No one ever closes the book with the feeling that man is a poor mean creature.  He may be wretched and he may be awful, but he is not small.  His lot may be heart-rending and mysterious, but it is not contemptible.  The most confirmed of cynics ceases to be a cynic while he reads these plays.  And with this greatness of the tragic hero (which is not always confined to him) is connected, secondly, what I venture to describe as the centre of the tragic impression.  This central feeling is the impression of waste.  With Shakespeare, at any rate, the pity and fear which are stirred by the tragic story seem to unite with, and even to merge in, a profound sense of sadness and mystery, which is due to this impression of waste.  ’What a piece of work is man,’ we cry; ’so much more beautiful and so much more terrible than we knew!  Why should he be so if this beauty and greatness only tortures itself and throws itself away?’ We seem to have before us a type of the mystery of the whole world, the tragic fact which extends far beyond the limits of tragedy.  Everywhere, from the crushed rocks beneath our feet to the soul of man, we see power, intelligence, life and glory, which astound us and seem to call for our worship.  And everywhere we see them perishing, devouring one another and destroying themselves, often with dreadful pain, as though they came into being for no other end.  Tragedy is the typical form of this mystery, because that greatness of soul which it exhibits oppressed, conflicting and destroyed, is the highest existence in our view.  It forces the mystery upon us, and it makes us realise so vividly the worth of that which is wasted that we cannot possibly seek comfort in the reflection that all is vanity.

4

In this tragic world, then, where individuals, however great they may be and however decisive their actions may appear, are so evidently not the ultimate power, what is this power?  What account can we give of it which will correspond with the imaginative impressions we receive?  This will be our final question.

The variety of the answers given to this question shows how difficult it is.  And the difficulty has many sources.  Most people, even among those who know Shakespeare well and come into real contact with his mind, are inclined to isolate and exaggerate some one aspect of the tragic fact.  Some are so much influenced by their own habitual beliefs that they import them more or less into their interpretation of every author who is ‘sympathetic’ to them.  And even where neither of these causes of error appears to operate, another is present from which it is probably impossible wholly to escape.  What I mean is this.  Any answer we give to the question proposed ought to correspond with, or to represent in terms of the understanding, our imaginative and emotional experience in reading the tragedies.  We have, of course, to do our best by study and effort to make this experience true to Shakespeare; but, that