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