[Footnote 12:  I have raised no objection to the use of the idea of fate, because it occurs so often both in conversation and in books about Shakespeare’s tragedies that I must suppose it to be natural to many readers.  Yet I doubt whether it would be so if Greek tragedy had never been written; and I must in candour confess that to me it does not often occur while I am reading, or when I have just read, a tragedy of Shakespeare.  Wordsworth’s lines, for example, about

         poor humanity’s afflicted will
     Struggling in vain with ruthless destiny

do not represent the impression I receive; much less do images which compare man to a puny creature helpless in the claws of a bird of prey.  The reader should examine himself closely on this matter.]

[Footnote 13:  It is dangerous, I think, in reference to all really good tragedies, but I am dealing here only with Shakespeare’s.  In not a few Greek tragedies it is almost inevitable that we should think of justice and retribution, not only because the dramatis personae often speak of them, but also because there is something casuistical about the tragic problem itself.  The poet treats the story in such a way that the question, Is the hero doing right or wrong? is almost forced upon us.  But this is not so with Shakespeare. Julius Caesar is probably the only one of his tragedies in which the question suggests itself to us, and this is one of the reasons why that play has something of a classic air.  Even here, if we ask the question, we have no doubt at all about the answer.]

[Footnote 14:  It is most essential to remember that an evil man is much more than the evil in him.  I may add that in this paragraph I have, for the sake of clearness, considered evil in its most pronounced form; but what is said would apply, mutatis mutandis, to evil as imperfection, etc.]

[Footnote 15:  Partly in order not to anticipate later passages, I abstained from treating fully here the question why we feel, at the death of the tragic hero, not only pain but also reconciliation and sometimes even exultation.  As I cannot at present make good this defect, I would ask the reader to refer to the word Reconciliation in the Index.  See also, in Oxford Lectures on Poetry, Hegel’s Theory of Tragedy, especially pp. 90, 91.]

LECTURE II

CONSTRUCTION IN SHAKESPEARE’S TRAGEDIES

Having discussed the substance of a Shakespearean tragedy, we should naturally go on to examine the form.  And under this head many things might be included; for example, Shakespeare’s methods of characterisation, his language, his versification, the construction of his plots.  I intend, however, to speak only of the last of these subjects, which has been somewhat neglected;[16] and, as construction is a more or less technical matter, I shall add some general remarks on Shakespeare as an artist.