an apparently inevitable sequence to a catastrophe. The effect
of such a series on imagination is to make us regard the sufferings
which accompany it, and the catastrophe in which it ends, not only or
chiefly as something which happens to the persons concerned, but
equally as something which is caused by them. This at least may be
said of the principal persons, and, among them, of the hero, who always
contributes in some measure to the disaster in which he perishes.
This second aspect of tragedy evidently differs greatly from the first.
Men, from this point of view, appear to us primarily as agents,
'themselves the authors of their proper woe'; and our fear and pity,
though they will not cease or diminish, will be modified accordingly.
We are now to consider this second aspect, remembering that it too is
only one aspect, and additional to the first, not a substitute for it.
The 'story' or 'action' of a Shakespearean tragedy does not consist, of
course, solely of human actions or deeds; but the deeds are the

predominant factor. And these deeds are, for the most part, actions in
the full sense of the word; not things done ''tween asleep and wake,' but
acts or omissions thoroughly expressive of the doer,--characteristic
deeds. The centre of the tragedy, therefore, may be said with equal truth
to lie in action issuing from character,