this warning, and no less Othello's answer, 'My life upon her faith,'
make our hearts sink. The whole of the coming story seems to be
prefigured in Antony's muttered words (I. ii. 120):

These strong Egyptian fetters I must break,
Or lose myself in dotage;

and, again, in Hamlet's weary sigh, following so soon on the passionate
resolution stirred by the message of the Ghost:

The time is out of joint. Oh cursed spite,
That ever I was born to set it right.

These words occur at a point (the end of the First Act) which may be
held to fall either within the exposition or beyond it. I should take
the former view, though such questions, as we saw at starting, can
hardly be decided with certainty. The dimensions of this first section
of a tragedy depend on a variety of causes, of which the chief seems to
be the comparative simplicity or complexity of the situation from which
the conflict arises. Where this is simple the exposition is short, as in
_Julius Caesar_ and _Macbeth_. Where it is complicated the exposition
requires more space, as in _Romeo and Juliet_, _Hamlet_, and _King
Lear_. Its completion is generally marked in the mind of the reader by a
feeling that the action it contains is for the moment complete but has
left a problem. The lovers have met, but their families are at deadly
enmity; the hero seems at the height of success, but has admitted the
thought of murdering his sovereign; the old king has divided his kingdom
between two hypocritical daughters, and has rejected his true child; the
hero has acknowledged a sacred duty of revenge, but is weary of life:
and we ask, What will come of this? Sometimes, I may add, a certain time