A. C. Bradley - Shakespearean Tragedy

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This truth, with some of its qualifications, will appear more clearly if
we now go on to ask what elements are to be found in the 'story' or
'action,' occasionally or frequently, beside the characteristic deeds,
and the sufferings and circumstances, of the persons. I will refer to
three of these additional factors.

(_a_) Shakespeare, occasionally and for reasons which need not be
discussed here, represents abnormal conditions of mind; insanity, for
example, somnambulism, hallucinations. And deeds issuing from these are
certainly not what we called deeds in the fullest sense, deeds
expressive of character. No; but these abnormal conditions are never
introduced as the origin of deeds of any dramatic moment. Lady Macbeth's
sleep-walking has no influence whatever on the events that follow it.
Macbeth did not murder Duncan because he saw a dagger in the air: he saw
the dagger because he was about to murder Duncan. Lear's insanity is not
the cause of a tragic conflict any more than Ophelia's; it is, like
Ophelia's, the result of a conflict; and in both cases the effect is
mainly pathetic. If Lear were really mad when he divided his kingdom, if
Hamlet were really mad at any time in the story, they would cease to be
tragic characters.

(_b_) Shakespeare also introduces the supernatural into some of his
tragedies; he introduces ghosts, and witches who have supernatural
knowledge. This supernatural element certainly cannot in most cases, if
in any, be explained away as an illusion in the mind of one of the
characters. And further, it does contribute to the action, and is in
more than one instance an indispensable part of it: so that to describe
human character, with circumstances, as always the _sole_ motive force
in this action would be a serious error. But the supernatural is always
placed in the closest relation with character. It gives a confirmation
and a distinct form to inward movements already present and exerting an
influence; to the sense of failure in Brutus, to the stifled workings of
conscience in Richard, to the half-formed thought or the horrified
memory of guilt in Macbeth, to suspicion in Hamlet. Moreover, its
influence is never of a compulsive kind. It forms no more than an
element, however important, in the problem which the hero has to face;
and we are never allowed to feel that it has removed his capacity or
responsibility for dealing with this problem. So far indeed are we from
feeling this, that many readers run to the opposite extreme, and openly
or privately regard the supernatural as having nothing to do with the
real interest of the play.

(_c_) Shakespeare, lastly, in most of his tragedies allows to 'chance'
or 'accident' an appreciable influence at some point in the action.
Chance or accident here will be found, I think, to mean any occurrence
(not supernatural, of course) which enters the dramatic sequence neither
from the agency of a character, nor from the obvious surrounding
circumstances.[3] It may be called an accident, in this sense, that
Romeo never got the Friar's message about the potion, and that Juliet
did not awake from her long sleep a minute sooner; an accident that
Edgar arrived at the prison just too late to save Cordelia's life; an
accident that Desdemona dropped her handkerchief at the most fatal of
moments; an accident that the pirate ship attacked Hamlet's ship, so
that he was able to return forthwith to Denmark. Now this operation of
accident is a fact, and a prominent fact, of human life. To exclude it
_wholly_ from tragedy, therefore, would be, we may say, to fail in
truth. And, besides, it is not merely a fact. That men may start a
course of events but can neither calculate nor control it, is a _tragic_
fact. The dramatist may use accident so as to make us feel this; and
there are also other dramatic uses to which it may be put. Shakespeare
accordingly admits it. On the other hand, any _large_ admission of
chance into the tragic sequence[4] would certainly weaken, and might
destroy, the sense of the causal connection of character, deed, and
catastrophe. And Shakespeare really uses it very sparingly. We seldom
find ourselves exclaiming, 'What an unlucky accident!' I believe most
readers would have to search painfully for instances. It is, further,
frequently easy to see the dramatic intention of an accident; and some
things which look like accidents have really a connection with
character, and are therefore not in the full sense accidents. Finally, I
believe it will be found that almost all the prominent accidents occur
when the action is well advanced and the impression of the causal
sequence is too firmly fixed to be impaired.

Thus it appears that these three elements in the 'action' are
subordinate, while the dominant factor consists in deeds which issue
from character. So that, by way of summary, we may now alter our first
statement, 'A tragedy is a story of exceptional calamity leading to the
death of a man in high estate,' and we may say instead (what in its turn
is one-sided, though less so), that the story is one of human actions
producing exceptional calamity and ending in the death of such a man.[5]

* * * * *

Before we leave the 'action,' however, there is another question that
may usefully be asked. Can we define this 'action' further by describing
it as a conflict?

The frequent use of this idea in discussions on tragedy is ultimately
due, I suppose, to the influence of Hegel's theory on the subject,
certainly the most important theory since Aristotle's. But Hegel's view
of the tragic conflict is not only unfamiliar to English readers and
difficult to expound shortly, but it had its origin in reflections on
Greek tragedy and, as Hegel was well aware, applies only imperfectly to
the works of Shakespeare.[6] I shall, therefore, confine myself to the
idea of conflict in its more general form. In this form it is obviously
suitable to Shakespearean tragedy; but it is vague, and I will try to
make it more precise by putting the question, Who are the combatants in
this conflict?

Not seldom the conflict may quite naturally be conceived as lying
between two persons, of whom the hero is one; or, more fully, as lying
between two parties or groups, in one of which the hero is the leading
figure. Or if we prefer to speak (as we may quite well do if we know
what we are about) of the passions, tendencies, ideas, principles,
forces, which animate these persons or groups, we may say that two of
such passions or ideas, regarded as animating two persons or groups, are
the combatants. The love of Romeo and Juliet is in conflict with the
hatred of their houses, represented by various other characters. The
cause of Brutus and Cassius struggles with that of Julius, Octavius and
Antony. In _Richard II._ the King stands on one side, Bolingbroke and
his party on the other. In _Macbeth_ the hero and heroine are opposed to
the representatives of Duncan. In all these cases the great majority of
the _dramatis personae_ fall without difficulty into antagonistic
groups, and the conflict between these groups ends with the defeat of
the hero.

Yet one cannot help feeling that in at least one of these cases,
_Macbeth_, there is something a little external in this way of looking
at the action. And when we come to some other plays this feeling
increases. No doubt most of the characters in _Hamlet_, _King Lear_,
_Othello_, or _Antony and Cleopatra_ can be arranged in opposed
groups;[7] and no doubt there is a conflict; and yet it seems misleading
to describe this conflict as one _between these groups_. It cannot be
simply this. For though Hamlet and the King are mortal foes, yet that
which engrosses our interest and dwells in our memory at least as much
as the conflict between them, is the conflict _within_ one of them. And
so it is, though not in the same degree, with _Antony and Cleopatra_ and
even with _Othello_; and, in fact, in a certain measure, it is so with
nearly all the tragedies. There is an outward conflict of persons and
groups, there is also a conflict of forces in the hero's soul; and even
in _Julius Caesar_ and _Macbeth_ the interest of the former can hardly
be said to exceed that of the latter.

The truth is, that the type of tragedy in which the hero opposes to a
hostile force an undivided soul, is not the Shakespearean type. The
souls of those who contend with the hero may be thus undivided; they
generally are; but, as a rule, the hero, though he pursues his fated
way, is, at least at some point in the action, and sometimes at many,
torn by an inward struggle; and it is frequently at such points that
Shakespeare shows his most extraordinary power. If further we compare
the earlier tragedies with the later, we find that it is in the latter,
the maturest works, that this inward struggle is most emphasised. In the
last of them, _Coriolanus_, its interest completely eclipses towards the
close of the play that of the outward conflict. _Romeo and Juliet_,
_Richard III._, _Richard II._, where the hero contends with an outward
force, but comparatively little with himself, are all early plays.

If we are to include the outer and the inner struggle in a conception
more definite than that of conflict in general, we must employ some such
phrase as 'spiritual force.' This will mean whatever forces act in the
human spirit, whether good or evil, whether personal passion or
impersonal principle; doubts, desires, scruples, ideas--whatever can
animate, shake, possess, and drive a man's soul. In a Shakespearean
tragedy some such forces are shown in conflict. They are shown acting in
men and generating strife between them. They are also shown, less
universally, but quite as characteristically, generating disturbance and
even conflict in the soul of the hero. Treasonous ambition in Macbeth
collides with loyalty and patriotism in Macduff and Malcolm: here is the
outward conflict. But these powers or principles equally collide in the
soul of Macbeth himself: here is the inner. And neither by itself could
make the tragedy.[8]

We shall see later the importance of this idea. Here we need only
observe that the notion of tragedy as a conflict emphasises the fact
that action is the centre of the story, while the concentration of
interest, in the greater plays, on the inward struggle emphasises the
fact that this action is essentially the expression of character.

3

Let us turn now from the 'action' to the central figure in it; and,
ignoring the characteristics which distinguish the heroes from one
another, let us ask whether they have any common qualities which appear
to be essential to the tragic effect.

One they certainly have. They are exceptional beings. We have seen
already that the hero, with Shakespeare, is a person of high degree or
of public importance, and that his actions or sufferings are of an
unusual kind. But this is not all. His nature also is exceptional, and
generally raises him in some respect much above the average level of
humanity. This does not mean that he is an eccentric or a paragon.
Shakespeare never drew monstrosities of virtue; some of his heroes are
far from being 'good'; and if he drew eccentrics he gave them a
subordinate position in the plot. His tragic characters are made of the
stuff we find within ourselves and within the persons who surround them.
But, by an intensification of the life which they share with others,
they are raised above them; and the greatest are raised so far that, if
we fully realise all that is implied in their words and actions, we
become conscious that in real life we have known scarcely any one
resembling them. Some, like Hamlet and Cleopatra, have genius. Others,
like Othello, Lear, Macbeth, Coriolanus, are built on the grand scale;
and desire, passion, or will attains in them a terrible force. In almost
all we observe a marked one-sidedness, a predisposition in some
particular direction; a total incapacity, in certain circumstances, of
resisting the force which draws in this direction; a fatal tendency to
identify the whole being with one interest, object, passion, or habit of
mind. This, it would seem, is, for Shakespeare, the fundamental tragic
trait. It is present in his early heroes, Romeo and Richard II.,
infatuated men, who otherwise rise comparatively little above the
ordinary level. It is a fatal gift, but it carries with it a touch of
greatness; and when there is joined to it nobility of mind, or genius,
or immense force, we realise the full power and reach of the soul, and
the conflict in which it engages acquires that magnitude which stirs not
only sympathy and pity, but admiration, terror, and awe.

The easiest way to bring home to oneself the nature of the tragic
character is to compare it with a character of another kind. Dramas like
_Cymbeline_ and the _Winter's Tale_, which might seem destined to end
tragically, but actually end otherwise, owe their happy ending largely
to the fact that the principal characters fail to reach tragic
dimensions. And, conversely, if these persons were put in the place of
the tragic heroes, the dramas in which they appeared would cease to be
tragedies. Posthumus would never have acted as Othello did; Othello, on
his side, would have met Iachimo's challenge with something more than
words. If, like Posthumus, he had remained convinced of his wife's
infidelity, he would not have repented her execution; if, like Leontes,
he had come to believe that by an unjust accusation he had caused her
death, he would never have lived on, like Leontes. In the same way the
villain Iachimo has no touch of tragic greatness. But Iago comes nearer
to it, and if Iago had slandered Imogen and had supposed his slanders to
have led to her death, he certainly would not have turned melancholy and
wished to die. One reason why the end of the _Merchant of Venice_ fails
to satisfy us is that Shylock is a tragic character, and that we cannot
believe in his accepting his defeat and the conditions imposed on him.
This was a case where Shakespeare's imagination ran away with him, so
that he drew a figure with which the destined pleasant ending would not
harmonise.

In the circumstances where we see the hero placed, his tragic trait,
which is also his greatness, is fatal to him. To meet these
circumstances something is required which a smaller man might have
given, but which the hero cannot give. He errs, by action or omission;
and his error, joining with other causes, brings on him ruin. This is
always so with Shakespeare. As we have seen, the idea of the tragic hero
as a being destroyed simply and solely by external forces is quite alien
to him; and not less so is the idea of the hero as contributing to his
destruction only by acts in which we see no flaw. But the fatal
imperfection or error, which is never absent, is of different kinds and
degrees. At one extreme stands the excess and precipitancy of Romeo,
which scarcely, if at all, diminish our regard for him; at the other the
murderous ambition of Richard III. In most cases the tragic error
involves no conscious breach of right; in some (_e.g._ that of Brutus or
Othello) it is accompanied by a full conviction of right. In Hamlet
there is a painful consciousness that duty is being neglected; in Antony
a clear knowledge that the worse of two courses is being pursued; but
Richard and Macbeth are the only heroes who do what they themselves
recognise to be villainous. It is important to observe that Shakespeare
does admit such heroes,[9] and also that he appears to feel, and exerts
himself to meet, the difficulty that arises from their admission. The
difficulty is that the spectator must desire their defeat and even their
destruction; and yet this desire, and the satisfaction of it, are not
tragic feelings. Shakespeare gives to Richard therefore a power which
excites astonishment, and a courage which extorts admiration. He gives
to Macbeth a similar, though less extraordinary, greatness, and adds to
it a conscience so terrifying in its warnings and so maddening in its
reproaches that the spectacle of inward torment compels a horrified
sympathy and awe which balance, at the least, the desire for the hero's
ruin.

The tragic hero with Shakespeare, then, need not be 'good,' though
generally he is 'good' and therefore at once wins sympathy in his error.
But it is necessary that he should have so much of greatness that in his
error and fall we may be vividly conscious of the possibilities of human
nature.[10] Hence, in the first place, a Shakespearean tragedy is never,
like some miscalled tragedies, depressing. No one ever closes the book
with the feeling that man is a poor mean creature. He may be wretched
and he may be awful, but he is not small. His lot may be heart-rending
and mysterious, but it is not contemptible. The most confirmed of cynics
ceases to be a cynic while he reads these plays. And with this greatness
of the tragic hero (which is not always confined to him) is connected,
secondly, what I venture to describe as the centre of the tragic
impression. This central feeling is the impression of waste. With
Shakespeare, at any rate, the pity and fear which are stirred by the
tragic story seem to unite with, and even to merge in, a profound sense
of sadness and mystery, which is due to this impression of waste. 'What
a piece of work is man,' we cry; 'so much more beautiful and so much
more terrible than we knew! Why should he be so if this beauty and
greatness only tortures itself and throws itself away?' We seem to have
before us a type of the mystery of the whole world, the tragic fact
which extends far beyond the limits of tragedy. Everywhere, from the
crushed rocks beneath our feet to the soul of man, we see power,
intelligence, life and glory, which astound us and seem to call for our
worship. And everywhere we see them perishing, devouring one another and
destroying themselves, often with dreadful pain, as though they came
into being for no other end. Tragedy is the typical form of this
mystery, because that greatness of soul which it exhibits oppressed,
conflicting and destroyed, is the highest existence in our view. It
forces the mystery upon us, and it makes us realise so vividly the worth
of that which is wasted that we cannot possibly seek comfort in the
reflection that all is vanity.

4

In this tragic world, then, where individuals, however great they may be
and however decisive their actions may appear, are so evidently not the
ultimate power, what is this power? What account can we give of it which
will correspond with the imaginative impressions we receive? This will
be our final question.

The variety of the answers given to this question shows how difficult it
is. And the difficulty has many sources. Most people, even among those
who know Shakespeare well and come into real contact with his mind, are
inclined to isolate and exaggerate some one aspect of the tragic fact.
Some are so much influenced by their own habitual beliefs that they
import them more or less into their interpretation of every author who
is 'sympathetic' to them. And even where neither of these causes of
error appears to operate, another is present from which it is probably
impossible wholly to escape. What I mean is this. Any answer we give to
the question proposed ought to correspond with, or to represent in terms
of the understanding, our imaginative and emotional experience in
reading the tragedies. We have, of course, to do our best by study and
effort to make this experience true to Shakespeare; but, that done to
the best of our ability, the experience is the matter to be interpreted,
and the test by which the interpretation must be tried. But it is
extremely hard to make out exactly what this experience is, because, in
the very effort to make it out, our reflecting mind, full of everyday
ideas, is always tending to transform it by the application of these
ideas, and so to elicit a result which, instead of representing the
fact, conventionalises it. And the consequence is not only mistaken
theories; it is that many a man will declare that he feels in reading a
tragedy what he never really felt, while he fails to recognise what he
actually did feel. It is not likely that we shall escape all these
dangers in our effort to find an answer to the question regarding the
tragic world and the ultimate power in it.

It will be agreed, however, first, that this question must not be
answered in 'religious' language. For although this or that _dramatis
persona_ may speak of gods or of God, of evil spirits or of Satan, of
heaven and of hell, and although the poet may show us ghosts from
another world, these ideas do not materially influence his
representation of life, nor are they used to throw light on the mystery
of its tragedy. The Elizabethan drama was almost wholly secular; and
while Shakespeare was writing he practically confined his view to the
world of non-theological observation and thought, so that he represents
it substantially in one and the same way whether the period of the story
is pre-Christian or Christian.[11] He looked at this 'secular' world
most intently and seriously; and he painted it, we cannot but conclude,
with entire fidelity, without the wish to enforce an opinion of his own,
and, in essentials, without regard to anyone's hopes, fears, or beliefs.
His greatness is largely due to this fidelity in a mind of extraordinary
power; and if, as a private person, he had a religious faith, his tragic
view can hardly have been in contradiction with this faith, but must
have been included in it, and supplemented, not abolished, by additional
ideas.

Two statements, next, may at once be made regarding the tragic fact as
he represents it: one, that it is and remains to us something piteous,
fearful and mysterious; the other, that the representation of it does
not leave us crushed, rebellious or desperate. These statements will be
accepted, I believe, by any reader who is in touch with Shakespeare's
mind and can observe his own. Indeed such a reader is rather likely to
complain that they are painfully obvious. But if they are true as well
as obvious, something follows from them in regard to our present
question.

From the first it follows that the ultimate power in the tragic world is
not adequately described as a law or order which we can see to be just
and benevolent,--as, in that sense, a 'moral order': for in that case
the spectacle of suffering and waste could not seem to us so fearful and
mysterious as it does. And from the second it follows that this ultimate
power is not adequately described as a fate, whether malicious and
cruel, or blind and indifferent to human happiness and goodness: for in
that case the spectacle would leave us desperate or rebellious. Yet one
or other of these two ideas will be found to govern most accounts of
Shakespeare's tragic view or world. These accounts isolate and
exaggerate single aspects, either the aspect of action or that of
suffering; either the close and unbroken connection of character, will,
deed and catastrophe, which, taken alone, shows the individual simply as
sinning against, or failing to conform to, the moral order and drawing
his just doom on his own head; or else that pressure of outward forces,
that sway of accident, and those blind and agonised struggles, which,
taken alone, show him as the mere victim of some power which cares
neither for his sins nor for his pain. Such views contradict one
another, and no third view can unite them; but the several aspects from
whose isolation and exaggeration they spring are both present in the
fact, and a view which would be true to the fact and to the whole of our
imaginative experience must in some way combine these aspects.

Let us begin, then, with the idea of fatality and glance at some of the
impressions which give rise to it, without asking at present whether
this idea is their natural or fitting expression. There can be no doubt
that they do arise and that they ought to arise. If we do not feel at
times that the hero is, in some sense, a doomed man; that he and others
drift struggling to destruction like helpless creatures borne on an
irresistible flood towards a cataract; that, faulty as they may be,
their fault is far from being the sole or sufficient cause of all they
suffer; and that the power from which they cannot escape is relentless
and immovable, we have failed to receive an essential part of the full
tragic effect.

The sources of these impressions are various, and I will refer only to a
few. One of them is put into words by Shakespeare himself when he makes
the player-king in _Hamlet_ say:

Our thoughts are ours, their ends none of our own;

'their ends' are the issues or outcomes of our thoughts, and these, says
the speaker, are not our own. The tragic world is a world of action, and
action is the translation of thought into reality. We see men and women
confidently attempting it. They strike into the existing order of things
in pursuance of their ideas. But what they achieve is not what they
intended; it is terribly unlike it. They understand nothing, we say to
ourselves, of the world on which they operate. They fight blindly in the
dark, and the power that works through them makes them the instrument of
a design which is not theirs. They act freely, and yet their action
binds them hand and foot. And it makes no difference whether they meant
well or ill. No one could mean better than Brutus, but he contrives
misery for his country and death for himself. No one could mean worse
than Iago, and he too is caught in the web he spins for others. Hamlet,
recoiling from the rough duty of revenge, is pushed into
blood-guiltiness he never dreamed of, and forced at last on the revenge
he could not will. His adversary's murders, and no less his adversary's
remorse, bring about the opposite of what they sought. Lear follows an
old man's whim, half generous, half selfish; and in a moment it looses
all the powers of darkness upon him. Othello agonises over an empty
fiction, and, meaning to execute solemn justice, butchers innocence and
strangles love. They understand themselves no better than the world
about them. Coriolanus thinks that his heart is iron, and it melts like
snow before a fire. Lady Macbeth, who thought she could dash out her own
child's brains, finds herself hounded to death by the smell of a
stranger's blood. Her husband thinks that to gain a crown he would jump
the life to come, and finds that the crown has brought him all the
horrors of that life. Everywhere, in this tragic world, man's thought,
translated into act, is transformed into the opposite of itself. His
act, the movement of a few ounces of matter in a moment of time, becomes
a monstrous flood which spreads over a kingdom. And whatsoever he dreams
of doing, he achieves that which he least dreamed of, his own
destruction.

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