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SHAKESPEAREAN TRAGEDY
MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
LONDON·BOMBAY·CALCUTTA·MADRAS·MELBOURNE
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
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TORONTO
SHAKESPEAREAN TRAGEDY
LECTURES ON
HAMLET, OTHELLO, KING LEAR
MACBETH
BY
A.C. BRADLEY
LL.D. LITT.D., FORMERLY PROFESSOR OF POETRY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
_SECOND EDITION_ (_THIRTEENTH IMPRESSION_)
MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON
1919
_COPYRIGHT._
First Edition 1904.
Second Edition March 1905.
Reprinted August 1905, 1906, 1908, 1910, 1911, 1912, 1914, 1915, 1916,
1918, 1919.
GLASGOW: PRINTED AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS BY ROBERT MACLEHOSE AND CO.
LTD.
TO MY STUDENTS
PREFACE
These lectures are based on a selection from materials used in teaching
at Liverpool, Glasgow, and Oxford; and I have for the most part
preserved the lecture form. The point of view taken in them is explained
in the Introduction. I should, of course, wish them to be read in their
order, and a knowledge of the first two is assumed in the remainder; but
readers who may prefer to enter at once on the discussion of the several
plays can do so by beginning at page 89.
Any one who writes on Shakespeare must owe much to his predecessors.
Where I was conscious of a particular obligation, I have acknowledged
it; but most of my reading of Shakespearean criticism was done many
years ago, and I can only hope that I have not often reproduced as my
own what belongs to another.
Many of the Notes will be of interest only to scholars, who may find, I
hope, something new in them.
I have quoted, as a rule, from the Globe edition, and have referred
always to its numeration of acts, scenes, and lines.
_November, 1904._
* * * * *
NOTE TO SECOND AND SUBSEQUENT IMPRESSIONS
In these impressions I have confined myself to making some formal
improvements, correcting indubitable mistakes, and indicating here and
there my desire to modify or develop at some future time statements
which seem to me doubtful or open to misunderstanding. The changes,
where it seemed desirable, are shown by the inclusion of sentences in
square brackets.
CONTENTS
PAGE
INTRODUCTION 1
LECTURE I.
THE SUBSTANCE OF SHAKESPEAREAN TRAGEDY 5
LECTURE II.
CONSTRUCTION IN SHAKESPEARE'S TRAGEDIES 40
LECTURE III.
SHAKESPEARE'S TRAGIC PERIOD--HAMLET 79
LECTURE IV.
HAMLET 129
LECTURE V.
OTHELLO 175
LECTURE VI.
OTHELLO 207
LECTURE VII.
KING LEAR 243
LECTURE VIII.
KING LEAR 280
LECTURE IX.
MACBETH 331
LECTURE X.
MACBETH 366
NOTE A. Events before the opening of the action in _Hamlet_ 401
NOTE B. Where was Hamlet at the time of his father's death? 403
NOTE C. Hamlet's age 407
NOTE D. 'My tables--meet it is I set it down' 409
NOTE E. The Ghost in the cellarage 412
NOTE F. The Player's speech in _Hamlet_ 413
NOTE G. Hamlet's apology to Laertes 420
NOTE H. The exchange of rapiers 422
NOTE I. The duration of the action in
_Othello_ 423
NOTE J. The 'additions' in the Folio text of _Othello_. The
Pontic sea 429
NOTE K. Othello's courtship 432
NOTE L. Othello in the Temptation scene 434
NOTE M. Questions as to _Othello_, IV. i. 435
NOTE N. Two passages in the last scene of _Othello_ 437
NOTE O. Othello on Desdemona's last words 438
NOTE P. Did Emilia suspect Iago? 439
NOTE Q. Iago's suspicion regarding Cassio and Emilia 441
NOTE R. Reminiscences of _Othello_ in _King Lear_ 441
NOTE S. _King Lear_ and _Timon of Athens_ 443
NOTE T. Did Shakespeare shorten _King Lear_? 445
NOTE U. Movements of the _dramatis personæ_ in _King
Lear_, II 448
NOTE V. Suspected interpolations in _King Lear_ 450
NOTE W. The staging of the scene of Lear's reunion with
Cordelia 453
NOTE X. The Battle in _King Lear_ 456
NOTE Y. Some difficult passages in _King Lear_ 458
NOTE Z. Suspected interpolations in _Macbeth_ 466
NOTE AA. Has _Macbeth_ been abridged? 467
NOTE BB. The date of _Macbeth_. Metrical Tests 470
NOTE CC. When was the murder of Duncan first plotted? 480
NOTE DD. Did Lady Macbeth really faint? 484
NOTE EE. Duration of the action in _Macbeth_. Macbeth's age.
'He has no children' 486
NOTE FF. The Ghost of Banquo 492
INDEX 494
INTRODUCTION
In these lectures I propose to consider the four principal tragedies of
Shakespeare from a single point of view. Nothing will be said of
Shakespeare's place in the history either of English literature or of
the drama in general. No attempt will be made to compare him with other
writers. I shall leave untouched, or merely glanced at, questions
regarding his life and character, the development of his genius and art,
the genuineness, sources, texts, inter-relations of his various works.
Even what may be called, in a restricted sense, the 'poetry' of the four
tragedies--the beauties of style, diction, versification--I shall pass
by in silence. Our one object will be what, again in a restricted sense,
may be called dramatic appreciation; to increase our understanding and
enjoyment of these works as dramas; to learn to apprehend the action and
some of the personages of each with a somewhat greater truth and
intensity, so that they may assume in our imaginations a shape a little
less unlike the shape they wore in the imagination of their creator. For
this end all those studies that were mentioned just now, of literary
history and the like, are useful and even in various degrees necessary.
But an overt pursuit of them is not necessary here, nor is any one of
them so indispensable to our object as that close familiarity with the
plays, that native strength and justice of perception, and that habit of
reading with an eager mind, which make many an unscholarly lover of
Shakespeare a far better critic than many a Shakespeare scholar.
Such lovers read a play more or less as if they were actors who had to
study all the parts. They do not need, of course, to imagine whereabouts
the persons are to stand, or what gestures they ought to use; but they
want to realise fully and exactly the inner movements which produced
these words and no other, these deeds and no other, at each particular
moment. This, carried through a drama, is the right way to read the
dramatist Shakespeare; and the prime requisite here is therefore a vivid
and intent imagination. But this alone will hardly suffice. It is
necessary also, especially to a true conception of the whole, to
compare, to analyse, to dissect. And such readers often shrink from this
task, which seems to them prosaic or even a desecration. They
misunderstand, I believe. They would not shrink if they remembered two
things. In the first place, in this process of comparison and analysis,
it is not requisite, it is on the contrary ruinous, to set imagination
aside and to substitute some supposed 'cold reason'; and it is only want
of practice that makes the concurrent use of analysis and of poetic
perception difficult or irksome. And, in the second place, these
dissecting processes, though they are also imaginative, are still, and
are meant to be, nothing but means to an end. When they have finished
their work (it can only be finished for the time) they give place to the
end, which is that same imaginative reading or re-creation of the drama
from which they set out, but a reading now enriched by the products of
analysis, and therefore far more adequate and enjoyable.
This, at any rate, is the faith in the strength of which I venture, with
merely personal misgivings, on the path of analytic interpretation. And
so, before coming to the first of the four tragedies, I propose to
discuss some preliminary matters which concern them all. Though each is
individual through and through, they have, in a sense, one and the same
substance; for in all of them Shakespeare represents the tragic aspect
of life, the tragic fact. They have, again, up to a certain point, a
common form or structure. This substance and this structure, which would
be found to distinguish them, for example, from Greek tragedies, may, to
diminish repetition, be considered once for all; and in considering them
we shall also be able to observe characteristic differences among the
four plays. And to this may be added the little that it seems necessary
to premise on the position of these dramas in Shakespeare's literary
career.
Much that is said on our main preliminary subjects will naturally hold
good, within certain limits, of other dramas of Shakespeare beside
_Hamlet_, _Othello_, _King Lear_, and _Macbeth_. But it will often apply
to these other works only in part, and to some of them more fully than
to others. _Romeo and Juliet_, for instance, is a pure tragedy, but it
is an early work, and in some respects an immature one. _Richard III._
and _Richard II._, _Julius Caesar_, _Antony and Cleopatra_, and
_Coriolanus_ are tragic histories or historical tragedies, in which
Shakespeare acknowledged in practice a certain obligation to follow his
authority, even when that authority offered him an undramatic material.
Probably he himself would have met some criticisms to which these plays
are open by appealing to their historical character, and by denying that
such works are to be judged by the standard of pure tragedy. In any
case, most of these plays, perhaps all, do show, as a matter of fact,
considerable deviations from that standard; and, therefore, what is said
of the pure tragedies must be applied to them with qualifications which
I shall often take for granted without mention. There remain _Titus
Andronicus_ and _Timon of Athens_. The former I shall leave out of
account, because, even if Shakespeare wrote the whole of it, he did so
before he had either a style of his own or any characteristic tragic
conception. _Timon_ stands on a different footing. Parts of it are
unquestionably Shakespeare's, and they will be referred to in one of the
later lectures. But much of the writing is evidently not his, and as it
seems probable that the conception and construction of the whole tragedy
should also be attributed to some other writer, I shall omit this work
too from our preliminary discussions.
LECTURE I
THE SUBSTANCE OF SHAKESPEAREAN TRAGEDY
The question we are to consider in this lecture may be stated in a
variety of ways. We may put it thus: What is the substance of a
Shakespearean tragedy, taken in abstraction both from its form and from
the differences in point of substance between one tragedy and another?
Or thus: What is the nature of the tragic aspect of life as represented
by Shakespeare? What is the general fact shown now in this tragedy and
now in that? And we are putting the same question when we ask: What is
Shakespeare's tragic conception, or conception of tragedy?
These expressions, it should be observed, do not imply that Shakespeare
himself ever asked or answered such a question; that he set himself to
reflect on the tragic aspects of life, that he framed a tragic
conception, and still less that, like Aristotle or Corneille, he had a
theory of the kind of poetry called tragedy. These things are all
possible; how far any one of them is probable we need not discuss; but
none of them is presupposed by the question we are going to consider.
This question implies only that, as a matter of fact, Shakespeare in
writing tragedy did represent a certain aspect of life in a certain way,
and that through examination of his writings we ought to be able, to
some extent, to describe this aspect and way in terms addressed to the
understanding. Such a description, so far as it is true and adequate,
may, after these explanations, be called indifferently an account of the
substance of Shakespearean tragedy, or an account of Shakespeare's
conception of tragedy or view of the tragic fact.
Two further warnings may be required. In the first place, we must
remember that the tragic aspect of life is only one aspect. We cannot
arrive at Shakespeare's whole dramatic way of looking at the world from
his tragedies alone, as we can arrive at Milton's way of regarding
things, or at Wordsworth's or at Shelley's, by examining almost any one
of their important works. Speaking very broadly, one may say that these
poets at their best always look at things in one light; but _Hamlet_ and
_Henry IV._ and _Cymbeline_ reflect things from quite distinct
positions, and Shakespeare's whole dramatic view is not to be identified
with any one of these reflections. And, in the second place, I may
repeat that in these lectures, at any rate for the most part, we are to
be content with his _dramatic_ view, and are not to ask whether it
corresponded exactly with his opinions or creed outside his poetry--the
opinions or creed of the being whom we sometimes oddly call 'Shakespeare
the man.' It does not seem likely that outside his poetry he was a very
simple-minded Catholic or Protestant or Atheist, as some have
maintained; but we cannot be sure, as with those other poets we can,
that in his works he expressed his deepest and most cherished
convictions on ultimate questions, or even that he had any. And in his
dramatic conceptions there is enough to occupy us.
1
In approaching our subject it will be best, without attempting to
shorten the path by referring to famous theories of the drama, to start
directly from the facts, and to collect from them gradually an idea of
Shakespearean Tragedy. And first, to begin from the outside, such a
tragedy brings before us a considerable number of persons (many more
than the persons in a Greek play, unless the members of 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 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, or in character issuing
in action.
Shakespeare's main interest lay here. To say that it lay in _mere_
character, or was a psychological interest, would be a great mistake,
for he was dramatic to the tips of his fingers. It is possible to find
places where he has given a certain indulgence to his love of poetry,
and even to his turn for general reflections; but it would be very
difficult, and in his later tragedies perhaps impossible, to detect
passages where he has allowed such freedom to the interest in character
apart from action. But for the opposite extreme, for the abstraction of
mere 'plot' (which is a very different thing from the tragic 'action'),
for the kind of interest which predominates in a novel like _The Woman
in White_, it is clear that he cared even less. I do not mean that this
interest is absent from his dramas; but it is subordinate to others, and
is so interwoven with them that we are rarely conscious of it apart, and
rarely feel in any great strength the half-intellectual, half-nervous
excitement of following an ingenious complication. What we do feel
strongly, as a tragedy advances to its close, is that the calamities and
catastrophe follow inevitably from the deeds of men, and that the main
source of these deeds is character. The dictum that, with Shakespeare,
'character is destiny' is no doubt an exaggeration, and one that may
mislead (for many of his tragic personages, if they had not met with
peculiar circumstances, would have escaped a tragic end, and might even
have lived fairly untroubled lives); but it is the exaggeration of a
vital truth.
This truth, with some of its qualifications, will appear more clearly if
we now go on to ask what elements are to be found in the 'story' or
'action,' occasionally or frequently, beside the characteristic deeds,
and the sufferings and circumstances, of the persons. I will refer to
three of these additional factors.
(_a_) Shakespeare, occasionally and for reasons which need not be
discussed here, represents abnormal conditions of mind; insanity, for
example, somnambulism, hallucinations. And deeds issuing from these are
certainly not what we called deeds in the fullest sense, deeds
expressive of character. No; but these abnormal conditions are never
introduced as the origin of deeds of any dramatic moment. Lady Macbeth's
sleep-walking has no influence whatever on the events that follow it.
Macbeth did not murder Duncan because he saw a dagger in the air: he saw
the dagger because he was about to murder Duncan. Lear's insanity is not
the cause of a tragic conflict any more than Ophelia's; it is, like
Ophelia's, the result of a conflict; and in both cases the effect is
mainly pathetic. If Lear were really mad when he divided his kingdom, if
Hamlet were really mad at any time in the story, they would cease to be
tragic characters.
(_b_) Shakespeare also introduces the supernatural into some of his
tragedies; he introduces ghosts, and witches who have supernatural
knowledge. This supernatural element certainly cannot in most cases, if
in any, be explained away as an illusion in the mind of one of the
characters. And further, it does contribute to the action, and is in
more than one instance an indispensable part of it: so that to describe
human character, with circumstances, as always the _sole_ motive force
in this action would be a serious error. But the supernatural is always
placed in the closest relation with character. It gives a confirmation
and a distinct form to inward movements already present and exerting an
influence; to the sense of failure in Brutus, to the stifled workings of
conscience in Richard, to the half-formed thought or the horrified
memory of guilt in Macbeth, to suspicion in Hamlet. Moreover, its
influence is never of a compulsive kind. It forms no more than an
element, however important, in the problem which the hero has to face;
and we are never allowed to feel that it has removed his capacity or
responsibility for dealing with this problem. So far indeed are we from
feeling this, that many readers run to the opposite extreme, and openly
or privately regard the supernatural as having nothing to do with the
real interest of the play.
(_c_) Shakespeare, lastly, in most of his tragedies allows to 'chance'
or 'accident' an appreciable influence at some point in the action.
Chance or accident here will be found, I think, to mean any occurrence
(not supernatural, of course) which enters the dramatic sequence neither
from the agency of a character, nor from the obvious surrounding
circumstances.[3] It may be called an accident, in this sense, that
Romeo never got the Friar's message about the potion, and that Juliet
did not awake from her long sleep a minute sooner; an accident that
Edgar arrived at the prison just too late to save Cordelia's life; an
accident that Desdemona dropped her handkerchief at the most fatal of
moments; an accident that the pirate ship attacked Hamlet's ship, so
that he was able to return forthwith to Denmark. Now this operation of
accident is a fact, and a prominent fact, of human life. To exclude it
_wholly_ from tragedy, therefore, would be, we may say, to fail in
truth. And, besides, it is not merely a fact. That men may start a
course of events but can neither calculate nor control it, is a _tragic_
fact. The dramatist may use accident so as to make us feel this; and
there are also other dramatic uses to which it may be put. Shakespeare
accordingly admits it. On the other hand, any _large_ admission of
chance into the tragic sequence[4] would certainly weaken, and might
destroy, the sense of the causal connection of character, deed, and
catastrophe. And Shakespeare really uses it very sparingly. We seldom
find ourselves exclaiming, 'What an unlucky accident!' I believe most
readers would have to search painfully for instances. It is, further,
frequently easy to see the dramatic intention of an accident; and some
things which look like accidents have really a connection with
character, and are therefore not in the full sense accidents. Finally, I
believe it will be found that almost all the prominent accidents occur
when the action is well advanced and the impression of the causal
sequence is too firmly fixed to be impaired.
Thus it appears that these three elements in the 'action' are
subordinate, while the dominant factor consists in deeds which issue
from character. So that, by way of summary, we may now alter our first
statement, 'A tragedy is a story of exceptional calamity leading to the
death of a man in high estate,' and we may say instead (what in its turn
is one-sided, though less so), that the story is one of human actions
producing exceptional calamity and ending in the death of such a man.[5]
* * * * *
Before we leave the 'action,' however, there is another question that
may usefully be asked. Can we define this 'action' further by describing
it as a conflict?
The frequent use of this idea in discussions on tragedy is ultimately
due, I suppose, to the influence of Hegel's theory on the subject,
certainly the most important theory since Aristotle's. But Hegel's view
of the tragic conflict is not only unfamiliar to English readers and
difficult to expound shortly, but it had its origin in reflections on
Greek tragedy and, as Hegel was well aware, applies only imperfectly to
the works of Shakespeare.[6] I shall, therefore, confine myself to the
idea of conflict in its more general form. In this form it is obviously
suitable to Shakespearean tragedy; but it is vague, and I will try to
make it more precise by putting the question, Who are the combatants in
this conflict?
Not seldom the conflict may quite naturally be conceived as lying
between two persons, of whom the hero is one; or, more fully, as lying
between two parties or groups, in one of which the hero is the leading
figure. Or if we prefer to speak (as we may quite well do if we know
what we are about) of the passions, tendencies, ideas, principles,
forces, which animate these persons or groups, we may say that two of
such passions or ideas, regarded as animating two persons or groups, are
the combatants. The love of Romeo and Juliet is in conflict with the
hatred of their houses, represented by various other characters. The
cause of Brutus and Cassius struggles with that of Julius, Octavius and
Antony. In _Richard II._ the King stands on one side, Bolingbroke and
his party on the other. In _Macbeth_ the hero and heroine are opposed to
the representatives of Duncan. In all these cases the great majority of
the _dramatis personae_ fall without difficulty into antagonistic
groups, and the conflict between these groups ends with the defeat of
the hero.
Yet one cannot help feeling that in at least one of these cases,
_Macbeth_, there is something a little external in this way of looking
at the action. And when we come to some other plays this feeling
increases. No doubt most of the characters in _Hamlet_, _King Lear_,
_Othello_, or _Antony and Cleopatra_ can be arranged in opposed
groups;[7] and no doubt there is a conflict; and yet it seems misleading
to describe this conflict as one _between these groups_. It cannot be
simply this. For though Hamlet and the King are mortal foes, yet that
which engrosses our interest and dwells in our memory at least as much
as the conflict between them, is the conflict _within_ one of them. And
so it is, though not in the same degree, with _Antony and Cleopatra_ and
even with _Othello_; and, in fact, in a certain measure, it is so with
nearly all the tragedies. There is an outward conflict of persons and
groups, there is also a conflict of forces in the hero's soul; and even
in _Julius Caesar_ and _Macbeth_ the interest of the former can hardly
be said to exceed that of the latter.
The truth is, that the type of tragedy in which the hero opposes to a
hostile force an undivided soul, is not the Shakespearean type. The
souls of those who contend with the hero may be thus undivided; they
generally are; but, as a rule, the hero, though he pursues his fated
way, is, at least at some point in the action, and sometimes at many,
torn by an inward struggle; and it is frequently at such points that
Shakespeare shows his most extraordinary power. If further we compare
the earlier tragedies with the later, we find that it is in the latter,
the maturest works, that this inward struggle is most emphasised. In the
last of them, _Coriolanus_, its interest completely eclipses towards the
close of the play that of the outward conflict. _Romeo and Juliet_,
_Richard III._, _Richard II._, where the hero contends with an outward
force, but comparatively little with himself, are all early plays.
If we are to include the outer and the inner struggle in a conception
more definite than that of conflict in general, we must employ some such
phrase as 'spiritual force.' This will mean whatever forces act in the
human spirit, whether good or evil, whether personal passion or
impersonal principle; doubts, desires, scruples, ideas--whatever can
animate, shake, possess, and drive a man's soul. In a Shakespearean
tragedy some such forces are shown in conflict. They are shown acting in
men and generating strife between them. They are also shown, less
universally, but quite as characteristically, generating disturbance and
even conflict in the soul of the hero. Treasonous ambition in Macbeth
collides with loyalty and patriotism in Macduff and Malcolm: here is the
outward conflict. But these powers or principles equally collide in the
soul of Macbeth himself: here is the inner. And neither by itself could
make the tragedy.[8]
We shall see later the importance of this idea. Here we need only
observe that the notion of tragedy as a conflict emphasises the fact
that action is the centre of the story, while the concentration of
interest, in the greater plays, on the inward struggle emphasises the
fact that this action is essentially the expression of character.
3
Let us turn now from the 'action' to the central figure in it; and,
ignoring the characteristics which distinguish the heroes from one
another, let us ask whether they have any common qualities which appear
to be essential to the tragic effect.
One they certainly have. They are exceptional beings. We have seen
already that the hero, with Shakespeare, is a person of high degree or
of public importance, and that his actions or sufferings are of an
unusual kind. But this is not all. His nature also is exceptional, and
generally raises him in some respect much above the average level of
humanity. This does not mean that he is an eccentric or a paragon.
Shakespeare never drew monstrosities of virtue; some of his heroes are
far from being 'good'; and if he drew eccentrics he gave them a
subordinate position in the plot. His tragic characters are made of the
stuff we find within ourselves and within the persons who surround them.
But, by an intensification of the life which they share with others,
they are raised above them; and the greatest are raised so far that, if
we fully realise all that is implied in their words and actions, we
become conscious that in real life we have known scarcely any one
resembling them. Some, like Hamlet and Cleopatra, have genius. Others,
like Othello, Lear, Macbeth, Coriolanus, are built on the grand scale;
and desire, passion, or will attains in them a terrible force. In almost
all we observe a marked one-sidedness, a predisposition in some
particular direction; a total incapacity, in certain circumstances, of
resisting the force which draws in this direction; a fatal tendency to
identify the whole being with one interest, object, passion, or habit of
mind. This, it would seem, is, for Shakespeare, the fundamental tragic
trait. It is present in his early heroes, Romeo and Richard II.,
infatuated men, who otherwise rise comparatively little above the
ordinary level. It is a fatal gift, but it carries with it a touch of
greatness; and when there is joined to it nobility of mind, or genius,
or immense force, we realise the full power and reach of the soul, and
the conflict in which it engages acquires that magnitude which stirs not
only sympathy and pity, but admiration, terror, and awe.
The easiest way to bring home to oneself the nature of the tragic
character is to compare it with a character of another kind. Dramas like
_Cymbeline_ and the _Winter's Tale_, which might seem destined to end
tragically, but actually end otherwise, owe their happy ending largely
to the fact that the principal characters fail to reach tragic
dimensions. And, conversely, if these persons were put in the place of
the tragic heroes, the dramas in which they appeared would cease to be
tragedies. Posthumus would never have acted as Othello did; Othello, on
his side, would have met Iachimo's challenge with something more than
words. If, like Posthumus, he had remained convinced of his wife's
infidelity, he would not have repented her execution; if, like Leontes,
he had come to believe that by an unjust accusation he had caused her
death, he would never have lived on, like Leontes. In the same way the
villain Iachimo has no touch of tragic greatness. But Iago comes nearer
to it, and if Iago had slandered Imogen and had supposed his slanders to
have led to her death, he certainly would not have turned melancholy and
wished to die. One reason why the end of the _Merchant of Venice_ fails
to satisfy us is that Shylock is a tragic character, and that we cannot
believe in his accepting his defeat and the conditions imposed on him.
This was a case where Shakespeare's imagination ran away with him, so
that he drew a figure with which the destined pleasant ending would not
harmonise.
In the circumstances where we see the hero placed, his tragic trait,
which is also his greatness, is fatal to him. To meet these
circumstances something is required which a smaller man might have
given, but which the hero cannot give. He errs, by action or omission;
and his error, joining with other causes, brings on him ruin. This is
always so with Shakespeare. As we have seen, the idea of the tragic hero
as a being destroyed simply and solely by external forces is quite alien
to him; and not less so is the idea of the hero as contributing to his
destruction only by acts in which we see no flaw. But the fatal
imperfection or error, which is never absent, is of different kinds and
degrees. At one extreme stands the excess and precipitancy of Romeo,
which scarcely, if at all, diminish our regard for him; at the other the
murderous ambition of Richard III. In most cases the tragic error
involves no conscious breach of right; in some (_e.g._ that of Brutus or
Othello) it is accompanied by a full conviction of right. In Hamlet
there is a painful consciousness that duty is being neglected; in Antony
a clear knowledge that the worse of two courses is being pursued; but
Richard and Macbeth are the only heroes who do what they themselves
recognise to be villainous. It is important to observe that Shakespeare
does admit such heroes,[9] and also that he appears to feel, and exerts
himself to meet, the difficulty that arises from their admission. The
difficulty is that the spectator must desire their defeat and even their
destruction; and yet this desire, and the satisfaction of it, are not
tragic feelings. Shakespeare gives to Richard therefore a power which
excites astonishment, and a courage which extorts admiration. He gives
to Macbeth a similar, though less extraordinary, greatness, and adds to
it a conscience so terrifying in its warnings and so maddening in its
reproaches that the spectacle of inward torment compels a horrified
sympathy and awe which balance, at the least, the desire for the hero's
ruin.
The tragic hero with Shakespeare, then, need not be 'good,' though
generally he is 'good' and therefore at once wins sympathy in his error.
But it is necessary that he should have so much of greatness that in his
error and fall we may be vividly conscious of the possibilities of human
nature.[10] Hence, in the first place, a Shakespearean tragedy is never,
like some miscalled tragedies, depressing. No one ever closes the book
with the feeling that man is a poor mean creature. He may be wretched
and he may be awful, but he is not small. His lot may be heart-rending
and mysterious, but it is not contemptible. The most confirmed of cynics
ceases to be a cynic while he reads these plays. And with this greatness
of the tragic hero (which is not always confined to him) is connected,
secondly, what I venture to describe as the centre of the tragic
impression. This central feeling is the impression of waste. With
Shakespeare, at any rate, the pity and fear which are stirred by the
tragic story seem to unite with, and even to merge in, a profound sense
of sadness and mystery, which is due to this impression of waste. 'What
a piece of work is man,' we cry; 'so much more beautiful and so much
more terrible than we knew! Why should he be so if this beauty and
greatness only tortures itself and throws itself away?' We seem to have
before us a type of the mystery of the whole world, the tragic fact
which extends far beyond the limits of tragedy. Everywhere, from the
crushed rocks beneath our feet to the soul of man, we see power,
intelligence, life and glory, which astound us and seem to call for our
worship. And everywhere we see them perishing, devouring one another and
destroying themselves, often with dreadful pain, as though they came
into being for no other end. Tragedy is the typical form of this
mystery, because that greatness of soul which it exhibits oppressed,
conflicting and destroyed, is the highest existence in our view. It
forces the mystery upon us, and it makes us realise so vividly the worth
of that which is wasted that we cannot possibly seek comfort in the
reflection that all is vanity.
4
In this tragic world, then, where individuals, however great they may be
and however decisive their actions may appear, are so evidently not the
ultimate power, what is this power? What account can we give of it which
will correspond with the imaginative impressions we receive? This will
be our final question.
The variety of the answers given to this question shows how difficult it
is. And the difficulty has many sources. Most people, even among those
who know Shakespeare well and come into real contact with his mind, are
inclined to isolate and exaggerate some one aspect of the tragic fact.
Some are so much influenced by their own habitual beliefs that they
import them more or less into their interpretation of every author who
is 'sympathetic' to them. And even where neither of these causes of
error appears to operate, another is present from which it is probably
impossible wholly to escape. What I mean is this. Any answer we give to
the question proposed ought to correspond with, or to represent in terms
of the understanding, our imaginative and emotional experience in
reading the tragedies. We have, of course, to do our best by study and
effort to make this experience true to Shakespeare; but, that done to
the best of our ability, the experience is the matter to be interpreted,
and the test by which the interpretation must be tried. But it is
extremely hard to make out exactly what this experience is, because, in
the very effort to make it out, our reflecting mind, full of everyday
ideas, is always tending to transform it by the application of these
ideas, and so to elicit a result which, instead of representing the
fact, conventionalises it. And the consequence is not only mistaken
theories; it is that many a man will declare that he feels in reading a
tragedy what he never really felt, while he fails to recognise what he
actually did feel. It is not likely that we shall escape all these
dangers in our effort to find an answer to the question regarding the
tragic world and the ultimate power in it.
It will be agreed, however, first, that this question must not be
answered in 'religious' language. For although this or that _dramatis
persona_ may speak of gods or of God, of evil spirits or of Satan, of
heaven and of hell, and although the poet may show us ghosts from
another world, these ideas do not materially influence his
representation of life, nor are they used to throw light on the mystery
of its tragedy. The Elizabethan drama was almost wholly secular; and
while Shakespeare was writing he practically confined his view to the
world of non-theological observation and thought, so that he represents
it substantially in one and the same way whether the period of the story
is pre-Christian or Christian.[11] He looked at this 'secular' world
most intently and seriously; and he painted it, we cannot but conclude,
with entire fidelity, without the wish to enforce an opinion of his own,
and, in essentials, without regard to anyone's hopes, fears, or beliefs.
His greatness is largely due to this fidelity in a mind of extraordinary
power; and if, as a private person, he had a religious faith, his tragic
view can hardly have been in contradiction with this faith, but must
have been included in it, and supplemented, not abolished, by additional
ideas.
Two statements, next, may at once be made regarding the tragic fact as
he represents it: one, that it is and remains to us something piteous,
fearful and mysterious; the other, that the representation of it does
not leave us crushed, rebellious or desperate. These statements will be
accepted, I believe, by any reader who is in touch with Shakespeare's
mind and can observe his own. Indeed such a reader is rather likely to
complain that they are painfully obvious. But if they are true as well
as obvious, something follows from them in regard to our present
question.
From the first it follows that the ultimate power in the tragic world is
not adequately described as a law or order which we can see to be just
and benevolent,--as, in that sense, a 'moral order': for in that case
the spectacle of suffering and waste could not seem to us so fearful and
mysterious as it does. And from the second it follows that this ultimate
power is not adequately described as a fate, whether malicious and
cruel, or blind and indifferent to human happiness and goodness: for in
that case the spectacle would leave us desperate or rebellious. Yet one
or other of these two ideas will be found to govern most accounts of
Shakespeare's tragic view or world. These accounts isolate and
exaggerate single aspects, either the aspect of action or that of
suffering; either the close and unbroken connection of character, will,
deed and catastrophe, which, taken alone, shows the individual simply as
sinning against, or failing to conform to, the moral order and drawing
his just doom on his own head; or else that pressure of outward forces,
that sway of accident, and those blind and agonised struggles, which,
taken alone, show him as the mere victim of some power which cares
neither for his sins nor for his pain. Such views contradict one
another, and no third view can unite them; but the several aspects from
whose isolation and exaggeration they spring are both present in the
fact, and a view which would be true to the fact and to the whole of our
imaginative experience must in some way combine these aspects.