other name,--a power which appears to smile on him for a little, and
then on a sudden strikes him down in his pride.

Shakespeare's idea of the tragic fact is larger than this idea and goes
beyond it; but it includes it, and it is worth while to observe the
identity of the two in a certain point which is often ignored. Tragedy
with Shakespeare is concerned always with persons of 'high degree';
often with kings or princes; if not, with leaders in the state like
Coriolanus, Brutus, Antony; at the least, as in _Romeo and Juliet_, with
members of great houses, whose quarrels are of public moment. There is a
decided difference here between _Othello_ and our three other tragedies,
but it is not a difference of kind. Othello himself is no mere private
person; he is the General of the Republic. At the beginning we see him
in the Council-Chamber of the Senate. The consciousness of his high
position never leaves him. At the end, when he is determined to live no
longer, he is as anxious as Hamlet not to be misjudged by the great
world, and his last speech begins,

Soft you; a word or two before you go.
I have done the state some service, and they know it.[2]

And this characteristic of Shakespeare's tragedies, though not the most
vital, is neither external nor unimportant. The saying that every
death-bed is the scene of the fifth act of a tragedy has its meaning,
but it would not be true if the word 'tragedy' bore its dramatic sense.
The pangs of despised love and the anguish of remorse, we say, are the
same in a peasant and a prince; but, not to insist that they cannot be
so when the prince is really a prince, the story of the prince, the
triumvir, or the general, has a greatness and dignity of its own. His
fate affects the welfare of a whole nation or empire; and when he falls