an illusion, 'such stuff as dreams are made on.' But these faint and
scattered intimations that the tragic world, being but a fragment of a
whole beyond our vision, must needs be a contradiction and no ultimate
truth, avail nothing to interpret the mystery. We remain confronted with
the inexplicable fact, or the no less inexplicable appearance, of a
world travailing for perfection, but bringing to birth, together with
glorious good, an evil which it is able to overcome only by self-torture
and self-waste. And this fact or appearance is tragedy.[15]

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: _Julius Caesar_ is not an exception to this rule. Caesar,
whose murder comes in the Third Act, is in a sense the dominating figure
in the story, but Brutus is the 'hero.']

[Footnote 2: _Timon of Athens_, we have seen, was probably not designed
by Shakespeare, but even _Timon_ is no exception to the rule. The
sub-plot is concerned with Alcibiades and his army, and Timon himself is
treated by the Senate as a man of great importance. _Arden of Feversham_
and _A Yorkshire Tragedy_ would certainly be exceptions to the rule; but
I assume that neither of them is Shakespeare's; and if either is, it
belongs to a different species from his admitted tragedies. See, on this
species, Symonds, _Shakspere's Predecessors_, ch. xi.]

[Footnote 3: Even a deed would, I think, be counted an 'accident,' if it
were the deed of a very minor person whose character had not been
indicated; because such a deed would not issue from the little world to
which the dramatist had confined our attention.]

[Footnote 4: Comedy stands in a different position. The tricks played by