cena 
The Theory of Greek Tragedy [I 
wretched contingencies, but what would you have? Life 
is a tale 
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, 
Signifying nothing. 
In default of a final impression of moral consistency as between 
the hero’s deserts and his apportionment, the consternation of the 
spectators is composed by a feeling which is left with them of the 
sympathetic superiority of the victim over the forces to which he 
succumbs. In spite of his insufficiency it is impossible not to rate 
Hamlet or Lear above the whole conspiracy to which he falls a 
victim. In this way the tragic qualm, as I have called it, is allayed 
after a fashion; the audience is reconciled to the catastrophe— 
otherwise there would be no tragic effect at all. Such a con- 
clusion, however, is purely sentimental and lenitive; there is no 
reassertion of the moral order, no catharsis of the passions to which 
the qualm is due. It is not by his solution, to speak exactly, that 
Shakespeare is great. Perhaps the kind of incongruity on which 
he based his drama is incapable of moral reconciliation. At all 
events, it is, as a matter of fact, to the terrific vividness with 
which he pictures the plight of humanity in a world of unscrupu- 
lous eventualities and draws its consequences for the character 
of the individual that his greatness is due. Hence the individual- 
ity of his drama and its title to the common designation, tragedy 
of character. 
Such, as I conceive the matter, are the fundamental ideas of 
Shakespearean tragedy, which is in most respects a fair type of 
romantic tragedy in general. By comparison, the problem of 
Greek tragedy has to do with the effect of an action, as such, in 
promoting human happiness or misery; while the solution seeks 
to justify the issue by attaching to the action concerned a cor- 
responding moral quality of good or evil. It is not a concern for 
happiness in itself which differentiates the Greek tragedy from 
the Shakespearean; on the whole, it is rather a concern for the 
correlation of happiness and righteousness. But as far as the 
representation itself goes, all tragedy, as a matter of fact, is alike 
eudaemonistic in referring immediately to the instinct of happiness 
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