Racine 37 



bound to consider it, ex hypothesi, on the strength of its hideous 

 disproportion with the presumptive innocency of the victim. At 

 least, since the "hero" is no longer "to be held to strict account- 

 ability for his conduct to the extent of sharing impartially in the 

 obloquy of his misdeeds, there is no choice save to call the catas- 

 trophe morally indifferent whatever his instrumentality in its 

 production. As Othello and Hamlet are written, it is impossible 

 to visit upon the heads of the titular characters the full measure 

 of abhorrence proper to their infamies as such. Taken in them- 

 selves, the crazing of Ophelia by the meditative Dane and the 

 smothering of Desdemona by the valiant Moor are not exploits 

 particularly creditable to their perpetrators. And yet in spite of 

 the egotistic squeamishness of the one and the jealous credulity 

 of the other character, we are induced to shift the blame from 

 their shoulders to the instigation of circumstance and the con- 

 nivance of opportunity — agencies admirably symbolized in the 

 Phedre, for instance, by the person of the nurse. Herein, ob- 

 viously, consists the utility of the " villain " ; he lets the " hero " 

 out. For notice that with this gentry Sophocles and ^schylus, 

 whose protagonists bear, like CEdipus, the opprobrium of their 

 own mischief, have no traffic. And though there are fore- 

 shadowings of the villain, in the present acceptation of the word, 

 in Euripides as a scapegoat for some of the interesting adven- 

 turesses, like Medea, for whom that author had such a particular 

 tenderness; yet the role owes its sinister prominence to the exi- 

 gencies of the sentimental reconciliation and the modern trage- 

 dian's efforts to save his hero's face at all odds — an effort in 

 which he is inevitably led to develop the ethical rather than the 

 moral possibilities of his action, treating it as revelatory of the 

 complexity and richness of the protagonist's temperament, which 

 to our notion constitutes its worth and value. 



As a result of these conditions, then, the modern protagonist 

 or hero is invariably a " sympathetic " character. If he were not 

 — if he were to forfeit the indulgence of the audience, he would 

 lose what standing he has and become identified with his own 

 performances. In that event, being as he is the source of irre- 



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