THE SUBSTANCE OF SHAKESPEAREAN TRAGEDY


The question we are to consider in this lecture may be stated in a
variety of ways. We may put it thus: What is the substance of a
Shakespearean tragedy, taken in abstraction both from its form and from
the differences in point of substance between one tragedy and another?
Or thus: What is the nature of the tragic aspect of life as represented
by Shakespeare? What is the general fact shown now in this tragedy and
now in that? And we are putting the same question when we ask: What is
Shakespeare's tragic conception, or conception of tragedy?

These expressions, it should be observed, do not imply that Shakespeare
himself ever asked or answered such a question; that he set himself to
reflect on the tragic aspects of life, that he framed a tragic
conception, and still less that, like Aristotle or Corneille, he had a
theory of the kind of poetry called tragedy. These things are all
possible; how far any one of them is probable we need not discuss; but
none of them is presupposed by the question we are going to consider.
This question implies only that, as a matter of fact, Shakespeare in
writing tragedy did represent a certain aspect of life in a certain way,
and that through examination of his writings we ought to be able, to
some extent, to describe this aspect and way in terms addressed to the
understanding. Such a description, so far as it is true and adequate,
may, after these explanations, be called indifferently an account of the
substance of Shakespearean tragedy, or an account of Shakespeare's
conception of tragedy or view of the tragic fact.

Two further warnings may be required. In the first place, we must
remember that the tragic aspect of life is only one aspect. We cannot