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 is supposed to elapse before the events which answer our question make their appearance and the conflict begins; in King Lear, for instance, about a fortnight; in Hamlet about two months.

2

We come now to the conflict itself.  And here one or two preliminary remarks are necessary.  In the first place, it must be remembered that our point of view in examining the construction of a play will not always coincide with that which we occupy in thinking of its whole dramatic effect.  For example, that struggle in the hero’s soul which sometimes accompanies the outward struggle is of the highest importance for the total effect of a tragedy; but it is not always necessary or desirable to consider it when the question is merely one of construction.  And this is natural.  The play is meant primarily for the theatre; and theatrically the outward conflict, with its influence on the fortunes of the hero, is the aspect which first catches, if it does not engross, attention.  For the average play-goer of every period the main interest of Hamlet has probably lain in the vicissitudes of his long duel with the King; and the question, one may almost say, has been which will first kill the other.  And so, from the point of view of construction, the fact that Hamlet spares the King when he finds him praying, is, from its effect on the hero’s fortunes, of great moment; but the cause of the fact, which lies within Hamlet’s character, is not so.