7,6 Prosser Hall Frye 



nobler part for all their calamities, as contrasted with the wholly 

 despicable conspiracy to which each falls a victim. And so this 

 assertion of the sentimental pre-eminence of an approved char- 

 acter, irrespective of its ends and activities, has come — thanks to 

 its conformity with our modern, and perhaps I should add our 

 Christian, prepossession — to form the resolution of modern tra- 

 gedy, of the neo-classic as well as the romantic. 



That such a resolution is emotional rather than rational can 

 not be disputed. All too obviously it supplies no genuine solu- 

 tion of the mystery of good and evil, happiness and misery which 

 has vexed the heart of man for so many centuries. It is but a 

 compromise at best ; and as such it is an inherent defect of mod- 

 ern tragedy. Nevertheless there are two remarks to be made in 

 extenuation. In the first place, the immediate appeal of tragedy 

 is emotional any way ; and such a reconciliation, though failing 

 to satisfy mature reflection, does at least offer temporary allevia- 

 tion of the heart-ache that accompanies the spectacle of such 

 enormities as make the subject-matter of tragedy. While further, 

 since it is unreasonable to expect a thoroughly congruous art of 

 an age without consistency, it is only by some such compromise 

 that the dramatist can hope to mediate between the warring tend- 

 encies of our post-renaissance mood. In an order purely physical, 

 for example, it is inconceivable that righteousness should influ- 

 ence our material well-being in one way or the other. Or else, 

 if a man's fortunes are to be taken as the index of his deserts, as 

 antiquity was prone to believe, then the protestations of his own 

 conscience are unreliable as against the evidences of adversity. 

 But either of these alternatives we are loathe to embrace. The 

 former implies an insensible determinism ; the latter a moral 

 causation. And in our reluctance we are driven to make the 

 benefits and dignities of virtue, as of character, largely subjective 

 and intimate — an affair of sentiment pretty exclusively. 



As a result of this, expedient of reconciling the heart, irre- 

 spective of the head, to the contingencies of the denouement or 

 catastrophe, there has ensued a momentous change of attitude 

 toward the protagonist. I speak of the denouement or catas- 

 trophe as a contingency deliberately ; for in this light we are 



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