30 Prosser Hall Frye 



even abandoned enough to believe that Hterature is all the better 

 for something of the sort, provided it is humane and not eco- 

 nomic or sociological or anthropological. And so I have the# 

 effrontery to repeat that with the substitution of Phedre for Hip- 

 polytus in the principal part the play is destitute of problem, and 

 being without a problem, is destitute of thesis likewise. To be 

 sure, there is a kind of justice in Phedre's fate ; but it is that 

 obvious, anticipated, matter-of-fact sort of justice to which the 

 conscience does not have to be reconciled. Her guilt is as sensible 

 as her sentence. She is a sinner — the fascinating and sympa- 

 thetic sinner with whom a long course of modern literature has 

 sufficiently familiarized us. Her seduction is undeniable. But 

 she is plainly a dangerous woman, a fenime fatale ; and it is 

 better that she should be put away. And in this decision we ac- 

 quiesce without difficulty. There is no ambiguity in her lot, no 

 misgiving in the minds of her judges. 



The only compunction that her lot arouses has to do with the 

 fate of her victim, Hippolytus; and to that problem, it has been 

 seen, no solution is vouchsafed. In short, the logic of the tragedy 

 is of a thoroughly modern type, of which Macbeth and Richard 

 III are the readiest examples — the tragedy of wickedness or de- 

 pravity. And like all tragedies of the type, it is a little awry. 

 For what we fail to notice in our preoccupation with such pro- 

 tagonists is the circumstance that the merited visitation of their 

 iniquities provides no satisfaction or compensation for the suf- 

 ferings of their victims — the endless procession of Duncans, 

 Banquos, and Lady Macduffs. It is they who rise, 



With twenty mortal murthers on their crowns, 



in speechless expostulation with the ordering of their destiny. 

 What warrant can we produce for their ills? Theirs is the tra- 

 gedy — unrecognized and unriddled; for every tragedy is some- 

 thing of a mystery as of a sacrament. No, such tragedies are out 

 of focus somehow ; and the Greek with his habitual tact avoided 

 them. It is not Phedre's subtle and pervasive corruption — that 

 only proclaims her a moral outlaw and debars her from tragic 



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