Since Aristotle dealt with tragedy, and, as usual, drew the main
features of his subject with those sure and simple strokes which no
later hand has rivalled, the only philosopher who has treated it in a
manner both original and searching is Hegel. I propose here to give a
sketch of Hegel's theory, and to add some remarks upon it. But I cannot
possibly do justice in a sketch to a theory which fills many pages of
the _Aesthetik_; which I must tear from its connections with the
author's general view of poetry, and with the rest of his philosophy[2];
and which I must try to exhibit as far as possible in the language of
ordinary literature. To estimate this theory, therefore, from my sketch
would be neither safe nor just--all the more because, in the interest of
immediate clearness, I have not scrupled to insert without warning
various remarks and illustrations for which Hegel is not responsible.
On certain characteristics of tragedy the briefest reminder will
suffice. A large part of the nature of this form of drama is common to
the drama in all its forms; and of this nothing need be said. It will be
agreed, further, that in all tragedy there is some sort of collision or
conflict--conflict of feelings, modes of thought, desires, wills,
purposes; conflict of persons with one another, or with circumstances,
or with themselves; one, several, or all of these kinds of conflict, as
the case may be. Again, it may be taken for granted that a tragedy is a
story of unhappiness or suffering, and excites such feelings as pity and
fear. To this, if we followed the present usage of the term, we should
add that the story of unhappiness must have an unhappy end; by which we
mean in effect that the conflict must close with the death of one or
more of the principal characters. But this usage of the word 'tragedy'
is comparatively recent; it leaves us without a name for many plays, in
many languages, which deal with unhappiness without ending unhappily;
and Hegel takes the word in its older and wider sense.
Passing on from these admitted characteristics of tragedy, we may best
approach Hegel's peculiar view by observing that he lays particular
stress on one of them. That a tragedy is a story of suffering is
probably to many people the most obvious fact about it. Hegel says very
little of this; partly, perhaps, because it is obvious, but more because
the essential point to him is not the suffering but its cause, namely,
the action or conflict. Mere suffering, he would say, is not tragic, but
only the suffering that comes of a special kind of action. Pity for mere
misfortune, like fear of it, is not tragic pity or fear. These are due
to the spectacle of the conflict and its attendant suffering, which do
not appeal simply to our sensibilities or our instinct of
self-preservation, but also to our deeper mind or spirit (_Geist_, a
word which, with its adjective, I shall translate 'spirit,' 'spiritual,'
because our words 'mind' and 'mental' suggest something merely
intellectual).
The reason why the tragic conflict thus appeals to the spirit is that it
is itself a conflict of the spirit. It is a conflict, that is to say,
between powers that rule the world of man's will and action--his
'ethical substance.' The family and the state, the bond of parent and
child, of brother and sister, of husband and wife, of citizen and ruler,
or citizen and citizen, with the obligations and feelings appropriate to
these bonds; and again the powers of personal love and honour, or of
devotion to a great cause or an ideal interest like religion or science
or some kind of social welfare--such are the forces exhibited in tragic
action; not indeed alone, not without others less affirmative and
perhaps even evil, but still in preponderating mass. And as they form
the substance of man, are common to all civilised men, and are
acknowledged as powers rightfully claiming human allegiance, their
exhibition in tragedy has that interest, at once deep and universal,
which is essential to a great work of art.
In many a work of art, in many a statue, picture, tale, or song, such
powers are shown in solitary peace or harmonious co-operation. Tragedy
shows them in collision. Their nature is divine, and in religion they
appear as gods; but, as seen in the world of tragic action, they have
left the repose of Olympus, have entered into human wills, and now meet
as foes. And this spectacle, if sublime, is also terrible. The
essentially tragic fact is the self-division and intestinal warfare of
the ethical substance, not so much the war of good with evil as the war
of good with good. Two of these isolated powers face each other, making
incompatible demands. The family claims what the state refuses, love
requires what honour forbids. The competing forces are both in
themselves rightful, and so far the claim of each is equally justified;
but the right of each is pushed into a wrong, because it ignores the
right of the other, and demands that absolute sway which belongs to
neither alone, but to the whole of which each is but a part.
And one reason why this happens lies in the nature of the characters
through whom these claims are made. It is the nature of the tragic hero,
at once his greatness and his doom, that he knows no shrinking or
half-heartedness, but identifies himself wholly with the power that
moves him, and will admit the justification of no other power. However
varied and rich his inner life and character may be, in the conflict it
is all concentrated in one point. Antigone _is_ the determination to do
her duty to her dead brother; Romeo is not a son or a citizen as well as
a lover, he is lover pure and simple, and his love is the whole of him.
The end of the tragic conflict is the denial of both the exclusive
claims. It is not the work of chance or blank fate; it is the act of the
ethical substance itself, asserting its absoluteness against the
excessive pretensions of its particular powers. In that sense, as
proceeding from an absolute right which cancels claims based on right
but pushed into wrong, it may be called the act of 'eternal justice.'
Sometimes it can end the conflict peacefully, and the tragedy closes
with a solution. Appearing as a divine being, the spiritual unity
reconciles by some adjustment the claims of the contending powers
(_Eumenides_); or at its bidding one of them softens its demand
(_Philoctetes_); or again, as in the more beautiful solution of the
_Oedipus Coloneus_, the hero by his own self-condemnation and inward
purification reconciles himself with the supreme justice, and is
accepted by it. But sometimes the quarrel is pressed to extremes; the
denial of the one-sided claims involves the death of one or more of the
persons concerned; and we have a catastrophe. The ultimate power thus
appears as a destructive force. Yet even here, as Hegel insists, the end
is not without an aspect of reconciliation. For that which is denied is
not the rightful powers with which the combatants have identified
themselves. On the contrary, those powers, and with them the only thing
for which the combatants cared, are affirmed. What is denied is the
exclusive and therefore wrongful assertion of their right.
Such in outline is Hegel's main view. It may be illustrated more fully
by two examples, favourites of his, taken from Aeschylus and Sophocles.
Clytemnestra has murdered Agamemnon, her husband and king. Orestes,
their son, is impelled by filial piety to avenge his father, and is
ordered by Apollo to do so. But to kill a mother is to sin against
filial piety. The spiritual substance is divided against itself. The
sacred bond of father and son demands what the equally sacred bond of
son and mother forbids. When, therefore, Orestes has done the deed, the
Furies of his murdered mother claim him for their prey. He appeals to
Apollo, who resists their claim. A solution is arrived at without a
catastrophe. The cause is referred to Athene, who institutes at Athens a
court of sworn judges. The votes of this court being equally divided,
Athene gives her casting-vote for Orestes; while the Furies are at last
appeased by a promise of everlasting honour at Athens.
In the _Antigone_, on the other hand, to Hegel the 'perfect exemplar of
tragedy,' the solution is negative. The brother of Antigone has brought
against his native city an army of foreigners bent on destroying it. He
has been killed in the battle, and Creon, the ruler of the city, has
issued an edict forbidding anyone on pain of death to bury the corpse.
In so doing he not only dishonours the dead man, but violates the rights
of the gods of the dead. Antigone without hesitation disobeys the
edict, and Creon, despite the remonstrance of his son, who is affianced
to her, persists in exacting the penalty. Warned by the prophet
Teiresias, he gives way, but too late. Antigone, immured in a rocky
chamber to starve, has anticipated her death. Her lover follows her
example, and his mother refuses to survive him. Thus Antigone has lost
her life through her absolute assertion of the family against the state;
Creon has violated the sanctity of the family, and in return sees his
own home laid in ruins. But in this catastrophe neither the right of the
family nor that of the state is denied; what is denied is the
absoluteness of the claim of each.
The danger of illustrations like these is that they divert attention
from the principle illustrated to questions about the interpretation of
particular works. So it will be here. I cannot stay to discuss these
questions, which do not affect Hegel's principle; but it will be well,
before going further, to remove a misunderstanding of it which is
generally to be found in criticisms of his treatment of the _Eumenides_
and the _Antigone_. The main objection may be put thus: 'Hegel talks of
equally justified powers or claims. But Aeschylus never meant that
Orestes and the Furies were equally justified; for Orestes was
acquitted. Nor did Sophocles mean that Antigone and Creon were equally
right. And how can it have been equally the duty of Orestes to kill his
mother and not to kill her?' But, in the first place, it is most
important to observe that Hegel is not discussing at all what we should
generally call the moral quality of the acts and persons concerned, or,
in the ordinary sense, what it was their duty to do. And, in the second
place, when he speaks of 'equally justified' powers, what he means, and,
indeed, sometimes says, is that these powers are _in themselves_ equally
justified. The family and the state, the bond of father and son, the
bond of mother and son, the bond of citizenship, these are each and all,
one as much as another, powers rightfully claiming human allegiance. It
is tragic that observance of one should involve the violation of
another. These are Hegel's propositions, and surely they are true. Their
truth is quite unaffected by the fact (assuming it is one) that in the
circumstances the act combining this observance of one and violation of
another was morally right, or by the fact (if so it is) that one such
act (say Antigone's) was morally right, and another (say Creon's) was
morally wrong. It is sufficient for Hegel's principle that the violation
should take place, and that we should feel its weight. We do feel it. We
may approve the act of Antigone or Orestes, but in approving it we still
feel that it is no light matter to disobey the law or to murder a
mother, that (as we might say) there is much justice in the pleas of the
Furies and of Creon, and that the _tragic_ effect depends upon these
facts. If, again, it is objected that the underlying conflict in the
_Antigone_ is not between the family and the state, but between divine
and human law, that objection, if sound, might touch Hegel's
interpretation,[3] but it would not affect his principle, except for
those who recognise no obligation in human law; and it will scarcely be
contended that Sophocles is to be numbered among them. On the other
hand, it is, I think, a matter for regret that Hegel employed such words
as 'right,' 'justified,' and 'justice.' They do not mislead readers
familiar with his writings, but to others they suggest associations with
criminal law, or our everyday moral judgments, or perhaps the theory of
'poetic justice'; and these are all out of place in a discussion on
tragedy.
Having determined in outline the idea or principle of tragedy, Hegel
proceeds to give an account of some differences between ancient and
modern works. In the limited time at our disposal we shall do best to
confine ourselves to a selection from his remarks on the latter. For in
speaking of ancient tragedy Hegel, who finds something modern in
Euripides, makes accordingly but little use of him for purposes of
contrast, while his main point of view as to Aeschylus and Sophocles has
already appeared in the illustrations we have given of the general
principle. I will only add, by way of preface, that the pages about to
be summarised leave on one, rightly or wrongly, the impression that to
his mind the principle is more adequately realised in the best classical
tragedies than in modern works. But the question whether this really was
his deliberate opinion would detain us too long from weightier
matters.[4]
Hegel considers first the cases where modern tragedy resembles ancient
in dealing with conflicts arising from the pursuit of ends which may be
called substantial or objective and not merely personal. And he points
out that modern tragedy here shows a much greater variety. Subjects are
taken, for example, from the quarrels of dynasties, of rivals for the
throne, of kings and nobles, of state and church. Calderon shows the
conflict of love and honour regarded as powers imposing obligations.
Schiller in his early works makes his characters defend the rights of
nature against convention, or of freedom of thought against
prescription--rights in their essence universal. Wallenstein aims at the
unity and peace of Germany; Karl Moor attacks the whole arrangement of
society; Faust seeks to attain in thought and action union with the
Absolute. In such cases the end is more than personal; it represents a
power claiming the allegiance of the individual; but, on the other
hand, it does not always or generally represent a great _ethical_
institution or bond like the family or the state. We have passed into a
wider world.
But, secondly, he observes, in regard to modern tragedy, that in a
larger number of instances such public or universal interests either do
not appear at all, or, if they appear, are scarcely more than a
background for the real subject. The real subject, the impelling end or
passion, and the ensuing conflict, is personal,--these particular
characters with their struggle and their fate. The importance given to
subjectivity--this is the distinctive mark of modern sentiment, and so
of modern art; and such tragedies bear its impress. A part at least of
Hegel's meaning may be illustrated thus. We are interested in the
personality of Orestes or Antigone, but chiefly as it shows itself in
one aspect, as identifying itself with a certain ethical relation; and
our interest in the personality is inseparable and indistinguishable
from our interest in the power it represents. This is not so with
Hamlet, whose position so closely resembles that of Orestes. What
engrosses our attention is the whole personality of Hamlet in his
conflict, not with an opposing spiritual power, but with circumstances
and, still more, with difficulties in his own nature. No one could think
of describing Othello as the representative of an ethical family
relation. His passion, however much nobility he may show in it, is
personal. So is Romeo's love. It is not pursued, like Posa's freedom of
thought, as something universal, a right of man. Its right, if it could
occur to us to use the term at all, is Romeo's right.
On this main characteristic of modern tragedy others depend. For
instance, that variety of subject to which reference has just been made
depends on it. For when so much weight is attached to personality,
almost any fatal collision in which a sufficiently striking character is
involved may yield material for tragedy. Naturally, again,
characterisation has become fuller and more subtle, except in dramas
which are more or less an imitation of the antique. The characters in
Greek tragedy are far from being types or personified abstractions, as
those of classical French tragedy tend to be: they are genuine
individuals. But still they are comparatively simple and easy to
understand, and have not the intricacy of the characters in Shakespeare.
These, for the most part, represent simply themselves; and the loss of
that interest which attached to the Greek characters from their
identification with an ethical power, is compensated by an extraordinary
subtlety in their portrayal, and also by their possession of some
peculiar charm or some commanding superiority. Finally, the interest in
personality explains the freedom with which characters more or less
definitely evil are introduced in modern tragedy. Mephistopheles is as
essentially modern as Faust. The passion of Richard or Macbeth is not
only personal, like that of Othello; it is egoistic and anarchic, and
leads to crimes done with a full knowledge of their wickedness; but to
the modern mind the greatness of the personality justifies its
appearance in the position of hero. Such beings as Iago and Goneril,
almost portents of evil, are not indeed made the heroes of tragedies;
but, according to Hegel, they would not have been admitted in Greek
tragedy at all. If Clytemnestra had been cited in objection as a
parallel to Lady Macbeth, he would have replied that Lady Macbeth had
not the faintest ground of complaint against Duncan, while in reading
the _Agamemnon_ we are frequently reminded that Clytemnestra's husband
was the sacrificer of their child. He might have added that Clytemnestra
is herself an example of the necessity, where one of the principal
characters inspires hatred or horror, of increasing the subtlety of the
drawing or adding grandeur to the evil will.
It remains to compare ancient and modern tragedy in regard to the issue
of the conflict. We have seen that Hegel attributes this issue in the
former to the ethical substance or eternal justice, and so accounts for
such reconciliation as we feel to be present even where the end is a
catastrophe. Now, in the catastrophe of modern tragedy, he says, a
certain justice is sometimes felt to be present; but even then it
differs from the antique justice. It is in some cases more 'abstract':
the end pursued by the hero, though it is not egoistic, is still
presented rather as his particular end than as something rightful though
partial; and hence the catastrophe appears as the reaction, not of an
undivided ethical totality, but merely of the universal turning against
a too assertive particular.[5] In cases, again, where the hero (Richard
or Macbeth) openly attacks an ethical power and plunges into evil, we
feel that he meets with justice, and only gets what he deserves; but
then this justice is colder and more 'criminalistic' than that of
ancient tragedy. Thus even when the modern work seems to resemble the
ancient in its issue, the sense of reconciliation is imperfect. And
partly for this reason, partly from the concentration of our interest on
individuality as such, we desire to see in the individual himself some
sort of reconciliation with his fate. What shape this will take depends,
of course, on the story and the character of the hero. It may appear in
a religious form, as his feeling that he is exchanging his earthly being
for an indestructible happiness; or again, in his recognition of the
justice of his fall; or at least he may show us that, in face of the
forces that crush him to death, he maintains untouched the freedom and
strength of his own will.
But there remain, says Hegel, many modern tragedies where we have to
attribute the catastrophe not to any kind of justice, but to unhappy
circumstances and outward accidents. And then we can only feel that the
individual whose merely personal ends are thwarted by mere particular
circumstances and chances, pays the penalty that awaits existence in a
scene of contingency and finitude. Such a feeling cannot rise above
sadness, and, if the hero is a noble soul, it may become the impression
of a dreadful external necessity. This impression can be avoided only
when circumstance and accident are so depicted that they are felt to
coincide with something in the hero himself, so that he is not simply
destroyed by an outward force. So it is with Hamlet. 'This bank and
shoal of time' is too narrow for his soul, and the death that seems to
fall on him by chance is also within him. And so in _Romeo and Juliet_
we feel that the rose of a love so beautiful is too tender to bloom in
the storm-swept valley of its birth. But such a feeling of
reconciliation is still one of pain, an unhappy blessedness.[6] And if
the situation displayed in a drama is of such a kind that we feel the
issue to depend _simply_ on the turn the dramatist may choose to give to
the course of events, we are fully justified in our preference for a
happy ending.
In this last remark (or rather in the pages misrepresented by it) Hegel,
of course, is not criticising Shakespeare. He is objecting to the
destiny-dramas of his own time, and to the fashionable indulgence in
sentimental melancholy. Strongly as he asserted the essential function
of negation throughout the universe, the affirmative power of the
spirit, even in its profoundest divisions, was for him the deepest truth
and the most inspiring theme. And one may see this even in his
references to Shakespeare. He appreciated Shakespeare's representation
of extreme forms of evil, but, even if he was fully satisfied of its
justification, his personal preference lay in another direction, and
while I do not doubt that he thought _Hamlet_ a greater work than
_Iphigenie_, I suspect he loved Goethe's play the best.
Most of those who have thought about this subject will agree that the
ideas I have tried to sketch are interesting and valuable; but they
suggest scores of questions. Alike in the account of tragedy in general,
and in that of the differences between ancient and modern tragedy,
everyone will find statements to doubt and omissions to regret; and
scarcely one of Hegel's interpretations of particular plays will escape
objection. It is impossible for me to touch on more than a few points;
and to the main ideas I owe so much that I am more inclined to dwell on
their truth than to criticise what seem to be defects. But perhaps after
all an attempt to supplement and amend may be the best way of throwing
some part of Hegel's meaning more into relief. And I will begin with the
attempt to supplement.
He seems to be right in laying emphasis on the action and conflict in
tragedy rather than on the suffering and misfortune. No mere suffering
or misfortune, no suffering that does not spring in great part from
human agency, and in some degree from the agency of the sufferer, is
tragic, however pitiful or dreadful it may be. But, sufficient
connection with these agencies being present, misfortune, the fall from
prosperity to adversity, with the suffering attending it, at once
becomes tragic; and in many tragedies it forms a large ingredient, as
does the pity for it in the tragic feeling. Hegel, I think, certainly
takes too little notice of it; and by this omission he also withdraws
attention from something the importance of which he would have admitted
at once; I mean the way in which suffering is borne. Physical pain, to
take an extreme instance, is one thing: Philoctetes, bearing it, is
another. And the noble endurance of pain that rends the heart is the
source of much that is best worth having in tragedy.
Again, there is one particular kind of misfortune _not_ obviously due to
human agency, which undoubtedly may affect us in a tragic way. I mean
that kind which suggests the idea of fate. Tragedies which represent man
as the mere plaything of chance or a blank fate or a malicious fate, are
never really deep: it is satisfactory to see that Maeterlinck, a man of
true genius, has now risen above these ideas. But, where those factors
of tragedy are present which Hegel emphasises, the impression of
something fateful in what we call accident, the impression that the hero
not only invites misfortune by his exceptional stature and exceptional
daring, but is also, if I may so put it, strangely and terribly unlucky,
is in many plays a genuine ingredient in tragic effect. It is so, for
example, in the _Oedipus Tyrannus_. It is so even in dramas like
Shakespeare's, which exemplify the saying that character is destiny.
Hegel's own reference to the prominence of accident in the plot of
_Hamlet_ proves it. Othello would not have become Iago's victim if his
own character had been different; but still, as we say, it is an
extraordinary fatality which makes him the companion of the one man in
the world who is at once able enough, brave enough, and vile enough to
ensnare him. In the _Antigone_ itself, and in the very catastrophe of
it, accident plays its part: we can hardly say that it depends solely on
the characters of Creon and Antigone that the one yields just too late
to save the life of the other. Now, it may be said with truth that
Hegel's whole account of the ultimate power in tragedy is a
rationalisation of the idea of fate, but his remarks on this particular
aspect of fate are neither sufficient nor satisfactory.
His insistence on the need for some element of reconciliation in a
tragic catastrophe, and his remarks on the various forms it assumes,
have the greatest value; but one result of the omissions just noticed is
that he sometimes exaggerates it, and at other times rates it too low.
When he is speaking of the kind of tragedy he most approves, his
language almost suggests that our feeling at the close of the conflict
is, or should be, one of complete reconciliation. This it surely neither
is nor can be. Not to mention the suffering and death we have witnessed,
the very existence of the conflict, even if a supreme ethical power is
felt to be asserted in its close, remains a painful fact, and, in large
measure, a fact not understood. For, though we may be said to see, in
one sense, how the opposition of spiritual powers arises, something in
us, and that the best, still cries out against it. And even the
perception or belief that it must needs be that offences come would not
abolish our feeling that the necessity is terrible, or our pain in the
woe of the guilty and the innocent. Nay, one may conjecture, the feeling
and the pain would not vanish if we fully understood that the conflict
and catastrophe were by a rational necessity involved in the divine and
eternally accomplished purpose of the world. But this exaggeration in
Hegel's language, if partly due to his enthusiasm for the affirmative,
may be mainly, like some other defects, an accident of lecturing. In the
_Philosophy of Religion_, I may add, he plainly states that in the
solution even of tragedies like the _Antigone_ something remains
unresolved (ii. 135).
On the other hand, his treatment of the aspect of reconciliation in
modern tragedy is in several respects insufficient. I will mention only
one. He does not notice that in the conclusion of not a few tragedies
pain is mingled not merely with acquiescence, but with something like
exultation. Is there not such a feeling at the close of _Hamlet_,
_Othello_, and _King Lear_; and that although the end in the last two
cases touches the limit of legitimate pathos? This exultation appears to
be connected with our sense that the hero has never shown himself so
great or noble as in the death which seals his failure. A rush of
passionate admiration, and a glory in the greatness of the soul, mingle
with our grief; and the coming of death, so far from destroying these
feelings, appears to leave them untouched, or even to be entirely in
harmony with them. If in such dramas we may be said to feel that the
ultimate power is no mere fate, but a spiritual power, then we also feel
that the hero was never so near to this power as in the moment when it
required his life.
The last omission I would notice in Hegel's theory is that he underrates
the action in tragedy of what may be called by a rough distinction moral
evil rather than defect. Certainly the part played by evil differs
greatly in different cases, but it is never absent, not even from
tragedies of Hegel's favourite type. If it does not appear in the main
conflict, it appears in its occasion. You may say that, while Iago and
Macbeth have evil purposes, neither the act of Orestes nor the vengeance
of the Furies, neither Antigone's breach of the edict nor even Creon's
insistence on her punishment, springs from evil in them; but the
situation with which Orestes or Antigone has to deal, and so in a sense
the whole tragedy, arises from evil, the murder of Agamemnon, and the
attempt of Polyneices to bring ruin on his native city. In fact, if we
confine the title 'tragedy' to plays ending with a catastrophe, it will
be found difficult to name great tragedies, ancient or modern, in which
evil has not directly or indirectly a prominent part. And its presence
has an important bearing on the effect produced by the catastrophe. On
the one hand, it deepens the sense of painful awe. The question why
affirmative spiritual forces should collide is hard enough; but the
question why, together with them, there should be generated violent evil
and extreme depravity is harder and more painful still. But, on the
other hand, the element of reconciliation in the catastrophe is
strengthened by recognition of the part played by evil in bringing it
about; because our sense that the ultimate power cannot endure the
presence of such evil is implicitly the sense that this power is at
least more closely allied with good. If it rejects the exaggerated
claims of its own isolated powers, that which provokes from it a much
more vehement reaction must be still more alien to its nature. This
feeling is forcibly evoked by Shakespeare's tragedies, and in many Greek
dramas it is directly appealed to by repeated reminders that what is at
work in the disasters is the unsleeping Ate which follows an ancestral
sin. If Aristotle did not in some lost part of the _Poetics_ discuss
ideas like this, he failed to give a complete rationale of Greek
tragedy.
I come lastly to the matter I have most at heart. What I take to be the
central idea in Hegel's theory seems to me to touch the essence of
tragedy. And I will not assert that his own statement of it fails to
cover the whole field of instances. For he does not teach, as he is
often said to do, that tragedy portrays only the conflict of such
ethical powers as the family and the state. He adds to these, as we have
seen, others, such as love and honour, together with various universal
ends; and it may even be maintained that he has provided in his general
statement for those numerous cases where, according to himself, no
substantial or universal ends collide, but the interest is centred on
'personalities.' Nevertheless, when these cases come to be considered
more fully--and, in Hegel's view, they are the most characteristically
modern cases--we are not satisfied. They naturally tend to appear as
declensions from the more ideal ancient form; for how can a personality
which represents only itself claim the interest of one which represents
something universal? And further, they are sometimes described in a
manner which strikes the reader, let us say, of Shakespeare, as both
insufficient and misleading. Without raising, then, unprofitable
questions about the comparative merits of ancient and modern tragedy, I
should like to propose a restatement of Hegel's general principle which
would make it more obviously apply to both.
If we omit all reference to ethical or substantial powers and interests,
what have we left? We have the more general idea--to use again a formula
not Hegel's own--that tragedy portrays a self-division and self-waste of
spirit, or a division of spirit involving conflict and waste. It is
implied in this that on _both_ sides in the conflict there is a
spiritual value. The same idea may be expressed (again, I think, not in
Hegel's own words) by saying that the tragic conflict is one not merely
of good with evil, but also, and more essentially, of good with good.
Only, in saying this, we must be careful to observe that 'good' here
means anything that has spiritual value, not moral goodness alone,[7]
and that 'evil' has a similarly wide sense.
Now this idea of a division of spirit involving conflict and waste
covers the tragedies of ethical and other universal powers, and it
covers much besides. According to it the collision of such powers would
be one kind of tragic collision, but only one. _Why_ are we tragically
moved by the conflict of family and state? Because we set a high value
on family and state. Why then should not the conflict of anything else
that has sufficient value affect us tragically? It does. The value must
be sufficient--a moderate value will not serve; and other
characteristics must be present which need not be considered here. But,
granted these conditions, _any_ spiritual conflict involving spiritual
waste is tragic. And it is just one greatness of modern art that it has
shown the tragic fact in situations of so many and such diverse kinds.
These situations have not the peculiar effectiveness of the conflicts
preferred by Hegel, but they may have an equal effectiveness peculiar to
themselves.
Let me attempt to test these ideas by choosing a most unfavourable
instance--unfavourable because the play seems at first to represent a
conflict simply of good and evil, and so, according both to Hegel's
statement and the proposed restatement, to be no tragedy at all: I mean
_Macbeth_. What is the conflict here? It will be agreed that it does not
lie between two ethical powers or universal ends, and that, as Hegel
says, the main interest is in personalities. Let us take it first, then,
to lie between Macbeth and the persons opposing him, and let us ask
whether there is not spiritual value or good on both sides--not an equal
amount of good (that is not necessary), but enough good on each to give
the impression of spiritual waste. Is there not such good in Macbeth? It
is not a question merely of moral goodness, but of good. It is not a
question of the use made of good, but of its presence. And such bravery
and skill in war as win the enthusiasm of everyone about him; such an
imagination as few but poets possess; a conscience so vivid that his
deed is to him beforehand a thing of terror, and, once done, condemns
him to that torture of the mind on which he lies in restless ecstasy; a
determination so tremendous and a courage so appalling that, for all
this torment, he never dreams of turning back, but, even when he has
found that life is a tale full of sound and fury, signifying nothing,
will tell it out to the end though earth and heaven and hell are leagued
against him; are not these things, in themselves, good, and gloriously
good? Do they not make you, for all your horror, admire Macbeth,
sympathise with his agony, pity him, and see in him the waste of forces
on which you place a spiritual value? It is simply on this account that
he is for you, not the abstraction called a criminal who merely 'gets
what he deserves' (art, like religion, knows no such thing), but a
tragic hero, and that his war with other forces of indubitable spiritual
worth is a tragic war.[8]
It is required by the restatement of Hegel's principle to show that in
the external conflict of persons there is good on both sides. It is not
required that this should be true, secondly, of both sides in the
conflict within the hero's soul; for the hero is only a part of the
tragedy. Nevertheless in almost all cases, if not in all, it is true. It
is obviously so where, as in the hero and also the heroine of the _Cid_,
the contending powers in this internal struggle are love and honour.
Even when love is of a quality less pure and has a destructive force, as
in Shakespeare's Antony, it is clearly true. And it remains true even
where, as in Hamlet and Macbeth, the contest seems to lie, and for most
purposes might conveniently be said to lie, between forces simply good
and simply the reverse. This is not really so, and the tragic effect
depends upon the fact. It depends on our feeling that the elements in
the man's nature are so inextricably blended that the good in him, that
which we admire, instead of simply opposing the evil, reinforces it.
Macbeth's imagination deters him from murder, but it also makes the
vision of a crown irresistibly bright. If he had been less determined,
nay, if his conscience had been less maddening in its insistence that he
had thrown the precious jewel of his soul irretrievably away, he might
have paused after his first deed, might even have repented. Yet his
imagination, his determination, and his conscience were things good.
Hamlet's desire to do his duty is a good thing, but what opposes this
desire is by no means simply evil. It is something to which a
substantial contribution is made by the qualities we most admire in him.
Thus the nature of tragedy, as seen in the external conflict, repeats
itself on each side of this conflict, and everywhere there is a
spiritual value in both the contending forces.
In showing that _Macbeth_, a tragedy as far removed as possible from the
_Antigone_ as understood by Hegel, is still of one nature with it, and
equally answers to the account of tragedy proposed, it has been
necessary to ignore the great difference between the two plays. But when
once the common essence of all tragedies has been determined, their
differences become the interesting subject. They could be distinguished
according to the character of the collisions on which they are built, or
of the main forces which move the principal agents. And it may well be
that, other things being equal (as they never are), the tragedy in which
the hero is, as we say, a good man, is more tragic than that in which he
is, as we say, a bad one. The more spiritual value, the more tragedy in
conflict and waste. The death of Hamlet or Othello is, so far, more
tragic than that of Macbeth, that of Macbeth than that of Richard. Below
Richard stands Iago, a figure still tragic, but unfit for the hero's
part; below him persons like Regan or, in the very depth, Oswald,
characters no longer (at least in the dramatic sense) tragic at all.
Moral evil, that is to say, so greatly diminishes the spiritual value we
ascribe to the personality that a very large amount of good of some kind
is required to bring this personality up to the tragic level, the
destruction of evil as such being in no degree tragic. And again, it may
well be that, other things being equal, the more nearly the contending
forces approach each other in goodness, the more tragic is the conflict;
that the collision is, so far, more tragic in the _Antigone_ than in
_Macbeth_, and Hamlet's internal conflict than his struggle with outward
enemies and obstacles. But it is dangerous to describe tragedy in terms
that even appear to exclude _Macbeth_, or to describe _Macbeth_, even
casually or by implication, in terms which imply that it portrays a
conflict of mere evil with mere good.
The restatement of Hegel's main principle as to the conflict would
involve a similar restatement as to the catastrophe (for we need not
consider here those 'tragedies' which end with a solution). As before,
we must avoid any reference to ethical or universal ends, or to the work
of 'justice' in the catastrophe. We might then simply say that, as the
tragic action portrays a self-division or intestinal conflict of spirit,
so the catastrophe displays the violent annulling of this division or
conflict. But this statement, which might be pretty generally accepted,
would represent only half of Hegel's idea, and perhaps nothing of what
is most characteristic and valuable in it. For the catastrophe (if I may
put his idea in my own way) has two aspects, a negative and an
affirmative, and we have ignored the latter. On the one hand it is the
act of a power immeasurably superior to that of the conflicting agents,
a power which is irresistible and unescapable, and which overbears and
negates whatever is incompatible with it. So far, it may be called, in
relation to the conflicting agents,[9] necessity or fate; and unless a
catastrophe affects us in ways corresponding with this aspect it is not
truly tragic. But then if this were all and this necessity were merely
infinite, characterless, external force, the catastrophe would not only
terrify (as it should), it would also horrify, depress, or at best
provoke indignation or rebellion; and these are not tragic feelings. The
catastrophe, then, must have a second and affirmative aspect, which is
the source of our feelings of reconciliation, whatever form they may
assume. And this will be taken into account if we describe the
catastrophe as the violent self-restitution of the divided spiritual
unity. The necessity which acts and negates in it, that is to say, is
yet of one substance with both the agents. _It_ is divided against
itself in them; they are _its_ conflicting forces; and in restoring its
unity through negation it affirms them, so far as they are compatible
with that unity. The qualification is essential, since the hero, for all
his affinity with that power, is, as the living man we see before us,
not so compatible. He must die, and his union with 'eternal justice'
(which is more than 'justice') must itself be 'eternal' or ideal. But
the qualification does not abolish what it qualifies. This is no
occasion to ask how in particular, and in what various ways in various
works, we feel the effect of this affirmative aspect in the catastrophe.
But it corresponds at least with that strange double impression which is
produced by the hero's death. He dies, and our hearts die with him; and
yet his death matters nothing to us, or we even exult. He is dead; and
he has no more to do with death than the power which killed him and with
which he is one.
I leave it to students of Hegel to ask whether he would have accepted
the criticisms and modifications I have suggested. Naturally I think he
would, as I believe they rest on truth, and am sure he had a habit of
arriving at truth. But in any case their importance is trifling,
compared with that of the theory which they attempt to strengthen and to
which they owe their existence.
1901.